3 #MeToo Sexual Misconduct Considerations for CBS: Lessons in Crisis Communications & Public Relations

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MoonvesBy Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

Variety magazine is writing about the CBS public relations crisis surrounding the sexual misconduct allegations against CEO Les Moonves. Many of you reading this blog could be faced with similar allegations against one of your executives and wondering what you should do and how you should handle such a potential crisis. This requires both expert crisis management and expert crisis communication.

Variety asked for my thoughts as a crisis communication expert. My quote to Variety is identical to expert crisis management and crisis communication advice I would share with all of my clients. It begins with deciding a proper course of action and then sharing a sincere statement that explains what you are doing and why. CBS has said they will leave Moonves in his position while they investigate. I would have gone one step further and asked Moonves to take a leave of absence during the investigation. Trust me, he won’t really be doing his job well with the weight of the accusations and the negative publicity of the crisis. This is the crisis management phase.

First, you should consider the perspective of the crisis. People believe they were hurt and want justice, while someone has been accused. Without a confession, it becomes a situation that requires a third-party investigation. This is the personification of “she said; he said.”

Secondly, consider that this is a highly volatile topic and that the #MeToo movement evokes strong opinions. There will never be a 100% agreement on how to handle such matters.

Thirdly, in business, the decision makers must remember the saying, “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” Hence, when multiple accusers come forth with similar allegations, it is logical to assume the accused person is likely guilty. But lost in many sexual misconduct cases is the basic American principle that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. CBS, however, is following that principle.

My crisis management advice to any company facing allegations against an executive would be to ask the executive to take a leave of absence with pay while an investigation is conducted. My crisis communications advice would be that such a move must be accompanied by a thoughtful and sincere statement, such as:

“Because of the sensitivity of the allegations being made, we feel the best course of action is to conduct a thorough investigation. Because such investigations can prove disruptive to the day-to-day operations of the organization, we have asked the accused individual to take a leave of absence until the investigation is completed. Once the investigation is completed, we will share our findings with you.”

Of note in this modern age of frequent sexual misconduct allegations, employers would be well served to work out the logistics of such a leave agreement, during the hiring and contract phase of onboarding any new executive. Take your cue from police departments, who take an officer off of the street after a shooting, while an investigation is conducted. Some police officers are put on desk duty while others are put on paid leave. The police departments know that a distracted officer should not be on the street with a gun. Likewise, a distracted CEO should not be making decisions that affect the reputation and revenue of the company.

Finally, remember that the time to address your crisis management and crisis communication plan of action is to make these hard decisions on a clear, sunny day, when you have clarity of thought. The best time to deal with a crisis is before the crisis happens.

 

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

 

 

The Most Cringe-worthy Jargon You Must Avoid

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

People in public relations, media relations, and corporate communications love to make fun of jargon and most have a hit list of phrases, clichés, and abbreviations that they hate.

People hate jargon.

Employees hate jargon.

Customers hate jargon.

I once introduced, “The Worst Speech in the World” to show how cringe-worthy jargon gets.

This is not the usual keynote speech I deliver, but I could likely write a customized speech just like this for every association, conference, and convention from New Orleans to New York.

So why does your CEO, VP, or manager use jargon?https-::pixabay.com:en:conference-public-speaking-2705706:

Why do your work colleagues use jargon?

Here are some observations:

1) Many executives, business coaches, business trainers, and authors are looking for a profound phrase or expression. The “sticky” phrases get repeated by people who want to share what they learn from the coach, trainer, or author.

2) No one has taught the person using the cliché, especially in a speech, that originality is more profound then mimicking someone else. We can usually chalk this up to the speaker not having a speech or communications coach and trying to wing it.

3) The world is full of copycats who use copycat clichés. For many, it might be laziness or a time saver, to simply lift phrases they’ve heard all of their lives.

In conclusion, analogies are great. Use them with sensitivity, such as avoiding the phrase, “open kimono.”

Make your analogies original. People love original thoughts and ideas.

I invite you to add a list of the jargon you hate in the comment section below.

 

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

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Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

Melania Trump Jacket Crisis Gerard BraudTalking about crisis communications, media relations and the Trump White House is difficult. Too many people want to look at issues only through the politics of whether they love or hate the Trumps. To appreciate this article and to comment on it, you cannot and must not let your love or hate of the Trumps enter your mind. My observations are about public relations and are neither left, right, nor center. They are PR. Are we good? If you agree, then read on…

If you were on Melania Trump’s team and saw her wearing her Zara designer jacket with the inscription, “I really don’t care. Do u?” while boarding her plane after visiting a controversial refugee center where children are being relocated and separated from their migrant parents, what would your PR instincts tell you to do? Keep in mind, that this could happen with one of your executives or their spouses.

Here are three public relations steps you can take:

1) Explain the optics and offer a Plan B.

The Trump White House is unique in that they either are oblivious to optics or they are comfortable enough with the level of support they receive from their base that they dismiss negative optics. But in this case, my suggested approach in any event with the potential for bad optics is for you to directly approach your leader, in this case, the First Lady (but in your case it could be an executive or a family member of one of your executives) and explain the consequences of their action.

The conversation might be, “Mrs. Trump, we just noticed that on your jacket are written the words, ‘I really don’t care.’ Mrs. Trump, you specifically made this trip to show you care. The writing on your jacket could lead to horrible consequences and criticism if the media, or the public, photograph you wearing that. Do you have another jacket that you can put on or should we stop and purchase one for you?”

When I was a journalist, I was a part of many political motorcades that stopped so the handlers could buy clothing between public appearances. For example, a candidate wearing a coat and tie to speak to a luncheon of CEOs may fail to see the optics of him wearing the same coat and tie to his 3 p.m. meeting with pig farmers on a farm.

Keep in mind, Mrs. Trump was also criticized for wearing high heels when leaving the White House to visit Texas flood victims last year. I saw it happen live and immediately commented on it to my wife. Later, Mrs. Trump showed up in tennis shoes. Ultimately, the staff must be ready to travel with a variety of wardrobe options in the event the executive has failed to think things through.

To be an expert in crisis management and communications, you must pride yourself on preventing the crisis, rather than priding yourself on your response after the crisis has unfolded.

2) Have the nerve to speak up if no one else will.

Often team members are afraid to speak up or are afraid of getting fired if they do speak up. In my opinion, you are not doing your job and you should be fired if you do not speak up. Your job should be to protect the reputation of your brand at all times, even if your brand is technically the image of the First Lady.

If you refuse to speak up, you are weak and do not deserve the job. Seats at the table are not offered to the weak. If you do speak up and get fired, you should celebrate the opportunity to move on and work in a place where your expert opinion is respected, rather than being miserably crushed like a bug.

3) Be willing to quit your job if the executive dismisses your suggestion.

We do not know if anyone on the First Lady’s team attempted to intervene. I’m sure there are a lot of layers of protocol before someone can successfully interject and stop a PR disaster from unfolding. But, if it is your job to speak up, and if you did speak up, and if you were rejected and sent away, then by all means… quit your job.

I’m constantly amazed by PR people who tell me their bosses will not listen to them. Routinely PR people tell me about how their bosses will not allow them to do their jobs properly. Really? You should quit.

The bonus tip:

And even though I promised three tips, here is a bonus fourth tip.

After the event has gone badly and you have to defend your executive, for goodness sake, learn to parse your words. Mrs. Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham issued a statement that read, “It’s a jacket. There was no hidden message.” Technically, it was a jacket. Technically, the words on the jacket constituted a message, as all words do. And technically, the message wasn’t hidden, but damn if it didn’t appear to be subliminal or oblivious to optics. If you are in charge of communications for the wife of one of the most powerful people on the planet, I would hope you could be a better wordsmith.

In conclusion, some powerful people are oblivious to optics; some don’t care. If you are in the communications profession, your entire purpose should be to care. If you keep getting rejected when you attempt to do what you know is professionally correct, it is the equivalent of asking someone if they would like fries and a large drink with that news release. You are little more than the person taking orders at a fast food restaurant… and your worth is about equal to the $8 an hour wage the burger employee makes.

Stand up. Be strong. Do your job… and do it well.

 

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Stop Un-Selling: Roseanne Uses Social Media to Create a Costly Self-Inflicted Crisis

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Roseanne Barr TweetBy Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

 Un-Selling. It is the opposite of selling. It’s not good (he writes sarcastically). Stop Un-Selling, people. Stop it!

I could stop there, but today’s case study looks at ABC canceling their hugely popular television sitcom reboot of the Roseanne show, which drew upwards to 25 million viewers per week.

The Roseanne show was selling. The reboot of the sitcom was a huge moneymaker for ABC. Money was pumped into production and marketing. Huge salaries were paid to stars. Jobs were created for writers and the production staff.

Then this morning, Roseanne made the unwise decision to Tweet something racist. Yep. In a nanosecond it is all gone. Roseanne tweeted that, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby-vj.” VJ is indicated to be Valerie Jarrett, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama.

The revenue is gone. The jobs are gone.

Like many people; like many companies; this is a self-inflicted crisis. I like to call these self-inflicted crises an act of “Un-Selling.”

The world is hypersensitive. Social media fuels hypersensitivity.

Corporations can no longer defend themselves in a hypersensitive world. Admitting defeat and closing up shop is more cost-effective than fighting a controversy and the fallout associated with the crisis.

Somehow, after 12-14 years of social media, many people and companies still seem oblivious that we are at the crossroads of social media; we are at the crossroads of crisis communications; we are at the crossroads of selling.

Roseanne has always been controversial and has said many things in her comedy that offend people. When she went off of the air 21 years ago, social media didn’t exist. Heck, 21 years ago the internet and email were just making their mark.

There was a time when a network like ABC would experience a crisis like this, then hunker down with lawyers for a few days, then count how much money they would lose if the show got canceled. They would compare that number to the revenues they would earn, before making decisions. Those days are gone.

These days, decisions are swift, brutal, and costly.

Every corporation is vulnerable to Un-Selling these days. It can be from your own post. It can be due to a bad situation captured on video and shared with the world.

I can’t help but notice the irony that I’m typing these words at the very moment every Starbucks store is closed for sensitivity training because the arrest of two black men was captured in one of their stores, causing the company to lose customers. (Yes, Starbucks was Un-Selling.) It happened when United Airlines dragged a passenger off a flight. It happened when Wells Fargo created fake accounts. It happened when Facebook sold your data.

Everyone one of these is an act of Un-Selling by a company. Un-Selling requires crisis planning and crisis training.

Plan, practice, and stop Un-Selling.

 

 

 3 Attempts at Crisis Management with Television Commercials — 3 Lessons to Learn

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

Think of a crisis as UN-selling your customers.

Traditional crisis management and crisis communications are practiced almost the same way by every company and public relations firm. A company screws up and UN-sells their customer. Then the public relations team tries to clean up the mess. They essentially try to resell the customer.

Three television commercials have just hit the air with three high-profile companies attempting to repair their self-inflicted wounds and resell their customers.

Will it work?

Facebook lead the way with their television commercial, followed by Uber, and now followed by Wells Fargo.

As a cynic, I wonder if they would be running commercials if each crisis didn’t hurt their bottom line? That’s what happens when you un-sell. As a crisis communications expert, I question why their respective responses were so slow, which further damaged their bottom line.

Most so-called crisis communication experts want to repair reputation. My expert advice is to protect revenue by preventing the crisis from happening to begin with and by getting out ahead of the crisis if it reaches a flashpoint.  I have three tips about this at the bottom of this post.

All three of these companies were initially silent and all three were much too slow to respond. Speed in crisis communications is critical. The sooner you address the crisis with one or more statements, the faster the crisis will go away.

Facebook apology video Gerard Braud crisis expertFacebook  was the first I saw on television. Imagine, the company with one of the largest advertising platforms in the world having to buy television commercials because so many of their customers were un-sold and the only way to reach them is through television.

As commercials go, it is sentimental and emotional and may cause some people to give them a second chance. It confesses the sins of the company, then boldly states, “That’s going to change.” I like that. But what is missing is the phrase, “We let you down, and for that, we are sorry.”

Uber Apology Video Gerard Braud Crisis ExpertThe second commercial I saw was from Uber. Uber portrays their new CEO as the crusader who will right the wrongs of the past and invites the customer “to move forward together,” and “to help write our next chapter.” Void again is the phrase, “In our growth we let some things fall through the cracks and for that we are sorry.”

What is also interesting about Uber, is their growth resulted from virtually every taxi driver in America un-selling people with open windows, dirty cabs, excessive speed and a lack of courtesy. Uber drivers were essentially the opposite until a handful of crises happened that were not addressed quickly enough.

Wells Fargo apology Crisis Expert Gerard BraudWells Fargo has the weakest of the three attempts to win customers back. Their commercials are frankly years too late, since their crisis was exposed in the Fall of 2016. The cynic in me says that a commercial this late in the game is likely the result of executive denial, portrayed by folks who thought this crisis would blow over. It didn’t. Human denial in a crisis is the thing that slows response. Regarding the commercial, the music is bad. The script is weak. The commercial is vague in alluding to the company’s actions in which reportedly two million fake accounts were opened, leading to 5,300 employees being fired and the company paying $185 million in fines. Added to the list of bad moves is the company paying almost that much in bonuses to the executives who lead the teams which led to the bad behavior. Oh, and never is there an apology.

Your crisis management and crisis communications lessons should be this:

1) When your company screws up, respond fast. If you want to know how, ask me about the 100 pre-written news releases I now provide to each of the clients who use my crisis communications plan.

2) You must apologize for something. Your lawyers don’t want you to say you are sorry as part of a confession of wrongdoing. I understand that. But I have written many phrases in the past that apologize to the offended party without confession to anything that would give ammunition to the plaintiff’s attorney. I’ve included some of those above, such as, “We are sorry for letting you down.” Remember, winning in court is a small consolation when you have lost in the court of public opinion and your customers have left you.

3) The best form of crisis management is to recognize a potential crisis before it goes public. I could have spotted all three of these crises long before they went public. My best case studies are always about potential crises that were caught in the early stages and made to go away before they ever went public.

When denial, bad behavior, and poor judgment exist in the C-suite, you will have a crisis. That crisis will un-sell your customers.

United Airline’s Flawed Apology: 4 Lessons in Crisis Communications

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by Gerard Braud

So which of the three statements issued by United CEO Oscar Munoz should we believe?

Monday he said, “This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United. I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers.”United Airlines Response

Later on Monday in a statement to employees he said, “While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.” He went on to say, about the man dragged off of the flight, “Treating our customers and each other with respect and dignity is at the core of who we are, and we must always remember this no matter how challenging the situation.”

Oscar to employees

 

Or do we believe the Tuesday statement that says, “The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all customers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way.” He goes on to say, “It’s never too late to do the right thing.” United Apology Statement

Yes, but it’s never too soon to do the right thing either.

As one who has sat in public relations war rooms on five continents, I’m constantly amazed that big companies constantly make predictable bad decisions based on out-of-date public relations standards and failed crisis communications strategies, often supervised by a team of lawyers who do not want to ever use the word “apology” out of fear of giving ammunition to the plaintiff’s attorney.

Here are four lessons you should consider to be a crisis communications expert:

Lesson #1: Never make one statement to the public and another to your employees. All audiences should always get the same statement. The incongruencies in your statements will always be released to the public by an employee. I’ve said this a thousand times to clients and to conference audiences around the world and I’ll keep saying it.

Lesson #2: Your corporate response must move at the speed of Twitter. If it takes two days to get as outraged as the Twittersphere got in a matter of seconds, then you don’t understand modern crisis communications. I have more than 300 pre-written news releases on my laptop that are lawyer approved and ready to use in seconds. On average it takes 10 minutes for me to edit one.

Lesson #3: If you could attach a dollar value to your words and actions in a crisis, would you make money or lose money? United is losing. The stock is crashing. The cynic in me wonders if Munoz would have foregone the Tuesday statement if it were not for the outraged world screaming advice in dollar signs.

Lesson  #4: Parse your words until they are cynic-proof. Let’s break down the words parsed in the statements from United and let us add a cynic’s view. On Monday he said, “I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers.”

The cynic reads this as saying, “We needed to get four of our employees somewhere and they are more important than you are, even if we have to call the cops to drag you out of your seat.”

Later he said to employees, “I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right.” The cynic reads, “You showed our customers who is boss. Keep up the good work. Follow the rules written to benefit us, regardless of who gets hurt.”

He went on to tell employees, “Treating our customers and each other with respect and dignity is at the core of who we are, and we must always remember this no matter how challenging the situation.” The cynic looks at the video and clearly sees that the customer dragged from the plane was in no way treated with respect or dignity.

The Tuesday statement says, “The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment.” The cynic thinks, we all got that feeling 48 hours ago. Why did it take you two days to feel the same way?

Somewhere at United there is a room full of executives, PR folks, PR agency people, and lawyers. Do you think any one of them should get to keep their job after how they have mismanaged this in the past 48 hours?

The key to crisis communications is to take the steps and to make the decisions on a clear sunny day, about how you will respond to the many things that can happen on your darkest day. Yet most organizations are too focused on bringing in money to discuss the methods they should use to keep the money from gushing out the door when they screw up.

 

Crisis communications expert Gerard Braud, CSP, IEC has been the go-to expert for organizations on five continents for nearly 25 years. He shares his passion for effective communications through his keynote speeches at conferences and conventions, as well as by helping organizations write an effective crisis communications plan. Additionally, he media trains spokespeople around the world. Braud began his career in journalism in 1979. During his 15 year career on television, you may have seen him on CNN, NBC, CBS, The BBC or The Weather Channel. In 1994 he left television to venture out into the world of public relations. This video will help you get to know him better.

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Stop Unselling: Crisis Communications Tip for United Airlines

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united3By Gerard Braud

Are you constantly amazed by how companies unsell you as a customer? Think about the millions of dollars spent and hours invested trying to get you to buy. Then in a heartbeat, they unsell you. When will companies learn to Stop Unselling?

United Airlines had done just that with the video of the doctor being dragged off of an overbooked flight. The impact is compounded by the recent news story about passengers who were denied boarding because they were wearing leggings. That’s two strikes United.

Just for fun, do a Google search for United Airlines and witness how the negative news stories have pushed the airline’s own SEO optimized site out of first place.

united

Then peek at Twitter, to see the field day of negative comments from people who are actively being unsold by United.

united2

The one piece of expert crisis communications advice every company should know is that if your rules favor the company more than they favor the customer, you will eventually unsell your customers.

The incident happened Sunday and began making the news Monday. By the Tuesday news cycle less than 48 hours after the incident, Marketwire reports a 6% fall in the company’s stock, wiping out $1.4 billion dollars in market cap. Even more frightening than the financial loss is that we have to even wonder if that matters to a company with a $22 billion dollar cap? Will they even care?

Will you fly United again? How many people since seeing this video have made a conscious effort to not fly United and are buying their tickets on any other airline?

United has been on my do not fly list for more than ten years after one of their red-coated gate managers removed me, my wife, and two daughters from a flight to Belize, ruining our summer vacation and never compensating us. United repeatedly gave us flawed information about our travel documents before and during the trip. Finally seconds before the door closed we were told to remove our bags and exit the flight. I solved my problem with a single phone call to customs agents in Belize who gave us the green light to fly. It was something United could have done, but didn’t.

United unsold me. On an annual basis, I spend about $50,000 for airline tickets and most of it is spent with Southwest Airlines. Not only has United unsold me, but so has Delta and American because of various acts in which they treated me like a second-class citizen by putting their interests and rules above my rights as a customer.

I’m not sure if we will be able to measure how many passengers right now are selecting flights on other airlines because they saw the video of the doctor being dragged down the aisle.

My fear is that there are actuaries in companies like United who will say that the stock drop and the loss of ticket sales are within the acceptable spectrum of doing business.

Relative Ad Value

In public relations, experts love to measure the relative ad value of positive news. It is based on the idea that your time in a news story is worth three times the value of you having bought an ad in that same media. I can’t wait for an expert to run the data and tell us the negative, unselling effect of this news story.

And what about social media and the comment sections on web-based news sites? What is the negative ad value of that?

Stop Unselling

The bottom line is that corporations make stupid decisions every day. United Airlines is the poster child today.

Dear United Airlines,

Stop Unselling.

Sincerely,

Your former passenger Gerard Braud

 

 

Crisis communications expert Gerard Braud, CSP, IEC has been the go-to expert for organizations on five continents for nearly 25 years. He shares his passion for effective communications through his keynote speeches at conferences and conventions, as well as by helping organizations write an effective crisis communications plan. Additionally, he media trains spokespeople around the world. Braud began his career in journalism in 1979. During his 15 year career on television, you may have seen him on CNN, NBC, CBS, The BBC or The Weather Channel. In 1994 he left television to venture out into the world of public relations. This video will help you get to know him better.

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What should you do with your hands in a media interview? PR Discussion Question

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Should you sit with your hands folded together? If you are standing, should they be clasped as well? Or should you make the appropriate hand gestures as you speak? What could your nonverbals be saying about you during your media interview? It may seem like a simple question, but every minute detail counts when you are doing an interview for the media. Your reputation and revenue are at stake, and you have to be on top of your game to represent your brand.

There is plenty to be discussed on this topic and many corporate spokespeople, CEOs, and subject matter experts could benefit from your expert tips. So, to help out our public relations community, this week’s PR discussion question is, “What should you do with your hands in a media interview?”

We would love to hear your thoughts this week. Comment here and on our social media pages to join the discussion. Your answers may be featured in our follow-up video!

This question is one of a series of debates in the media relations, crisis communications, public relations, and social media industries where you and your colleagues can share observations with each other. Yes, YOU are invited to share your bite size bits of best practices. Here is how:

Step 1: Subscribe to The BraudCast on YouTube

Step 2: You will see a short video that poses a new question every Monday. You then post your best practices and observations on The BraudCast YouTube channel.

Step 3: Once your opinion is shared, you can follow the discussion online so you can compare your best practices to those of your professional colleagues.

Step 4: Watch the follow-up Friday Video where you will see a short YouTube video outlining some of the most interesting observations. Yes…your comments may actually show up on our BraudCast video, bringing you world-wide fame, fortune, a big raise, glory, street parades, and more.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge. Please take 2 seconds now to subscribe to The BraudCast.

Maverick Media Training: 3 Secrets to Greater Media Interview Success

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By Gerard Braud

Gerard Braud media(Editor’s note: You can learn more about this topic by attending Gerard Braud’s pre-conference session at the IABC World Conference in New Orleans. Register for only $250 today. “Rise to Perfection in Media Interviews” on Sunday, June 5, 2016 from 1:30–4:30 p.m.)

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

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

What is maverick media training?

Step one is to recognize the failing point of an interview. Expert analysis tells us 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.

To visualize the writing process, think of it 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 two is to 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.

By using 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 three of maverick media training focuses 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 what you have done in media training in the past has failed you and your spokespeople, be a maverick and adopt new media training techniques. Register for this IABC pre-conference session.

Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC (Jared Bro) is known by many as the crisis communications expert who is able to put a low cost, yet highly effective crisis communications plan in place in just 2 days. As a former reporter, you may have seen him on NBC, CNN, CBS, the BBC or The Weather Channel. It is the mistakes he saw people make daily as he covered the news that lead him to create a system of crisis communications plans and strategies that have served his clients on 5 continents. 

 

Corporate Communicators Answered: What Do You Do When Leadership Listens to Lawyers more than the PR Team?

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By Gerard Braud –

This week we asked you for your best public relations practices, like we do every week on the BraudCast. We wanted corporate communicators and PR professionals to weigh in on the question, “If Your Leadership Team Listens to Corporate Lawyers More Than They Listen to the Public Relations Team How Do You Rectify That?” This follow-up video features what your colleagues shared on social media. Please share your comments and subscribe to the weekly question on the BraudCast YouTube Channel to participate next week.

Lawyers vs PR teams gerard braud BraudCast

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This question is one of a series of discussion questions about media relations, crisis communications, public relations, and social media. Yes, YOU are invited to share your bite size bits of best practices each week. Here is how:

Step 1: Subscribe to The BraudCast on YouTube

Step 2: You will see a short video that poses a new question every Monday. You then post your best practices and observations on The BraudCast YouTube channel.

3: Once your opinion is shared, you can follow the discussion online so you can compare your best practices to those of your professional colleagues.

Step 4: Watch the Follow-up Video where you will see a short YouTube video outlining some of the most interesting observations. Yes…your comments may actually show up on our BraudCast video, bringing you world-wide fame, fortune, a big raise, glory, street parades, and more.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge. Please take 2 seconds now to subscribe to The BraudCast.