Braud Communications

3 Steps to Make Your Mark in a Media Interview

September 17, 2018/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Media Training /by gbraud

Have you put a spokesperson through media training only to have the news report turn out less than favorable? Have you ever put a spokesperson through media training, only to have the interview miss its mark?

If you answered yes to one or both of these, it is time to adopt maverick media training.

What is maverick media training?

Step 1:

Recognize the failing point of an interview. Bad ad libs are the leading cause of interview failures and news report embarrassment. Yet most media trainers still use the same old technique of giving a spokesperson three key messages, with instructions to ad lib about the key messages. The key messages are usually bullet points or slogan type phrases. They lack the parsing that leads to perfection in word choice.

Maverick media training relies on more preparation by a brilliant writer who can think and write like a reporter. Elements include first writing a strong preamble statement that adds immediate context when spoken. It must explain how your organization serves the greater good of humanity and the primary ways you accomplish this goal. The preamble statement must be written in a conversational tone and must foreshadow the aspects of the organization that the spokesperson is capable of discussing. This should then be followed by a series of paragraphs that simplify complicated issues, adding slightly more detail as you go.

Think of the writing process as a large tree, anchored by a solid tree trunk, that supports three solid branches. In maverick media training this is known as the key message tree. The more you grow your tree with well-worded, easy to internalize sentences, the greater likelihood you have that the spokesperson will internalize and use the sentences verbatim, thus replacing bad ad libs with great, quotable content.

Step 2:

Recognize that a direct answer to a direct question leads to failure. That’s because a direct answer has no context. This mistake is the primary reason spokespeople complain that they were taken out of context.

When you use the preamble and key message tree system described in step one, the spokesperson can add context with the preamble and transition from there to answering the essence of the reporter’s question.

If the actions of your organization are always in line with and congruent to your preamble, your interview will always go smoothly. If someone has done something wrong and created a crisis, the preamble can be modified to include an apology for failing to live up to the goals and standards of the organization. The apology can then be followed by an explanation of what corrective actions will be taken to avoid similar failings in the future.

Step 3:

Focus on the final edit. Many people lament that, “You can’t control the edit.” That is false.

If you recognize that every news report has a headline, a synopsis sentence known as a “lead,” and at least one quote from your spokesperson, then you can begin to control the edit.

Maverick media training stresses to the spokesperson the need to begin answers with a series of well-worded, well-written and well-internalized verbatim phrases that mimic the headline, lead, and quote. In essence, the key message tree mimics what reporters call the inverted pyramid. The inverted pyramid focuses on generalities first and adds more details as the news story progresses.

Ultimately, there is a psychology to greater success in a media interview. It involves thinking like, writing like, and speaking like a reporter. If you give a reporter the elements needed to do their job, in the very order and sequence that they need them, your victories in interviews and news report edits will rise exponentially.

If media interviews in the past have failed you and your spokespeople, or you are unsure about the logistics of a potential future media interview, be a maverick and adopt new media training techniques.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

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3 Key Messages for Communications and Interviews? – MYTH!

September 11, 2018/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Media Training /by gbraud

In public relations, corporate communications, and media training, the concept of identifying your “Three Key Messages” is often taught. In other words, what are the three most important things you need to communicate during your interview with the reporter?

But wait, what exactly is a key message? Is it a talking point? Is it a bullet point? Is it a set of words that incorporate more spin than truth? Is it a set of verbatim words that incorporate both truth and quotes?

In my world as a media trainer, it is a set of verbatim words that incorporate both truth and quotes. But many PR pros and media trainers teach only bullet points and talking points. I call this “The Myth About Three Key Messages.”

For instance, imagine a U.S. political candidate in a debate with his or her opponent. The moderator of the debate might ask a question such as, “Please give me your thoughts on education.”

The candidate, whose strategist may have determined that the key messages should only be about energy, the economy, and international relations, is left with nothing to say. Therefore, the candidate will BS his or her way through 50 seconds of a 60-second answer, then conclude by saying, “Education is important and you can get more details on my website.”

STOP THIS BULL!

Each time you give a CEO or spokesperson only bullet points and talking points for an interview, you give them license to ad lib. Have you ever seen anyone who can truly ad lib well? They are few and far between. The person who ad libs is doing what? Winging it! And when you wing it you crash and burn.

Start each interview with three key AREAS that you want to talk about. For each of those areas, you should have learned and internalized several pre-written sentences that are also very quotable sentences. Then, each of those three areas should have three key messages of their own, that are well written, internalized and quotable. And conceivably, each of those three key messages will have three more messages to go with them.

Pretend your conversation is a large live oak tree like you see in the South. Picture that tree with a huge, sturdy trunk and three large branches. Your “Tree Trunk Message” should consist of two sentences that anchor the entire conversation. These are the first words out of your mouth when the reporter asks the first question and they provide context for the entire conversation. Both sentences must be quotable.

Next, write two more sentences for each of those three large branches that grow from the tree trunk. These sentences must also be highly quotable and will add a few more overarching facts and point to other important areas that you may want to talk about.

Now add three limbs to each of the large branches. Then add three twigs to each of the limbs. Then add three leaves to each of the twigs. Ultimately, just as a tree sprouts limbs, twigs, and leaves, your conversation needs to sprout additional sentences with slightly more detail. Draw it out. If you can visualize the tree, you will begin to understand how the conversation grows.

In our analogy, the leaves represent great detail while the tree trunk and three branches symbolize very basic facts. If you invest time to populate your tree with verbatim, quotable sentences that you internalize, you will ace your next interview. Basically, your populated tree has created a full conversation and an interview should be a conversation. It should tell a story.

The Conversation Tree analogy has prepared us to tell our story in the inverted pyramid style – the same style reporters use when they write.

This is not easy. It takes a great amount of preparation. An interview is as important as any business deal. If you could attach a dollar to every word that comes out of your mouth, would you make money or lose money?

Bottom line – know what you want to say, know it verbatim, and be prepared to tell a story.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

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PR and Communications People: It’s Time to Re-evaluate Your Life

September 4, 2018/0 Comments/in Public Relations /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Public relations and corporate communications professionals: It’s time to look at your life. The kids are back in school. The Labor Day weekend is behind you. Co-workers have all wrapped up their summer vacations. For the first time since Memorial Day the entire staff is all in one place at one time. What was not even a second thought last week is suddenly urgent and important.

Is “work – life” balance possible for people in public relations? Experience tells me many public relations professionals get stressed trying to complete job tasks while also balancing their family or personal life, especially this time of year.

Do you feel invigorated to recommit yourself to achieving end of year goals? Or do you feel stressed because so much has gone unaccomplished all summer and now deadline pressures are looming?

If you had work-life balance you would feel neither re-invigorated nor stressed after Labor Day because you live your entire year in balance rather than the ups and downs and ebbs and flow of a chaotic corporate existence.

Here are three ways to level out your life.

1) Implement a rolling 12-month calendar

Develop a strategic communications plan based on a rolling 12-month calendar and stop planning your communications based on either your calendar year or your fiscal year. When PR people live by a calendar year there is the “fresh start” syndrome of January, complete with soon-to-fail New Year resolutions. Next you spend January and February getting ready to get ready.

March, April and May are your busy times of the year, with pauses for spring break and Memorial Day. Little gets accomplished in the summer because too many people who impact your goals and projects are on vacation. By the time you regroup after Labor Day, it takes several weeks to get rolling again, similar to New Years. By mid-September you are productive again and you stay focused through Halloween. Your mind then starts planning for Thanksgiving break and then for Christmas. Before you know it, New Years rolls around and you hit reset all over again.

Does this sound like you? If so, it appears you have five productive months a year and seven months of distractions.

Set a goal from September 2014, through September 2015. Strategically plan all of your goals and deadlines for training, publications, etc. On October 1, 2014, extend the strategic plans and goals by one additional month, through October 2015. Keep doing this at the first of every month and you now have a rolling 12-month calendar.

2) Plan around the obstacles

When you build your 12-month rolling calendar, set clear, hard deadlines. Identify the times of the year when people are inaccessible, such as in the summer, and plan around those challenges. If you need a team meeting or a training program next June, send the invitations out now, before people fill their calendars with vacation dates. That will make next summer more productive because you planned so far in advance. Everything won’t come to a grinding halt.

3) Budget accordingly

A 12-month rolling calendar will make the budgeting process easier. You should set clear goals now to spend your remaining budgets before the end of your calendar or fiscal year, so you don’t lose those dollars. But as you enter your new budgeting phase and make budget requests, you should also schedule on your calendar exactly when you plan to spend your dollars for training and projects using your 12-month rolling calendar.

Planning this way allows you to get contracts in place early, which legally commits your funds to vendors now, preventing the boss from taking your money away should conditions change for the worse down the road.

Stop losing momentum. Adopt a rolling 12-month calendar that resets strategic goals and budgets at the start of each month for the next 12-months. Too many people live start and stop lives. Recommit today to end the ebb and flow to achieve greater work-life balance.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

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You May Be Guilty of PR Word Vomit

August 27, 2018/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Public Relations /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Before every media training class I teach, I ask the PR team to provide me with their existing key messages. Most are word vomit.

Many public relations people “vomit” every word they can, every cliché they can, and every statistic they can onto the page they submit to me. As you might guess, I have to do major key message re-writes before every media training class.

While teaching interview skills in a media training class, a participating executive provided expert insight to the lesson I was teaching.

“So you don’t want us to word vomit everything we know in a media interview, right?” he asked.

That isn’t how I would have phrased it, but now that I think about it, many spokespeople, and the public relations people who write the key messages for the spokespeople, are guilty of “word vomit.”

When a spokesperson is being interviewed, more is less. You must help them fight the urge to say everything they know about the company or organization.

The more you say to a reporter, the more you subject yourself to editing that you may not like.

It may not be pretty, but today’s media training expert advice is:

Avoid word vomit when you write your key messages.
Avoid word vomit when you are speaking to a reporter in a media interview.

If someone read your key messages right now, would they think, “Ugh. Too much information!”?

If you need help finding the perfect way to write your key messages, check out my “Kick-Butt Key Message” writing program.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

More crisis communications articles:

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First Step towards Social Media Communications

Take This Step FIRST to Begin Effective Social Media Communications

August 21, 2018/0 Comments/in Media Relations /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud (Jared Bro)

In every crisis communications workshop or media training I teach, people ask, “How should a public relations team, company, non-profit, or government agency best use social media for effective crisis communication?” They ask it from New Orleans to New York and everywhere in between.

I respond by asking, “When ‘it’ hits the fan, and you need good crisis communications, is social media right for the company or organization you work for?”

Your job will be discernment. Your assignment is to discern what is right for you, your PR team, your company or organization, and your audiences.

You are invited back to these informative blog articles as you wish, to spend a few quick minutes absorbing the perspectives shared here, then decide what is the RIGHT fit. (Good ‘ol option B is to just pick up the phone and call me at 985-624-9976 and we’ll talk it out now.)

Unfortunately, public relations communicators are often like sheep in the social media world, following the flock, taking the advice of consultants who tell you that you MUST use social media. I say bull! I’d rather see you as a lone wolf charting your own course of action than to see you as a sheep.

Make no secret about it, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. In certain situations, it is the right fit and in certain situations, it is a wrong fit.

But before we get into the specifics of social media, we need to agree upon the rules of engagement “When ‘It’ Hits the Fan.” As we go through the various steps we’re going to outline for you, I’m going to give you a specific list of action items to place on your to-do list.

First, let’s agree that in a crisis, the organization you work for has an obligation to talk with several key audiences, which include employees, the media, and your other stakeholders, which could be your community, families of employees, government leaders, etc. If you work for a school, the audience extends to students and parents. If you work for a hospital, the audience extends to patients and their families. A retail company needs to talk with customers. A non-profit organization needs to talk to contributors. Each type of company or organization has a unique set of audiences.

That being said, today’s assignment is for you to make a clear list of audiences you must communicate with in various types of crises, so you can decide how you can best reach them and how they want to get information.

Step ONE: Make a list of audiences, how to reach them, and how they want to be reached. Set aside 5-15 minutes and do this right now.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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Are You a Social Media Hypocrite?

August 14, 2018/0 Comments/in Social Media, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By, Gerard Braud

When it comes to social media and crisis communications, it’s all about analyzing how your particular audience uses social media. But before we talk about them, we should talk about you and your personal social media habits.

There are still companies that have no Facebook page, no Twitter, and no YouTube channel. Some companies have zero social media. Some companies have set up social media pages, but do not use them consistently. Some companies post frequently to one or more social media channels.

It’s time to cut to the point, especially for companies aggressively posting to social media. On a clear sunny day, when there is no crisis at hand, are you a social media hypocrite? Do you — or someone on your communications team — sit in your office each day updating your corporate social media sites expecting your audiences to follow you, when in fact you don’t personally follow any other companies?

At home, on your personal Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, do you personally follow your bank on social media? Do you follow your hospital? Do you follow your electric company?

As I was teaching my Social Media When “It” Hits the Fan workshop recently to a state-wide medical association, the audience was initially appalled that I asked if they were social media hypocrites. They then realized they were. Each has spent countless hours developing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for their hospitals. Some had branched out into Pinterest and Instagram. Yet in reflection, they realized that they spend a lot of time posting information for their corporate social media accounts, with the belief their audiences and customers would read it, when in fact they didn’t follow their bank, doctor, oil company, etc.

The audience quickly realized that they were social media hypocrites. Many realized that they were social media and public relations sheep, setting up social media accounts because some so-called social media expert said that every company needs to be on social media or you will be left behind.

It’s also crucial that we talk about the age and social media habits of your audience to determine if social media is the right fit for your organization on a clear sunny day when there is no crisis, because this will affect whether you can reach them during a crisis.

In my research and experience, there is a large generational divide between those who use it and those who don’t, which we will address in greater detail later. The age and social media habits of your audience will help you decide when and if social media needs to be part of your crisis communication strategy. People in their mid-20’s pioneered social media behavior and made Facebook popular. Now, as some grandparents join Facebook to keep track of their grandkids, younger participants are leaving because Facebook isn’t as cool anymore.

For the most part, it is safe to say that people under 35 are more active than those who are older. So as you decide if social media is right for you, keep this in mind. The best research on social media behavior can be viewed here.

When “it” hits the fan, you have to ask yourself, what does your audience need to know and how do you want them to behave? What is it that you want them to do? Sometimes you need to communicate safety information in the throes of a crisis. Perhaps you need to evacuate a community before a hurricane or issue advisories to your customers and employees before a bad weather event. Many times you may be communicating with your audiences because of an ugly rumor or the exposure of a scandal.

Whatever the crisis, whatever the situation may be, you need to know how to best reach your audience, and make sure you are not a social media hypocrite.

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog

3 Steps to Make Your Mark in a Media Interview

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

3 Key Messages for Communications and Interviews? – MYTH!

STOP THIS BULL!

PR and Communications People: It’s Time to Re-evaluate Your Life

Here are three ways to level out your life.

1) Implement a rolling 12-month calendar

2) Plan around the obstacles

3) Budget accordingly

You May Be Guilty of PR Word Vomit

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