Why News Can't Cope.

I don't like the term 'commit suicide'.

It still has the overtones of a criminal offence; you commit homicide, or matricide, but not suicide.

In the UK an estimated 7 people per 100,000 kill themselves each year and to characterize them all would be a horrible disservice to them and their families. Everyone is different, with different needs, and hopes, and emotional drivers pushing them on through life; and people who kill themselves have reached a point of desperation or calm or decision... they choose, for whatever reason, to end themselves.

None of this is news.

When L'Wren Scott killed herself was a model, a stylist, a designer, a business woman, she was a rounded personality.

A person.

None of this is news... unless you have an interest in the fashion world.

At the time L'Wren Scott killed herself she was in a relationship with Sir Mick Jagger the front man of The Rolling Stones.

This is news.

News organisations have difficulty with the dichotomy of being respectful and telling the story.

On the morning after her death was announced the UK Newspapers were evenly split between "L'Wren Scott, designer and partner of Sir Mick Jagger" and "Sir Micks Girlfriend". The Ex BBC Radio 4 newsreader Alice Arnold tweeted

Whoever wrote @BBCRadio2 headline on death of L’wren Scott - be ashamed..”Mick Jagger’s girlfriend”..you didn’t even name her for ‘30 secs.

 L'Wren Scott's death has highlighted a problem in reporting.

Would this be international news if she wasn't Sir Mick Jagger's partner? And if not, then how do you report something without making the error of forgetting that she is a person.

When I was managing journalists there were a number of inaccuracies that I didn't want to see or hear; people die of AIDS related illnesses not of AIDS, murderers murder women who were working as prostitutes / in the sex industry they don't murder prostitutes, people are wheelchair users not confined to wheelchairs, people live with a disability they aren't disabled...

The way the news uses language is important, not just for the sense of a story but for the way we feel about it.

Coverage of L'Wren Scott has shown us how journalists thinking "What's important?" Sometimes don't think "what is right?".

For a journalist covering this story "Mick Jagger's Girlfriend" is what they see as the important bit, is easier and quicker than "L'Wren Scott, designer and entrepreneur, girlfriend of Mick Jagger". It doesn't make it right and it certainly doesn't add to the moral health of an industry that has such power.

My heart goes out to those affected by her death and those affected when anyone kills themselves.

I'm sad that this horrible, private event has become news fodder.

I'm sorry so many journalists don't think about language as much as they should.

Media Training - The Media Landscape; Radio - Frequency Modulation

Dennis McCarthy

I first appeared on the radio in 1995, and my first live broadcast was with Dennis McCarthy who was a legend.

Dennis had the ability to stand in a street in Nottingham and say on-air, "I wonder who's house we're doing the programme from this morning" and 60% of the doors would be thrown open by eager listeners who wanted Dennis to come and sit in their best parlor and do a radio show.

Everyone listened to Dennis...

His avuncular style belied a prickly nature. He was bigger than the station he worked for; it was BBC Radio Dennis.

The first and longest conversation I had with Dennis went like this...

Dennis (in the studio some 1000 yards from where I was, in a bunker, under a car-park, looking at the traffic cameras) - Hello Travel, who's that?
Me - I'm John, Dennis.
Dennis - John? John? What happened to Annie, or Claire?
Me - They're not on today, it's my first day, sorry.
Dennis - Pick up after the sting.

For the next year, every weekday afternoon all he said to me was "Pick up after the sting". I may have said "afternoon Dennis, are you well?" or "How are you today Dennis?" all he ever said to me was...

"Pick up after the sting..."

When he said that to me for the last time I didn't know that one of my colleagues was wrestling control of the studio from him. He was seriously ill, and the decision had been taken to get him off air for medical attention. He was having none of it, and every time someone pressed the control button in the other studio to take his signal away from the transmitter, he pressed it in his studio.

He was determined to finish the show...

That night he went home, and died.

20,000 people turned out for his funeral.

The days of Dennis are long gone. In Nottingham you had the choice between national stations and 3 local stations; BBC Radio Nottingham, Radio Trent & GEM AM (later re-branded to be Trent FM & Classic Gold Gem) both of the latter were owned by the same company.

There was little choice and that made for massive loyalty.

In Nottingham, a city of 730,000, there are now... well, there are around 10 stations serving the city, others serving other parts of the county and then you have the nationals, DAB and the internet.

There has never been more choice in listening in the UK if you want to listen to music. If you want news and speech content then you're pretty much stuck with the BBC it's the only place you'll find documentary, discussions and opportunities to be interviewed.*

In the UK it's a speech monopoly we have choice but only in very particular ways... you may as well have Dennis back.


*there are a couple of important Metropolitan exceptions LBC TalkSport et al.

Attractive Men are, more attractive...

Here's an interesting article I've been quoted in...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10689948/Does-being-good-looking-really-help-men-get-on-in-business.html

Here's the text of that -

Good-looking men give more convincing business presentations, while a woman’s physical appearance has no impact on how her pitch is received, according to a study by researchers at Harvard University.

For the study, 60 experienced investors were asked to view recordings of business pitches by entrepreneurs from various sectors.

The men deemed good looking consistently had more positive reactions to pitches than their averagely attractive counterparts, whereas for attractive women there was no difference in feedback.

Dr Alison Brooks, of Harvard Business School, said that “the power of male attractiveness to persuade evaluators to select one pitch over another” showed good looking entrepreneurs were more likely to get ahead in their chosen field.

But Harry Key, a speech coach and author based in the UK, says it is unlikely that the men’s good looks in themselves were winning over potential investors.

“Good looking men generally give better presentations because they are more confident,” he says. “It’s a no-brainer that people prefer to look at attractive people, but that’s not enough to win a pitch.

“There’s also the ‘halo effect’ where people tend to group together positive attributes; you see that someone’s good looking and on some level you assume on some level they’ll be smart and thoughtful as well.”

So why is it only with men that this makes a difference? Are attractive women not as confident with it?

Key has a depressing suggestion to explain results of the study: “I do coaching with a lot of start-up owners, and I have heard men say ‘I don’t want to hire women because you never know when they are going to want kids, and I can’t afford to lose any member of staff’.

“So that’s something that might be continuously in these investors' minds, even if they’re not consciously thinking about it when giving feedback.”

Branding expert Mark Borkowski has another idea about why attractive women might be taken less seriously.

“We’ve been fed this idea by the media that an attractive man has hidden depths,” he says. “But because of the glamour and fashion industries there’s the assumption that if a woman’s beautiful she won’t be intellectual.”

He adds of the study in general: "I think it's true that people are increasingly being attracted by youthful exuberance. If we fall into this trap we're going to miss out on some of the brightest and most creative brains."

Commentators also suggest the study’s findings might be less true of business culture in the UK than America. Key, for example, says he encourages his British clients to be funny rather than slickly confident.

“Being attractive doesn’t help you make the audience laugh or engage with them, which is important for people in the UK. In America presentations tend to be more flashy and like a commercial.”

John Rockley, a presentation and media consultant, agrees that American audiences tend to be more focussed on appearance than British ones.

“In the UK, if someone’s speaking with confidence then people are willing to listen. In America, they’re much more used to having very polished news anchors and media experts, so how someone looks might be more of an issue.”

But Rockley agrees that good looks are still an advantage for a man in business anywhere in the world. If that’s the case, then, what can the averagely attractive do to make up for it?

“Work harder and prepare more,” he says.

Media Training - The Media Landscape; The Press - Who Owns Your Message?

If you're interviewed by the press, why does it matter who owns the organisation?

Media ownership is a thesis all on its own, but the main things to remember about the press, are the political standpoints of the owners and the readers.

People buy a newspaper because it reinforces their world view, it feels like a friend that's on their side, that stands for the things that they think they stand for. If your political leaning is to the right then The Daily Mail, The Express, The Star, The Sun are all for you. If your political leaning is to the left then The Guardian, The Mirror, The Independent should be of interest. If you're vaguely undecided then have a look at the ever wavering Times.

The voice of the outlet is as important as your message. If you take an example of the 31st of January 2014, then there wasn't much that the front pages of the papers agreed on, but it's worth looking at how 2 papers covered 1 story.

The i (a slimmed down version of the Independent paper) appeals to the left leaning, possibly younger audience. It's an easy digest of the news. On the front page a report into University demographics is hailed as a win for women. Women race ahead... a positive spin on the story.

Then look at the way that The Daily Telegraph (often referred to as The Daily Tory-graph) a right leaning paper covers the same story. This time Boys are being left behind... not celebratory, but warning of a disturbing 'gender gap'.

This is the same story, with the same figures, with the same information, presented in 2 different and opposed ways.

Where does that leave the interview that you're about to do?

Before agreeing to be interviewed ask yourself...
"Does this newspaper represent me or my organisation?"
"Does this newspaper have the same message we are buying into?"
"Is this the newspaper of choice for my clients, consumer base, customers, stakeholders?"

If not, then you may find that the interview will be more confrontational than you expect, it may even go down roads you don't want it to, especially if you're defending a politically left leaning action in a right wing newspaper.

What about journalistic impartiality?

When you're dealing with newspapers don't expect impartiality. They are there to serve a self selecting community of readers that have been drawn to that publication because they have their world view reinforced. Whether that world view is that women need more opportunity and university numbers signal a change for the better, or that masculinity is in crisis and boys need to be helped in the struggle to succeed because they are being let down by the left.

That said, news is news.

If you're asked to defend bankers bonuses, industrial accidents, killings, and embezzlement, no one will be on your side.

That's 'ownership' from the point of view of the intellectual ownership by the audience. Physical ownership will also have its effect on editorial, even if the papers protest that it won't.

If you are in competition with the owner of a newspaper, you won't get coverage, if you are in competition with the owner of a newspapers other companies, you'll get lots and lots of unwelcome coverage...

 Take the Wowcher / Groupon situation. Both are companies that offer deals and vouchers over the internet for various services.

Wowcher is owned (at the time of writing) by DMG Media, who own The Daily Mail. 

Groupon is not.

A quick search on The Daily Mail website brings up 1 page of results for Wowcher; generally favorable stories from the money saving pages.

There are 11 pages of stories featuring or mentioning Groupon. Mainly very bad news about the website putting people out of business.

I wonder if there's a connection there?

Both physical and intellectual ownership will affect your message. It will affect how your message is spun, used, and in some cases abused. You always need to know what's going on behind the scenes before you become involved in sending your message out.

Media Training - The Media Landscape; The Press In Numbers.

When I was growing up I had a paper-round and all of my friends had paper-rounds, because everyone had papers delivered.

My parents read The Daily Mail, and it appeared that everyone else read The Sun. I can still remember the early morning calm, the smell of the dew-damp air, and the yapping of the 9 or so Yorkshire Terriers that lived at the corner of Crookdole Lane and Broom Road.

I haven't seen a paperboy or girl for years.

It may be because I'm not awake at that time, it may be that I live in the Forest Of Dean and no one wants to cycle up and down the hills, it may be that Newspapers are dying.

In 1987, when I was delivering papers, The Sun had a circulation of nearly 4 million copies, The Daily Mail had 1.7 million copies, The Mirror had just over 3 million and the Guardian had half a million. Now you look at the circulation 26 years later, and in the last sample The Sun dropped 1.6 million to 2.4 million, The Daily Mail stayed steady with 1.8 million, The Mirror dropped by 2 million to 1 million and the Guardian more than halved it's circulation and dropped to 2 hundred thousand copies.

What do all those numbers really mean?

In 1987 the population was on its way to 57,439,000 (1991 Census) and the total copies of daily national papers sold was 14,867,000 about a quarter of the total population (and a much greater proportion of the adult population) was reading a daily national paper.

In 2013 we have a population of around 63,182,000 (2011 Census) and the total number of daily national papers sold was 8,151,000 about an eighth of the population (and a much greater proportion of the adult population) is reading a daily national paper.

Newspaper Circulation has halved in the last 26 years.

Halved.

So what does that mean for the companies that run these newspapers? They aren't making as much money as they used to so they've had to cut costs. Cutting costs means employing fewer people and asking them to do more.

Don't forget, much of a newspapers output is now available online, the Mail gets around 8 million unique users a day (worldwide) and the Guardian gets around 4 million (worldwide)... none of those users pay for it, but it has to be serviced somehow.

News organisations have to do more with less, journalists are over-worked, there isn't time to do 'journalism' which is why this happens

NOAH’S Ark Zoo Farm has achieved recognition for the education programme it runs at its Wraxall site. The zoo hosts more than 15,000 school children each year, ranging from infant school pupils to teenagers studying A-levels, and has now been awarded the Quality Badge from the Learning Outside of the Classroom scheme (LOTC).

The badge is a nationally-recognised benchmark that demonstrates that those places awarded it have met several stringent indicators for education.

Assessments are conducted by the Government-appointed Council for Learning Outside of the Classroom.

Noah’s Ark education coordinator Catherine Tisdall said: “We are very proud of our unique hands-on approach to learning at Noah’s Ark.

“Achieving the Quality Badge is the result of an awful lot of hard work from a team dedicated to providing an exceptional educational day out for visitors.”

This is a local news story taken from The Weston & Somerset Mercury. A zoo has got an award.

Well done them.

With a little bit of digging you can quickly discover that this is a Creationist Zoo that denies Evolution... which is why, after a number of comments from the website and from the page getting shared shared on social media the following was added to the story a day after the first publication...

The award comes after Alice Roberts, professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham, published an article in the Guardian in December raising concerns about how the creationist zoo promotes religious views to its visitors through posters.

Professor Roberts wrote how she fears such posters, which she said ‘distorted scientific fact’, could interfere with a child’s education.

* * *

* We have acknowledged there are contrasting views on this issue, and have added a line to make that fact clear – however, the award presented to Noah’s Ark is a reputable one, and we have reported on that fact without taking sides or passing judgment on the merits of the facility itself.

 The original piece looks like a "copy & paste" press release from the zoo, the addition looks like the stable door being closed by a journalist who has seen that people are angry about the celebratory tone.

This is what some press journalism has become, the recycling of press releases.

It's because there's a tiny number of journalists rattling around news rooms that used to be filled with people.

The individual journalist has to do more and more and more, and a press release with pictures of nice people from a zoo about how the zoo has won an award is easy to cut and paste.

The journalist can now get on with their real job.

I have a friend who was an editor at a local paper, she left because the owners had decided that her journalists were going to be managed by the commercial manager not the editor, because they were there to find stories to support the advertisers. I know people who have seen their jobs in national publications get harder and harder... you can almost understand why phone hacking started being used; it was an easy way to get good stories that sold papers and kept journalists employed.

When the press come to you for an interview, remember the background of a changing world, remember that the journalist may have 10 other stories to get done, and you're just another one, remember that the person you're talking to may just want sensationalism to keep in with the boss, or even rarer than that, they may have actually had the time to find some real news about you.

On the next blog we'll look at how owners, influencers, and audience can affect your press coverage.

Media Training - Introduction

She let out a small scream and ran away… she actually ran away.

I looked at her retreating back, looked at my microphone, and then looked at my other guest. My voice seemed to come from a cave a long way off. I recited one of the great journalistic ‘thinking time’ phrases “So, if I can turn to you…” as I tried to work out if what had happened, had actually happened…

…and then time returned and the interview continued.

I had never had an interviewee let out a little strangled scream and run off.

I was presenting a program from a large college; we had already interviewed seven or eight people including some of the college’s special needs students and were building up to talking to the management. Two of the senior people were standing with me in the entrance hall, the producer in my headphones told me that we’d be live in thirty seconds; I relayed that information and carried on explaining to my guests just what would happen.

I was live, I greeted them both, and I asked something ground-breaking like ‘you must be proud of the work you do here?’ or some other soft warm up question, and then she let out a small scream and ran away… she actually ran away.

Until you’re in front of the media you don’t know how you’ll react. This senior manager probably thought she’d be fine, presenting and talking are all part of the managers role, however, when there’s a branded microphone, a journalist, a producer, a runner, and a waiting audience of thousands, you may suddenly give a small scream and run away. Or worse, your common sense, good judgement, brand identity, ability to speak, bowel control and higher functions all run off and your physical shell is left to try and respond to a journalist whilst your brain is doing something else.

Media training isn't just getting the story straight, it’s learning to be comfortable with the media, it’s learning the rules, it’s learning to play the game properly, and until you can do that your media interactions will always be average, at the best.

Get Past The Black Knight.

If you think your audience is your market segment, your customers, your potential customers, and those who may be persuaded to be your customers then you're wrong.

When it comes to media engagement and press relations your audience is a journalist.

Forget about getting your PR to your target, it won't happen unless you can get past the journalist. Journalists are the gate keepers; they stand on the bridge, sword in hand, saying "None shall pass." You can fight with them if you want, but you'll never win, they'll just keep standing there.

So what do you do?

1) Think Like A Journalist - What is their audience and what is the best way to engage with them?

2) Play The Long Game - Offer content that can move a recurring the story on, add to the debate, or give a starting point to a new strand of content.

3) Be Realistic - If it's just a commercial 'puff' expect to be knocked back or asked to pay for coverage.

4) Use Their Voice - Approach your media outlet with something that sounds like them. You wouldn't send a 'Sun' style pitch to the 'Independent' News room (and vice versa); even if they can see the story they'll be nervous about using something that won't sit well with their audience.

5) Be A Consumer - Journalists love to be read, watched, and listened to. Make a point of consuming the media you want to target so you can link it in to what that journalist may have already published.

Now you can get past the Black Knight, or at least give him a scratch...

Coke, Sugar & The BBC Part 2...

Reissued & Updated...

On the 9th of May James Quincey the President of Coca-Cola Europe appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'PM'. He was interviewed by regular presenter Eddie Mair. The interview is available here...

listen to ‘PM Programme Coke Interview pt1’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘PM Programme Coke Interview pt2’ on Audioboo

I think that this is a great example of a large organisation doing something to break their 'default narrative' which simply reinforces their 'default narrative'...

The Coke default narrative in this case is...
"Coke is full of sugar and sugar makes us fat"

The result of Coke getting involved in anti obesity campaigns (and involved in this interview) changes the narrative to...
"We know Coke is full of sugar, but we're not going to admit that it contributes to obesity; by the way here are our anti obesity measures, which we're taking EVEN THOUGH Coke doesn't contribute to that obesity" 

We're left with a modified default that portrays the organisation in an even worse light...
"Coke is full of sugar, sugar makes us fat, and The Coca-Cola Corporation doesn't care."

As the interview progresses Mr Quincey states that people 'struggle to balance what goes in and what goes out... [low calorie and sugar free options] allow people to get the balance right.' Or in other words 'sorry fatty, you're too stupid to drink our drinks so we're going to offer you something else, because you've been struggling".

From the moment Mr Quincey enters the studio he has been stitched up like a kipper.

Coke is part of our collective food based cognitive dissonance. It's bad but we like to have it and we're not sure about the morality of the manufacturers. By approaching this dissonance the organisation attempts to mitigate its responsibility and (some would say) liability; they are doing good things so the problems are the consumers fault. It's not guns that kill people it's people that kill people... It's not coke that makes you fat it's YOU that makes YOU fat; you shouldn't blame the manufacturers of the tools.

Engaging the media on your core difficulty will often end badly.

When engaging someone as skilled as Eddie Mair it will end very badly.

He's prepared with multiple studies, he's prepared with the killer questions, he's prepared with 9 sugar cubes.

The challenge to eat 9 sugar cubes is a classic ploy, in this case it's the "would you feed this to your children?" question. It's side stepped and then returned to, it's the question that won't go away.

So, where does this leave an organisation that has an elephant in their room? (in this case it was a tasty sugary elephant... mmmm sugar elephant)

Weigh up the reputational risk between doing something and doing nothing. Doing nothing allows the default narrative to continue, you can acknowledge it, you can even monitor it, but it's unlikely to change rapidly without other circumstances coming into play. If you find there is a sector story you're dragged in to you need to reassess your default in that light.

Doing something attempts to change the default for the better, but the influential (in the UK) PM Programme is not the place to do it. What was the Coke Comms team thinking? Mr Quincey walked into the lions den and got delicately mauled. The key A + B demographic who hang on Eddie Mair's every word will have been delighted by the result and suddenly opinion formers are looking at the Coke initiatives and branding them 'fat wash'.

Do something you can make it worse, do nothing and it can get worse all by itself...

Which will you choose?

UPDATE 28/11/13 *** COKE now think that there IS a lot of sugar in their drinks... Mr Quincey has been thinking about what Eddie did to him, and has decided to let Jeremy Paxman do the same thing. Only this time he agrees that Coke has to change.

Who'd have thought?


FYI Diabetes UK have covered sugary drinks and type 2 diabetes in this article regardless of what Mr Quincey may have said.

THE NEW JDOUBLER MEDIA ENGAGEMENT SEMINAR IS BOOKING NOW 3RD DECEMBER '13 IN LEICESTER JUST OFF THE M1

Well, Raise My Awareness...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a charity, in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of awareness raising.

I'd like to apologise to Jane Austin for that, there really was no good reason for me to savage that quote...

Well, there was...

Because anything to sugar coat the next bit of information is good.

If you work for, in or around a charity in any territory you want to raise awareness, and any journalist working in any territory couldn't care less.

Seriously, there are small patches of mildew on a face cloth, in a bathroom on the outskirts of Baku, that hold more interest for the average journalist involved in daily news media. Each and every one of them could programme a radio station or fill a newspaper with the stories from charities that want to raise awareness... and no one would care.

The big problem is this is what a charity is for; to raise awareness of their chosen cause. It's built into the organisational blue print of 'Charity'.

So how do you get round this?

You supply content, you supply comment of current issues, you supply heart breaking stories, you supply NEWS.

The fact that you're trying to 'raise awareness' is the last thing you should say.

THE NEW JDOUBLER MEDIA ENGAGEMENT SEMINAR IS BOOKING NOW 3RD DECEMBER '13 IN LEICESTER JUST OFF THE M1

Prepare For Christmas.

2 things would fill me with dread when working for the BBC. One of them was Children In Need (I've never been a fan of forced jollity and news readers dancing).

The other was Christmas.

OK I now realise that I sound like an anti-fun stereotype. I do like Christmas, I've even warmed to tinsel and I want you to know that my home will become a grotto of delight for my 2 children. However, Christmas as a journalist is hell.

NOTHING.... EVER.... HAPPENS...

So why am I telling you this?

In the daily news media there are journalists, managers and producers up and down the land who are starting to prepare for the fallow period between Christmas and the New Year; they may only have it in their mind as a job that needs doing at this stage... and it's a job they all hate.

As a canny PR organisation, or as a PR working within an organisation, this is the time to think of how you can help those poor journalists with content.

Good content.

If you're thinking of things to do try along these lines (they are always the ones that get a look in at Christmas); Volunteering, working across the festive period, food waste, alternative presents, children, the armed forces / emergency services, animals and the awful things that happen to them and money. All of these will be trotted out every year without fail.

If you can dip your toe into any of these, provide case studies, no too many commercial mentions and access for a reporter to get it all pre recorded before Christmas week, start dangling it in front of them now. There will be journalists all over the UK who'll be so proud they have something to mention at the Christmas planning meeting in a months time.

Imagine their bright little face on that (nowhere near) Christmas morning when they open that big press release to find it's what every journalist asks Santa for... an easy life.

It's the gift that keeps giving.

THE NEW JDOUBLER MEDIA ENGAGEMENT SEMINAR IS BOOKING NOW 3RD DECEMBER '13 IN LEICESTER JUST OFF THE M1

The Big Stories

Every media outlet has its own list of 'big stories'; the core of the work they do. For daily news media some of the big stories are constantly running, for others it's something they come back to on a regular basis.

Today 5/11/13 Immigration has returned.

The BBC Website is reporting on a UCL study into the benefit of immigration. The report suggests that immigrants since 1999 were 45% less likely to claim benefits than the 'indigenous' population.

And now the cat is amongst the foreign pigeons.

The difficulty with the 'big stories' is that there are default narratives connected to them. The right wing press will shout that it's only since 1999, and immigrants from outside the European Economic Area are a drain to the system because they tend to have larger families. The left wing press hail the report as blindingly obvious and something that they have been saying for years.

So we're no further on. The argument continues and immigration remains one of the 'big stories'.

How can a PR professional, Marketing department, or business leader use the 'big stories'?

Identify them. Look at the websites of your chosen outlet, whether it's a trade story, or a wider news theme, and see how it's reported.

Add context or confirmation. It allows the story to change within their defaults and gives another bite of a story that lots of the journalists will be bored of.

Offer content that could break one default, but lets them build it into another. For example, one of the comments on the BBC website story suggests that undereducated indigenous young people are being passed over in favour of older more qualified migrants; this feeds the 'big story' on education and the slipping of standards. It gives the journalist the ability to change the story but remain on message.

When the sector 'big stories' appear you should be ready.

We Can't Afford Pensions.

This morning (1/11/13) The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 was discussing a planned strike by Fire-fighters in England and Wales. It's a dispute over pensions.

As soon as pensions were mentioned I snorted and thought "well, no one can afford pensions these days...". Then I took a moment and realised that I'd been sucked into one of the great financial narratives of recent times.

No one can afford pensions....

Organisations across the country are changing their pension plans due to "short falls" or in other words "we trusted our investments would work, but they didn't" and employee after employee has seen the value of their plan fall.

When I was in the BBC I saw my final salary scheme come to an end, and I accepted it...

The problem is... This isn't a story about pension deficit this is a story about pension entitlement and redundancy, but it fits so neatly into the default narrative of pension black holes.

I immediately wrote it off as another organisation stung by the financial down turn moaning about bad investments that the financial world said would be fine and then were ruined by another group of financial experts. You know, the old story.

Default Narrative is hugely powerful, it informs out gut reactions to complex stories, it makes us see stories from the wrong angle, with the wrong colour, and the wrong shape. When we remove our default, (like getting the person seated in front of us at the theatre to remove their comedy oversized 'My Fair Lady' hat) we can see the whole story and not just the bits that press our buttons.

Default Narrative - The basics.

Default Narrative - The basics in one handy video. follow me @johnrockley

Surveying the figures.

This isn't the first time that I've blogged about 'polls'... they make me a little bit cross; polls rarely produce robust figures that can be made into robust news stories.

The latest poll has been carried out by the BBC.

I'm not concerned by the reported findings, I'm not concerned by the political comment, I am concerned by the use of the poll to create news.

Why am I so troubled?

FIRSTLY - 1032 people were polled; this equates to 0.0016% of the UK population, or 0.002% of the adult population. If I showed you 0.002% of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel you'd think that Michaelangelo had an unhealthy nipple obsession (dependant on which 0.002% you looked at)

SECONDLY - ICM conducted the poll over the telephone. People who respond to telephone polls are the sort of people who respond to telephone polls. The background drivers for their reasons to talk on the phone with a polling organisation are many and varied; they want to be heard, no one has ever phoned them, they have nothing better to do, they are bored of writing angry letters to the Daily Mail... many reasons.

THIRDLY - The results are used to fuel a wider narrative; in this case they flip the default (which all journalists love doing) and give a better view of cuts to public services than previously reported.

FINALLY - I have too much time on my hands.

When polls are reported in a news context it makes me sad, because I know the pressures journalists and producers are under, I know what it's like to have to report the same basic story day after day after day... for years on end, I know what it's like sitting in a production meeting trying to work out how the hell you're going to make the story interesting again.

Polls are not the answer... and 100% of people surveyed agree with me*.

*survey sample of 1.

Presentation Training - Suddenly A Wild Question Appears.

It's every presenters stickiest moment; the 'any questions' when people start to ask the things you don't know how to answer.

I was training one senior manager who asked me "why don't people ever ask about my presentation?" and the answer is simple; if you've prepared properly they won't need to ask questions.

The problem then becomes one of answering ancillary questions, and they weren't ready for those.

A good presentation should cover the subject well enough to not need questions that are directly about the detail; clarifying questions may well be asked, like "could you run through those projected figures again, and tell me how you got to that?" but questions of substance won't be asked.

And then...

Suddenly, a wild question appears... it hasn't been prepared for, it hasn't been worded properly, but by God it's been asked and that's all that matters.

That's all that matters...

This is where people get bogged down; the wild question doesn't care if it gets answered, it just wants to be asked. These are questions that say more about the person asking it than the presentation.

Does the person asking want to appear strong, or clever, or decisive, or ambitious? Have they got something to prove? Do they just want to be taken seriously? 

We get bogged down with giving information, even when we know that people are parcels of simian emotions wrapped up in a suit and tie. 

The veneer of civilisation is alarmingly thin when someone who's ignored at work... and at home... and at the golf club... decides to 'show them all' and ask a question at the end of a presentation. It's not about the question it's about self-esteem, and you're the one who has to answer it.

What do you do? 

"That's a really good point and I'm very glad you've raised it. I'm not sure I can deal with it in this forum, I'll come and find you when we've finished and we'll talk that through... oh and if anyone else has the same point, then come over and we'll got through it, but, sorry what's your name? OK Dave can lead us in that, if that's OK"

Is somewhere close, it shares the power with the questioner, shuts down a difficult moment and allows you a thinking space. It hands a 'leadership' role and it's 'above and beyond' what they expect from you.

To find out more go to www.jdoubler.co.uk or follow @johnrockley

Tony Christie Is NOT Dead

"Tony Christie is dead and I think it's in very bad taste to be asking about him" I was surprised to get an email like that in 2003.

After playing a Tony Christie song on BBC Radio Gloucestershire I asked "what's Tony Christie doing these days?" This was long before the reintroduction of Tony on the British audience via Peter Kay and his charity video.

The anger I encountered spurred me on. I knew that if he had died I would have heard about it; so I started doing a bit of research.

I found, after trawling the internet, that Tony wasn't dead he was living in Spain and that he was still popular enough in Germany that he had an agent based there. He'd even released a number of German CDs.

A quick email to his German agent got a response from Tony and I got him on the programme, on the phone from his home and I interviewed him live. He was surprised to find out that he was dead.

A few weeks later I was sent a selection of his German releases, as a thank you for being interested in him.

Lovely, I resurrected a classic star, and got a nice bit of radio out of it.

In 2005 after the huge success of "Is This The Way To Amarillo" Tony was back in the UK, and he was doing a gig near to my patch... So I got him on and interviewed him again.

I always want an interview with an artist to be about them not me, we started looking back over his career and he mentioned that a radio station had once phoned him because they thought that he was dead. I was about to say, "yes I know, that was me" when he went on to say that it was a presenter at GMR in Manchester.... Not Gloucestershire... not even close...

What do you do in that situation?

He told me the whole story of how this great presenter had got in contact and it was very odd because he was working in Germany at the time... I let it slide. I didn't want to be the person who got uppity about being forgotten.

So why talk about it now?

I think that it pinpoints 2 things that you need to be aware of when communicating with anyone, from Media Training to Presentation Training to Crisis Communications... whether you're on BBC Breakfast or in a pitch meeting.

1) People remember what's important to them - To Tony the important bit was someone thought he was dead, the detail of who that was was unimportant. He didn't care it was me, he cared that they thought that he was dead.

2) What is important to you is irrelevant - I wanted to be remembered... it's as simple as that. I wanted to be the person that found out he wasn't dead. Tony Christie didn't care about that, why would he. That was what was important to me, not him. Make your communications relevant, interesting, and important to your audience and they will remember you. It may be easy, it may be about internal change, but even then you may be more interested in the strategic direction of your organisation, your audience cares about their jobs, and if they have to move their desks.

And, by the way, I still like Tony Christie

Presentation Training - Stinky and Impotent.

I'm a talker. I like to get ideas into the ether, bounce them off other peoples brains, and then modify or cement.

However, I tend to work alone these days, so getting together with my contemporaries always leaves me buzzing with ideas.

Yesterday I had a cuppa with Richard Tierney a fellow Presentation Trainer / Coach. We were talking about the job, this blog, and the challenges of telling someone they need training.

Richard told me that one of his clients described Presentation Training as 'Erectile Dysfunction"; you don't want to admit you have a problem, once you do it's treatable, but you're never going to tell your colleagues that you've had a problem in the first place... you may hand a card to a very good friend and say "go and see my guy, he sorted me".

It's somehow worse than that. I think it's Erectile Dysfunction and Body Odour rolled into one socially unacceptable mess.

How can you tell someone working with you or for you, that they need Presentation Training?

How do you go up to someone who may be oblivious to the problem themselves and say "you need Presentation Training." It's not just telling them that they can't do an element of their jobs, it's far more personal than that. It's telling them that their personality isn't good enough and they are a failure... Not that they need to build skills to match the rest or their highly skilled work... No, they PERSONALLY are a failure.

To you it's a minor change, to them, it's screwing with their image of themselves.

What if they already know that there is a problem?

They know that they smell, they've tried all the usual remedies; self help books, youtube videos, hiding in a cupboard and having a cry, delegating to someone else... and they are now so dissolution that they begrudgingly use PowerPoint as a distraction whilst they talk into their notes.

The presenting has become a self fulfilling prophecy, "I'm bad so my presentations are bad" (repeat to fade).

Offering training is just rubbing salt into their wounds...

Who's fault is this situation?

Some of the problem is the fault of the employer; rather than looking for aptitudes Presenting comes with the role and you just lump it.

Some of it is the fault of the individual; they don't want to admit to a problem.

Some of it is the fault of colleagues; not wanting to say "with training you'd be so much better".

And some of it can be levelled at the wider business community allowing bad presentations to happen without question and then going off to see another bad presentation...

Businesses of Britain, now is the time to be honest with each other, now is the time to be honest with yourself.

If you want your business to grow succeed and flourish, let's stop being so damned 'English' about things and cry out "I have no idea what I'm doing in front of an audience I NEED PRESENTATION TRAINING!!"

Photo Credit: miserablespice via Compfight cc

Presentation Training - No Slides?

I have a friend who has a problem...

It's not me, and it's not that sort of 'problem'.

She's been asked to present at a popular business breakfast meeting. She's been asked to present for 40 minutes including Q&A. She's been told that there is no room for a screen and therefore there won't be any slides.

No slides...

Many of us who present or train regularly rely on our slides. We only present without slides when the technology fails. My most recent technical failure happened in a board room in Geneva; we had to sort it out with a mixture of hand gestures and Franglais. The French IT guy eventually got it working, but I did have a moment when I thought that the lovely Rolf Kurth and I were going to have to do our 3 hour session without the video clips, audio and headline screens.

We were about to deliver the training to a group of International non-native English speaking Senior Executives.

The thing is, even without the slides, we would have been fine... absolutely fine.

Your brain starts to fixate on the problem, on the unexpected, instead of the knowledge that the slides are the icing on the cake... we still had a bloody good cake (or gateau).

If you're a professional, an expert, a leader in your field, the most important thing in that room is you... not the slide show; it's you and what's inside your head.

So....
     Be aware that they will look at you not your screen
     Monitor your eye contact, you'll have to look at them
     Think about how you're saying it (you can't show them)
     Imagine you're having a conversation with them in the pub; you've just been asked "what do you think"
     Keep it concise, without the visual element more concentration is needed.
     Embrace the Adrenaline, it will make your brain work faster and more efficiently.
     Don't think how much better it is with slides. The audience don't know or care, they want you to be good now!

And if you can't present without slides, your presentation needs to be re-written... you never know when they'll fail.

Presentation Training - Your Number's Up.

I like words, words can do what you want them to do; they can swirl around forming pictures in the sky, they can transmit emotion, they can bring people together, they can start arguments, they can do anything.

Words are the modelling clay of meaning...

Numbers are not.

Numbers are cold and hard and they mean one thing, 4 will always be 4, but fore, for, and four are very different.

Or at least that's how modern culture looks at numbers, as fixed moments in our minds.

The problem is that numbers have been leading a double life, they have been moonlighting as escorts who are ready to let you do terrible, terrible, dirty things to them.

Take the % symbol. It's used as a fairground mirror to make things look bigger or smaller or just different... "100% increase in users!" you trumpet... that means you now have 2 users rather than 1...

Well.

Done.

You.

When you present numbers what should you remember?

1) Vague percentages mean nothing unless you put them into context.
Tell me the starting point for any rise or fall, don't just get excited by the big percentage. That said....

2) Avoid Percentages...
They may be the icing on your cake, or the way that you're able to show a good thing (or a bad) but my brain likes fractions. I can understand a quarter or "1 in four" better than 25%.

3) Remember your audience.
Are you presenting annual figures to a department or are you talking to a group of potential clients? The annual figures need to be in there for the report but do you need so many numbers talking to potential clients? Probably not, they want the business benefits and to see if you're the type of person they can do business with.

4) Very big and very small are incomprehensible.
If you're talking billions, trillions or on the other end of the scale, nanos or picos, my brain goes mushy.

That's why (in the UK) we like the Wales scale; as in "an area 3 times the size of Wales*" or "the height of 12 Nelson's Columns". We like comparisons with solid things. I don't know how big Wales is, but I can picture it on a map and if it's 3 times bigger then that must be very big... don't forget that even the great writer Dorothy Parker compared length, she said "If all the girls who attended the Yale Prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised"

5) Headline numbers get remembered the subheadings don't. Use numbers sparingly.

The main thing is that you don't forget the reason for your presentation which is the passing on of UNDERSTANDABLE information. If the audience just get the information without understanding it, you'll need a 100% rewrite.

*62,283 Square Kilometres if you must know.

Presentation Training - Why Are You Here?

You walk up to the dais, you know why you’re there; you’re there to give a presentation. You’ve edited, pared down and you’ve prepared and prepared and prepared. You know what you’re going to say and you say it…

And yet, everyone still looks bored.

How can this be?

Do you lack charisma?

Is there something about you that’s just dull?

No, you’ve made one of the most common mistakes in presentation; you forgot to think about the audience.

Why are the audience there? Here are a few of the common reasons.

·         They’ve been told to be there.

·         They’ve come to hear bad news.

·         It’s all part of a new initiative; that they don’t like.

·         They NEED to be there but would rather not be.

·         They’re marking time before the keynote speaker that they WANT to see.

·         They feel obliged because you’re a client.

·         They feel obliged because they couldn’t tell you face to face that they don’t want your product and they’re stringing you along before telling you that the budget (that wasn’t there in the first place) has been cut.

·         They want the CPD points.

·         They want to be proved right and given the ammunition to go back to their workplaces and tell management that they were right all along

·         It was free and it gave them a legitimate day off.

·         They want to learn something.

The list could go on.

Without thinking about the reasons that your audience is there, your presentation will always be just about good enough, but never great.

When you’re putting your presentation together thing about the majority of the audience, put them in to context, and try to take your ego out of the equation.

It’s very difficult to be honest with yourself when (chances are), they’re not there to see you speak… or at least, that’s not the whole reason they’re there.