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

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.

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.

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

Interview Of The Week

listen to ‘Winifred Vs. Tesco Pt1’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Winifred Robinson Vs. Tesco Pt2’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘Winifred Robinson Vs. Tesco Pt3’ on Audioboo

I am rapidly becoming Winifred Robinsons biggest fan.

Which is odd, as I really don't like the programme that she works on. "You and Yours" used to be half an hour every week, then it became an hour a day of 'consumer' radio, or in other words people moaning about stuff...

Not my thing at all, and then I started driving more during the programme and found that I'd listen if Winifred was there.

Why?

Because she is a very, very good interviewer.

Which is a problem if you happen to be George Gordon from Tesco.

We begin from a position of dissonance; Tesco wants to flag up social good while Winifred wants to make the point that during all of the coverage of consumer complaints and bad practice in the supermarket industry, Tesco are never available for comment.

It doesn't get much better for Tesco. Through the interview George tries to show what the company are doing to cut food waste and Winifred accuses them of causing the food waste in the first place with B.O.G.O.F. deals on food.

So what should you take from this as a business.

1) Be Familiar - if you expect good coverage when you want it, engage with bad coverage when you don't. By refusing to respond when the journalists come to you they stop trusting you.

2) Ask What Is The Story? - To Tesco the story is that they are being cuddly and responsible, to The You And Yours listeners the story is that a giant company many of them HAVE to deal with are chiding them for something that isn't their fault. Before appearing ask what the story is from the point of view of the audience.

3) Be Prepared - George Gordon from Tesco seems to think that Winifred Robinson is a wet behind the ears ingénue. She isn't, she's one of the best broadcast interviewers out there and any press office setting this interview up should have been listening to that programme for weeks before approaching them with this initiative.

4) Make It Good - The people behind this story don't seem to have figured out the major flaw. Tesco encourages customers to cut food waste, whilst pushing customers to buy more food as it's often cheaper to buy bulk in Tescos' Shops, blaming customers for wasting half of what they are forced to buy... Yeh, that reads well doesn't it.

Sugar, Coke, Health & Business.

 
Photo Credit: RєRє via Compfight cc

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?


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

Louise Mensch Made My Life Better.

This morning I was lying in the bath thinking about Louise Mensch MP...

I was listening to The Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 and a representative of the PCC was interviewed to respond to Mrs Menschs' Comments on the Sun newspaper publishing pictures of Prince Harry playing naked pool in Vegas.

As I lay in the water (wondering when the electrician was going to come to fix the shower) I thought "Oh good Louise Mensch is cross about something, I now know what to support today" and I paused... 

You see, Louise Mensch has for a long time been my barometer for right and wrong; if she thinks it's right then it must be wrong, phew I don't have to form my own opinions today, I've got one ready made.

I paused... and thought a little more. 

I'm against child slavery, war, and famine, and you know what, I bet Louise Mensch is too. Oh, this felt a little radical, could I be becoming a Tory in my middle age? Had it finally happened? I hit 38 and now I'm in tweedy decline?

No, I just started thinking.

The problem was I was caught up in my liberal "default narrative". "Conservative views and conservatives are evil" and that's all there is to it. When I go into organisations I make sure that we cover their "default narrative" we break into groups and discuss it from different stakeholder viewpoints, we examine how opinions about related matters can change default, and how the default from inside organisation is never what it is from the outside.

Mrs Mensch I apologise, next time I'll listen without the baggage or your default, I'll listen with an open mind, and if we all did that then I wouldn't need to train people.

No one gets it right

It's a very simple job, you take time, you research and you build drama around that setting. "ER" did it for American Health Care, "The Bill" did it for the British Police, but no one ever gets radio right. Ever.

I've just had the misfortune to listen to "The Archers" on BBC Radio 4 and their portrayal of a local radio presenter was so wrong it hurt.

If they carry on like that they'll have to have the Police saying "'ello 'ello 'ello, what's goin' on 'ere then".

So what's wrong with the radio industry (particularly LOCAL radio) as shown in drama?

1) Presenters are not stupid - In the BBC most people are graduates with post graduate diplomas in journalism. Or have started in Radio at a University; because it's the only place you can be an amateur these days. However they often become cyphers for a story so they always present from the point of view of an idiot. Commercial DJ's live and die by RAJAR figures, if you're stupid then you don't survive, you need to be a chameleon, working a subject from all angles.

2) Very few people, and I really mean VERY few people have a 'radio voice'. Fashions change, and what used to work for Tony Blackburn no longer works for the radio audience. Listen to any local and you'll hear someone talking to you... that's what they do. There may be occasions that it sounds "Radio" but you try telling an empty room what song you were just listening to and you won't sound normal either.

3) They Con people into giving interviews and then unmask them - Yup, Eddy Grundy in "The Archers" has just been made a laughing stock in a scenario that wouldn't have happened because of producer guidelines on fair dealing and briefing guests.

4) Presenters are well paid. Your average BBC Presenter is paid on the same scale as the producer, or a journalist in the news room. There are some exceptions, but in general it's less than you'd expect. Commercial radio, unless you're on a networked Breakfast Show can be minimum wage... I have been there... some are very well off, but the majority? Average to middling.

Minor rant, but it annoys me that with even a tiny bit of research the industry could be represented in a much better way.

Notice I didn't mention Partridge? Comedy always gets closer to the truth.

Why Do You Need Media Training?

Join the latest seminar here - just £35 including VAT

JOURNALIST WHISPERING - WHAT THEY WANT AND HOW TO GIVE IT TO THEM.

It's another Vlog from the face of

Tone

The BBC decided that they didn't "own the tone" of the Jubilee Celebrations.

Tone will be the first thing on the minds of commentators and pundits during the Olympic Coverage.

Tone is often overlooked in journalism, as it is in most forms of communications work.

So what is tone? How can you define it's use in comms? Tone is more than syntax and paradigm; it's the collection of emotional signifiers that connect with an audiences own reading of the import, gravity, & significance of an action or event. It's all the bits in a message that aren't the words...

But, it includes the words...

Those who have completely misread tone include The Sun Newspaper's reaction to the Hilsborough Disaster in 1989 which centres around the collective shock of the event and the subsequent blame-storming.

The coalition Governments Omnishambles budget got the tone wrong. The Chancellor approached it from a "we have to do something about the economy" point of view, the electorate approached it from "I don't want my pasty to be taxed" point of view. The subsequent volte-face and insistence that The Government was listening to the electorate, once again got the tone wrong. At that point they just wanted them to admit to getting it wrong.

The BBC's attempted giddy, carnival coverage of what turned out to be a rousing, formal, slightly sombre celebration along the Thames actually turned out to be flippant and silly and a little bit disrespectful.

When looking at corporate comms (internal and external) the tone needs to be within a consistent framework. What does the brand stand for? What are the core values? How is that presented alongside the information that needs to be disseminated? If we have to comment on a pseudo-political matter what is the tone of the message? The tone becomes the driver of that message, the right words with the wrong tone is more damaging than the wrong words with the right tone...

Do we have to mention Fern Cotton here?

Join the latest seminar here - just £35 including VAT
JOURNALIST WHISPERING - WHAT THEY WANT & HOW TO GIVE IT TO THEM.

Silly Season Vlog.

To celebrate the start of The Silly Season, here's another vlog from the face of JDoubleR, and in case you were wondering the Season officially starts on the 17th of July this year.

Another vlog from the face of JDoubleR

What does it look like?

The Leveson enquiry juggernaut moves on and on and on, yesterday it left the crumpled injured body of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt in its tracks. Thankfully he's being given political first aid, including support from the PM.

I thought that there was another injured party; David Cameron himself. He was, however, only clipped by a wing mirror.

James Murdoch talked briefly about a Christmas party at Rebekah Brooks house. He and the PM were there. At the time Brooks was the chief executive of news international and James Murdoch was Chair of News Group Newspapers. Both of them were hugely important figures in the media industry. The party happened 2 days after the Secretary Of State For Business (and other stuff) had his responsibilities for the News Corp BSkyB takeover stripped... The company that both Brooks and Murdoch worked for.

I honestly don't care what went on at that party.

I really don't.

It was probably just a party.

I am hugely concerned that the PM's team isn't asking a really important PR question.

"WHAT DOES THIS LOOK LIKE?"

When working for the BBC I made a number of decisions that had "What does this look like?" at their heart. When invited to events I was the BBC not me; I didn't go to certain events and I didn't get too close to certain issues (usually political) if I thought that there would be questions asked of my journalistic impartiality.

David, seriously, What does this look like?

Piggy Back

The "Fuel Crisis" has started again. From the mouth of Francis Maud (whom I've blogged about before) comes a miss guided tip, and the country goes into meltdown.

This is a great opportunity for you. It really is.

Every single Local Radio Station will be talking about the looming crisis, the panic buying and the queues at the pumps; all you need to do is call them and piggy back the story.

Here's how to piggy back.

1) Identify what everyone is talking about.
Last night there was talk of little else, so you should have been thinking of how this story affects your business / charity / organisation. Do you have people on the road? Are you a sole trader who works with their van? What about meals on wheels!

2) Think of a universal line.
If you can say "I bet lots of people are in the same boat" then great. If you can't then think harder. Transport troubles in the world of herpetology isn't shared experience; freelance self employed delivery driver (who happens to cater for herpetologists is) if it means one child will go without their snake then it's terrible.

3) Say what you feel not what you think.
You feel worried that if fuel stocks run out then the old ladies won't get their meals, you are angry at the people who are filling up cars that do tiny mileage a week when you have to fill up every second day, you feel disappointed that this crisis threatens your charities work. Feel don't think.

4) Sound good.
You need to be calm prepared and slick. There's no use calling a phone-in and getting your business a mention when you sound like a school child who's been caught smoking in the bogs. Get the terror out of your head, listen to how the presenter is treating other callers and take your cue from that.

Don't forget that you have to get past the producer first "I want to talk to [insert alliterative local radio name here] about the problems for small businesses / charities / health workers / etc.", they will want you to get to the point, tell them the story and then repeat that on air to the presenter. If you sound normal then you certainly will get on.

5) Don't plug too hard.
A couple of mentions of a company name are fine, but more than that the presenter will pull you up on it and embarrass you. No one wants a public telling off.

6) Don't get drawn into politics.
"So what should the government have done?" and the answer is "I'm not sure about that, all I'm sure of is that my clients won't be happy and I'm not happy about the situation. I've built up "Farnsbarns Industries" over a number of years and this sort of thing could really tarnish our reputation and loose us money; and there are loads of other businesses that are going through the same thing." Lovely. No political argument, well side stepped and moved on. Your company / charity / organisation, unless it is always overtly political shouldn't get into a political debate. When you're on air talking for THEM you can't let personal bias suddenly become your company stance.

7) Be brief enough to get a news clip.
The news clip is the great bit in a bulletin where they lift stuff out of the broadcast and recycle. f you give punchy answers and short sentences it's easier for them to lift what you say and play it all day long. If they don't credit your company name when they do use it, call them and ask them to.

You can learn more about controlling the news agenda here.

6 Ways to avoid publicity.

I keep seeing over-optimistic blogs talking about the guaranteed ways to get your story covered by the conventional media.

It worries me; even if you follow these guides there are still things that will get in your way.

So why isn't your story featured? These are my top 6 reasons.





1) It's Too Commercial.
No one likes a 'puff' dressed up as a story. In the UK the dominant force in mass market news broadcasting is the BBC. They are a non commercial organisation and every journalist / producer / manager there has been bollocked for writing a 'puff' by accident. They are not going to do it again.

You may think that makes the commercial broadcasters and news media an easy target. No. No they really aren't. The commercial media (if it doesn't charge the users) survives by selling advertising. So why are they going to offer your commercial 'story' space when they would much prefer to charge you for the advertising instead?

2) It's Irrelevant...
...to the audience. Why would you approach an organisation that targets the over 50's with the latest trends in snowboarding?

...to the time scale. If it happened 3 days / weeks / months ago it's no longer news. (as added by @tonybraisby many thanks to him for the reminder!)

...to anyone outside your industry. Target trade press by all means but don't promise to get mass media coverage for the story about new ways to reinforce concrete.

...to anyone other than you. So many self produced press releases smell of "we're really excited about this, but we don't know how to make you excited". If you can't excite me then I'm not going to use it.

3) It's Dull.
Have you just sent information and forgotten to add a story? (see above)

4) It's political.
The BBC will not take stories with a strong political bias unless they can source someone from the other side; that issue kills stories, though it is getting better.

The commercial sector will not ally themselves to a political standpoint that differs from theirs. It's not just the feedback from the audience but also who sits on the board, who owns the organisation, who is married to the editor and who their friends are... For example, the Sun newspaper doesn't like the BBC unless the programme has been made by a Murdoch owned production company (see Masterchef). It's unlikely that you'll know any of this, your story will just be ignored.

5) They don't like you.

Not the organisation but the journalist. You've repeatedly called at the wrong time, you send emails with big attachments that crash their computers, you call the 'Pacific Ocean' the 'Specific Ocean', you never sound engaged with what you're doing, you push for too much coverage, you have unrealistic expectations, you don't know the producers name, you're attempting to be funny, you're not funny at all, you have stupid shoes, you drink mineral water with a twist, you have black rimmed 'marketing' spectacles, you don't understand that we are the powerful ones, you let us down last time, you promise things that you can't deliver, and (in the words of @dabberdave)

"you said "look at this attachment which has all the details in it" rather than copy and pasting the text of the it into the body of the email; that way when the journo is skimming through the hundreds in the inbox they don't have to waste time trying to open the thing. It will probably go straight in the waste bin"

Or, you are just very unlikeable... The story could be great, and we may pick it up from another source, but we won't give you the satisfaction.

6) Someone Else Got It Right.
There's always something else to cover. Always.

6 - a) They're Lazy.
This has been suggested by Ken Goodwin and really deserves a mention - "they might also be a lazy journo who can't see that with some creativity they could make a half decent package out of it"

So very true....

*******************
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GLOUCESTER 30/04/12  
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Who are you talking to?

Today I found out that I'm not middle aged.

I feel better for that.

At 37 and a half, I thought that I was well on my way to the furry boots and the tartan blanket; it doesn't help that I enjoy wearing a tweed cap when I'm driving.

"Start The Week" on BBC Radio 4, can be one of those programmes that disappears up its own intellectual pretensions but this week it reminded me of a process that was discredited in the BBC.

It's the process of thinking about your audience in context.

Or to 'Do a Dave and Sue'.

'Dave and Sue' were a composite couple that were created to focus programming on BBC Local Radio. The average age of the journalists in any local radio news room is about 13... or at least that's how it always felt to me. These 13 year-olds were making programmes for people over 50. Sometimes it's a bit of a mental stretch; what a tender young journalist thinks is interesting will often be beyond dull for the 50+ audience they are serving.

In walked 'Dave and Sue', the composite couple that was there to connect the programme makers with the audience; they were born out of the years of quantitative and qualitative demographic research carried out by the BBC.

I thought it was great, for a number of years I was aware that some of the programming was being done to serve the staff and not the audience and I'd worked with the concept in commercial broadcasting. It was going to make everything better by simply adding context.

Bless the BBC for mishandling the whole thing.

No, really, bless 'em all.

Instead of creating a context for the listeners lives, and letting the broadcasters think "This is really important/useful/funny/interesting how do I frame it to pitch properly to 'Dave and Sue' what's the context for them?" They were constantly told to simply ask "what do 'Dave and Sue' like?".

This resulted in very dull radio, lots of caravan features and prostate phone-ins.

All 'Dave and Sue' were was a tool for providing context by bringing together the demographic research. They became a tool for defining output.

Listeners left in the bucket load from all but a very small number of stations. The station I was working for was one of the 4 out of 40 who increased listener-ship through the whole sorry episode.

So what does this have to do with being middle aged and Andrew Marr?

As I get older I am surprised by the pitches (advertising, PR, entertainment) that either lacks context or is ruled by it's context because the demographic research says so... Shampoo ads or chocolate ads targeting men in their 30's by using amateur football imagery. Participation in amateur football covers a tiny proportion of the men in their 30's (angling remains the biggest participation sport in the country) and annoys the rest of us. Sitcoms where people just sort of do stuff with no back story because it's kooky and people like kooky...

I could go on.

For a very long time.

Beware the use of demographic research it may mean that you miss the wider context..

Who Takes Responsibility?

Recently there has been a focus on the idea of 'Joint Enterprise' particularly when associated with criminal convictions for violent crimes but it's a concept every shrewd business person needs to be aware of.

So what do I mean by 'Joint Enterprise'? It's more than shared responsibility, and it's far more than a post disaster blame storm; it's the concept that product development, public relations, marketing, advertising, sales strategy and everything in between is everyone's responsibility success or failure. 

Take my time with the BBC for example, I saw a number of programme strands that were flawed in thier original concept and under performed in their on air state. I may have had no responsibility for the idea or even be involved in the production, but like the gang member who doesn't call the police I stood by and watched it happen (OK sometimes it was for personal gain, for 'shits and giggles' and probably so that I could enjoy the warm glow of schadenfreude but I can admit that now). 

Is there too much fear in sticking your nose in? Is there a feeling that once a project gets to a certain point then questioning is seen as unhelpful? Do we just want an easy life?

There's been a lot written about the treatment of whistleblowers in the NHS and how staff are afraid to step up and question practice or policy; an enlightened organisation should welcome honest in put from any member of staff. If that person has an area of concern, expertise, or a perspective that's not being taken into account as a stakeholder then it's part of the collective responsibility to listen and it's part of the concept of 'Joint Enterprise' for that person to step up. It's their organisation too...

Local Radio.

Me & Katherine Jenkins On Local Radio

Sometimes memory creeps up on you. There's a feeling more than an image, it lurks in the back of your mind waiting to mug you on Memory Lane and leave you there unable to get on with your day. It keeps happening to me and I think it's because of the BBC cuts announced yesterday and the associated blogging*

I have a complicated emotional relationship with Local Radio. I've worked in Local Radio as a traffic reporter, radio car reporter, programme assistant, broadcast assistant, marketer, presenter, producer, broadcast journalist and manager. For 16 years it was the reason I got up in the morning and the thing that kept me from my bed. When it was good it made me cry or laugh or shout or just think about the world around me... when it was bad... no one felt the fall out. 

In 2000 I was working in a BBC station that I'm not going to name. My career in commercial radio had come to a shuddering anti-climax and I'd retreated back to the bosom of Auntie Beeb. The Editor of the station (station manager) and I would often drink tea in his office and try and be creative. One day he asked me what would happen to a commercial breakfast presenter if they didn't mention the stations name on air all week and were constantly reminded. I said that they'd be replaced. He sighed and told me that in the BBC there was little chance of that as they had too many hoops to jump through even to get an official warning. The station would have to put up with a presenter who couldn't remember to say it's name.

See what I mean about memory mugging you? That was a decade ago and the BBC is so much better now; the importance of branding, of giving a message, and of identifying yourself so the transient listener knows what they're listening to has been beaten into most of its staff. 

BBC Local Radio is slick, professional and ambitious and it's still as remarkable as ever.

Then came the belt tightening. I saw it as a programme maker and a manager and now I'm seeing it as an outsider. The last time the focus moved from programme making to News (with a capital N) and at the time I thought that was a dead end of an idea... I always thought it should be stories not news... People listen to radio because of the emotional connection that you build with broadcasters who are able to tell stories. It's not functional, it's emotional. If you ask why people choose a station it's because they like it. They like the personalities, they like the connection, they like the localness.

Local Radio at it's heart is Local... stupid to say really eh? But as I blog the plans are to take away the thing that attracts an audience. I presented a shared breakfast show across 3 BBC Local Radio Stations and found it a constricting and bland experience. Part of the joy of Local Radio is that you share the lives of your listeners, you shop in the same shops, you drive the same roads, you have the same colour wheely-bins (a minor point) but for that programme I didn't. I was in a box with Schroedinger's cat and as soon as I shared something local I identified where I was broadcasting from and the localness waveform would collapse. It didn't serve anyone properly, and that is going to be the shape of afternoons on BBC Local Radio.

It's because it's the programme that gets fewest listeners through the day. So now it will be less relevant to the audiences lives and the listening figures will fall again. I know from my own experience that if you mention the idea of shopping outside your own county the calls come in thick and fast that you should be supporting local business, how dare you! Is this listenership really interested in what's happening 75 miles away in Taunton? 

Making BBC Local Radio less local hurts; not just the people who work on the programmes, or the audience figures but the wider reputation of the BBC. 

There's going to be an unforseen economic effect too. Local radio supports the economy locally just think of the Charities with an urgent need of support, the local businesses who want to challenge opinion, show that the economy is working or just become the stories themselves... They will certainly find it far more difficult to get air time... (media training would help of course. Sorry, I still have to make a living)

The wider cuts will be difficult, but I think that Local Radio Cuts will be the most difficult. 

The figures suggest that the Local Radio listenership is older... 

... that older people are the only ones who vote... 

... that the voter to the Conservative Party is older... 

Nice one Mr Cameron looks like that licence fee freeze wasn't such a good idea after all.

* http://davidlloyd-radio.blogspot.com/2011/10/bbc-local-radio-personal-view.html?spref=tw & http://newsmutt.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/leaner-fitter-better/ both from former and respected colleagues.

People are people.

I listen to lots of interviews. It's what I do. I listen to interviews with civic dignitaries, local councils, regional government  parliamentarians and everything else. They all make the same mistake to varying degrees; they talk about information and not people.

I said in my last post that there was no room for 'stakeholders' in interviews and that is completely true. There has to be room for people. Yes I know that they are the same thing (more or less) but a stakeholder doesn't get dyspeptic after eating too much cheese a person does, a stakeholder isn't worried about their monthly budget but a person is, a stakeholder won't invite you to their house warming party... you get the idea? It's far from being a question of semantics it's a question of attitude.

Until the politician talks in terms of people they won't be able to bridge the gap between information and emotion. We may understand that the macro economic outlook is gloomy and that understanding will engender an emotion but what we need is a transmition of emotion that is one step sooner.

Valerie Geller Author & Guru

A number of years ago I was trained by Valerie Geller.

Ms Geller was one of a number of American consultants brought over to try and sort out what was wrong with BBC Radio. I personally didn't think there was too much wrong with BBC Radio... other than journalists being forced to be presenters with no training (after all it's only talking between the news bulletins, which are the important bit, it's not as if it matters)... I digress.

Ms Geller was flavour of the month and now, in the BBC, she's treated like Trotsky in the Stalin regime. Which is very wrong. Part of what she taught me was the power of 'you'. Her doctrine was that radio is personal and the listener is engaged in a powerful mutually beneficial relationship with the broadcaster; to engage them you need to start with 'you'. It's something that I took on whole heartedly and have used ever since to great effect. It's about 'you' not 'us'. It's about the personal experience not the group experience and this is how politicians at all levels need to think to be affective.

Going back to the economic outlook. There has been a lot of statements made talking about 'we'; 'We're all in it together' being one of the more striking ones*. The Government are trying to engender some sort of faux blitz spirit so that we'll all pull together for the greater good. Those days are long gone, we now live in a tribal environment that means that we have more in common with our Facebook friends than our neighbours. This throws up the difficulty of mobilising the hearts and minds; all you need to do is follow the simple rule of 'It's not about us, it's about YOU' then it gets personal and important.


*have they seen 'Brazil'? Terry Gilliam's classic has the line from the government of the day "Happiness; we're all in it together!" and that's set in a utopia isn't it?