The number of remote media interviews, online interviews, Zoom interviews, and the like have skyrocketed in the past few weeks. In last week’s video, I asked you, who is doing them well? How is the quality of the videos?
Well, today I am providing you with expert media training strategies to help you look professional, organized, and credible as a source for your media interview.
If lighting, camera angles, technology, and wardrobe stress you out (and rightfully so), this video can help you be a video producer in your own home office or other remote location.
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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Crisis experts Bill Coletti and Gerard Braud share their insights and top recommendations on “what’s next” and what to do in this very uncertain phase between shutting down and re-opening for business.
In addition to the webinar recording, please feel free to share theSlide deck with your colleagues.
Hopefully, the insights and recommendations shared will be helpful to you and your teams in this difficult time.
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…”
In crisis communication, the burden is shared between your leadership team and your communications team, to give clear directives to your employees, your customers, your stakeholders, and the media.
Nothing undermines the credibility of a leader during a crisis more than when their actions don’t match their words.
Be congruent. Your actions must match your words.
For example, don’t call a news conference about the coronavirus to tell your audience that social distancing requires people to be six feet apart, when in fact, you are standing shoulder to shoulder with 10 people on the stage with you. That’s not being congruent. You are sending a mixed message and the cynics are going to call it out.
Don’t tell your audience not to shake hands, yet you shake
hands. That’s not being congruent.
A perfect example of congruency can be seen in the media,
where news anchors are distancing themselves within a news studio. That’s being
congruent.
Leaders should be mindful of the proliferation of social media and cell phone cameras. As soon as you behave in a way that lacks congruency, someone will capture you in the act and publicize it. Don’t make your crisis worse by letting your bad actions overshadow your good message. Don’t create a secondary crisis because of your own bad behavior, poor judgment, or lack of congruency.
Leaders are often taught to catch their employees doing something right so praise can be given, rather than catching an employee doing something wrong so that criticism is given. As a leader, you need to lead in actions and in words. We want to catch you doing something right.
In times of crisis, people want to trust the leaders of their companies and their communities. A crisis, as we pointed out in yesterday’s blog, can really highlight who is a true leader and who is a fake leader.
Leadership is never based on one’s title; it’s based on
one’s behavior.
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…”
While many companies and brands are responding and communicating about the coronavirus (Covid 19), other individuals are questioning whether coronavirus fears are being blown out of proportion.
The best crisis communications tip I can give you is as simple as A-B-C:
Always Be Communicating.
In the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter if you, personally think things are being blown out of proportion or not.
What matters is that you are managing the expectations of your employees, your customers, and your stakeholders.
Replace fear with facts.
And because things change on a daily basis, you must be prepared to communicate constantly. In other words – Always Be Communicating.
When you manage expectations, you manage, mitigate, or
eliminate fear.
Here are a few things to communicate about:
What should employees do to remain safe?
What should customers do to remain safe?
Are any of your operations or services changing?
If everything is operating as normal, under what circumstances will change be enacted?
If changes are enacted, how will you continue to serve your audiences amid the changes?
You and your organization will be affected in some way. How severe the effect is can depend upon how effectively and how frequently you communicate.
Take your audience away from worry and take them to a place of informed decision-making.
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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Media Training for Mobile is a new crisis communications and public relations specialty. It is the latest addition to our 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications series for the new year.
Quick recap – this is the fifth week of the new year. You have been challenged in the previous four crisis communication blogs to end the cycle of broken New Year’s resolutions, in favor of achieving consistency.
Media Training as a Bucket List
Media training is too often treated like a bucket list item
that an executive does once in life. Our challenge to you is to conduct one
thorough media training for your key spokespeople each year, along with a
thorough practice training before every interview.
Today’s video goes deep into media training for mobile, as well as the use of crisis communications scripts for crisis events. Both of these techniques are great ways to improve and intensify any media training that you have done in the past.
I encourage you to watch the complete video, because it will
go much deeper into the techniques than this blog will. Warning – it goes so
deep that today’s BraudCast video runs about 12 minutes.
In the BraudCast, I share some media training and crisis
communication tips that I don’t normally share with anyone except my clients.
Give Up Old Media Training Techniques
This episode of the BraudCast encourages you to give up the
old, failed media training techniques of the past in favor of new techniques.
As more people transition from traditional media to news on
their mobile devices, you need to recognize that how a spokesperson delivers a message greatly affects public
perception and how a news
story is edited.
When someone reads news on a mobile device, they primarily
see a headline, followed by the lead sentence. Most people draw their conclusion
from those two pieces of the news story. Likewise, most people seldom scroll to
read anything else about the story, unless it directly affects them.
Therefore, your media training for mobile needs to focus on teaching the spokesperson to deliver a compelling preamble statement at the beginning of the interview, as a way to mimic a reporter’s lead. Your goal is to be so profound and natural in your wording of that preamble, that the reporter wants to capture the essence of it to write their lead.
Control the Lead; Control the Headline
When you control the lead, you then control the headline.
That’s because the person writing the headline only reads the lead sentence, in
order to gain the information they need to write the headline.
Can You Control the
Edit?
When you control the lead, you control the headline, which means you control public perception.
…And More Control
By watching the BraudCast video, you’ll also learn that the way to eliminate bad adlibs during a crisis is to use a well-worded script that anticipates all of the questions you’ll be asked during a crisis news conference.
Bottom Line The bottom line is that media interviews are hard. The variety of ways people receive their news is expanding. This means you must expand your media training to stay up with the times. It’s one of our secrets to effective crisis communications.
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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As we enter the third full week of January, we’ll look at how to write a crisis communications plan. If you’ve followed these articles and videos since the beginning of the year, you know that you are being challenged to abandon news year’s resolutions in favor of consistency in behavior, not just for this year, but throughout the life of your organization.
Think of crisis communications expertise as a five step process, called the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications. Think of a crisis communications plan as number three of those five steps.
This week we look at the heart of your crisis communications
plan. This is the written document that is the instruction book that one would
follow to know exactly what to do, when to do it, to whom specific tasks are
assigned, and how fast those tasks must be completed.
What to do.
When to do it.
Who does it.
How fast must it be done.
As for what to do, the crisis communications plan must
outline how you gather information, confirm that information, and then
disseminate that information.
Gather information.
Confirm information.
Disseminate information.
While those are the foundational elements, getting it perfect is difficult and time consuming. When writing my first plan, I put 9 months of work into the document. All these years later, that base document allows me to customize crisis communications plan for clients in five hours. But it was the outrageously hard to get the first plan written, so be patient. Forgive yourself on those days when you want to give up. Also, recognize that if you have other daily tasks to perform, finding the time will be a huge challenge.
Add two other goals to the process of writing your crisis
communications plan. Aim to make the plan as thorough and detailed as possible,
such that nothing falls through the cracks, yet make it so simple to follow
that anyone who can read can execute it.
So thorough that nothing falls through the
cracks.
So simple that anyone who can read can execute
it.
Do not make the crisis communications plan simply a policy manual. Instead, make it a document that the lead communicator actually reads and follows in real time during a crisis. What does that mean?
Most crisis communications plans I’ve read are six page
documents that say basic things such as, “Consider if you need to call a news
conference.” Instead, list the conditions in which a news conference would be
called, pre-determine multiple locations where it could be held, identify who
your potential spokespeople will be, identify who will write the news release,
outline the approval process, and outline the steps needed to prepare for the
news conference.
News conference parameters.
Pre-determine locations.
Pre-determine potential spokespeople.
Pre-determine who will write the news release and press conference script.
Outline the approval process.
Outline the steps for a news conference rehearsal.
The fatal flaw with most crisis communications plans is that they are so vague, they require people in the organization to make too many decisions on the day of the crisis. This leads to arguments, debates, and delays.
The more specific
your plan, the more terrific. For example, designate a timeline for
completing each task. My plans state that a public statement needs to be
released within one hour OR LESS, from the onset of the crisis going public.
Most organizations take from three to four hours to release their first
statement because 1) decisions have not been pre-made and 2) because news
releases are not pre-written.
The secret to speedy communications involves relying on
pre-written news releases. That is the third step in the five steps to
effective crisis communications. We’ll tackle that next week.
In the meantime, take a look at your calendar and map out time for when you will tackle the task of writing your crisis communications plan. If you have questions, use this link to schedule a free 15-minute phone call with me to talk about your needs. If you wish to tackle this task on your own I’ll provide guidance and answer your questions. If you want me to carry the burden for you, in two days I can help you customize a plan and provide you with 100 pre-written news releases. The option is yours to decide which is best for you.
Which ever way you choose, make your crisis communications plan a priority. Aim to finish it in the first three months of the new year.
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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December is filled with end of year meetings, budget reviews, and overall wrap up of your budget year. Not to mention your calendar is booked with office parties, gift-giving, and a to-do list the length of your arm.
That’s why January is the time to plan your crisis communications strategy for 2020. Before you just stroll in to the New Year and get back to the grind, let your C-suite, your executives, your public relations team, your communications staff know in DECEMBER that there will be crisis communication training and media training on the books EARLY in 2020. If you need help explaining this to your staff and team members, view this video:
Start by learning about the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications. Now is the time to encourage your team that they can spread the project out into manageable tasks over the four quarters of the year. A free 5-part video series is online here to get you started:
Quarter 1 is the time to conduct your Vulnerability Assessment, which is Step 1. Mid-Quarter 1 is the time to write your Crisis Communications Plan, which is Step 2.
Quarter 2 is the time to write Pre-written News Releases as Step 3, based on your Vulnerability Assessment.
Quarter 3 is when you should conduct Media Training as Step 4, based on the pre-written news releases you have written.
Quarter 4 is when you should conduct your Crisis Communications Drill, which is Step 5, based on completion of all of the previous steps.
Once you make the commitment to more effective crisis communications, I’m here to help you achieve your goals and I’m standing by to be your accountability buddy. When you sign up for the free 5-part video series, you’ll be given a chance to schedule a free 15-minute phone call with me to help you set your goals.
If you are the type to take the bull by the horns, and if you are ready to put things on the fast track, Steps 1, 2 and 3 can be completed in as few as two days with my fully customizable crisis communications plan system.
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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The ability for the global community to post online comments in countless ways and forums makes the world even more frightening for those trying to manage their reputation. For the sake of discussion here, when I use the term social media, I’m talking about all postings to the internet that allow your reputation to be improved or destroyed, as well as the gadgets that make it all possible. There are
3 ways you can get hurt in the world of social media:
When your public actions are photographed or video taped, then posted to the web
When your reputation is attacked on social sites and blogs
When you willingly participate in on-line discussions and do a poor job communicating
For example, there is a video posted to the web of a county commissioner being hounded by a television reporter. When asked after a public meeting to justify the delay in opening a new county juvenile justice center, the commissioner asks the reporter, “Elliot, do you know that Jesus loves you?” The commissioner then dodges every one of the reporter’s subsequent questions by trying to engage in a discussion about why the reporter should accept Jesus as his personal savior. Regardless of your religious beliefs, the answer is inappropriate because it is not germane to the news report, and by repeating a variation of it as the answer to every question, it only makes the official look more like he is guilty of hiding something.
Prior to the advent of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook.com and YouTube.com, such buffoonery would have been seen once or twice on the local evening news, the commissioner would have become the butt of some brief local mockery and embarrassment, but within a few days it would all pass.
But in the age of social media, millions of people around the world are able to watch the video and laugh at its absurdity on a daily basis. Some will post a link to their own website, or forward a link via e-mails to friends. This is what viral and social media is all about. This video lives forever on the world wide web and so does the commissioner’s embarrassment, mockery and humiliation, as people perpetually forward the video to their network of real friends and online acquaintances.
Issues like this are one of the reasons you should consider Social Media Training. Social Media Training is a program I pioneered to teach communicators and executives the realities and how their reputations can be damaged by public actions that are either voluntarily, or involuntarily captured, and posted to the web.
Numerous reputations and careers have been destroyed because of what someone says in a presentation to what is perceived as a friendly group. Inevitably, an audience member records the speech or presentation, then either posts a portion of it to the web or gives it directly to the media.
Cloaked with an audience of perceived friends, speakers often “cross the line” by their comments, only to face humiliation, embarrassment, and in many cases a long list of apologies and even the loss of their jobs because they thought their comments were made in private and off the record. If you are hosting a social media training class, you may wish to combine it with a presentation skills class.
Social Media Training is also needed before communicators and executives voluntarily attempt to participate in online communities. This is true whether one is responding to a posting made by someone else, or whether you are the one posting to a personal or corporate blog for your organization.
For instance, I found a random blog entry one day as I prepared to teach a Social Media Seminar. The blog entry was from a top executive from General Motors. The blog entry, posted on an official GM site, featured a photo of the executive. The guy in the photo looked like he was delivering an angry rant on stage at a corporate meeting. His blog entry, likewise, took an angry, rant style with a tone that personified, “I know better than you.”
His comment was a reply to a blog posting critical of GM’s poor gasoline mileage in its SUV’s. Because of how the executive worded his rather pompous response, many more participants in the blog criticized his parsed words and reply, which reflected the official corporate line.
In short, the executive’s poor choice of words was like throwing gasoline on a small fire, turning it into a bigger fire. It didn’t need to be that way.
CEO’s and executives need to think carefully before they participate in social media and corporate communicators need to think carefully before asking or allowing executives to actively participate in social media.
There are a few basic things communicators and executives should consider in the world of social media:
1. Are you good with traditional media? If you are not good with traditional media, what makes you think you can handle social media?
2. How do you behave in public? Do you realize that every public moment of your life is potentially being photographed or recorded? Your public behavior, what you do and say, who you associate with, and where you are seen in public, can all be posted to the web for the entire world to see.
My 5 basic rules for social media:
1) Every rule of media training applies to social media. Every word and how those words are phrased will be carefully scrutinized.
2) Edit what you say constantly to avoid having your comments taken out of context.
3) The rule of ethics is to ask whether you behavior in private is the same as the way you would behave if people were watching you. Congruency of behavior is important.
4) Before jumping into an online blog type discussion, you need to be prepared to use key messages and making sure those key messages have been run through the cynic filter. Bloggers are cynical and brutal.
5) Sometimes the best response to a blog posting is to ask a question. Rather than attacking a blogger for their point of view, simply ask them to further explain their point of view. Sometimes a blogger will back down as they are unable to defend their position. Sometimes other bloggers will come to your rescue with responses that match your point of view.
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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Crisis communication failures are easy for any expert to cite as an example of what not to do. It is far harder to find a crisis communication and crisis management case study where things are done correctly, because often the public never knows about a potential crisis that never reached a flash point.
Twitter, however, has publicly averted a crisis through both good crisis management and good crisis communications. The wisdom of their decision is punctuated by Facebook’s failure to avert a crisis.
Twitter has voluntarily decided to simply not run political ads. On the one hand, Twitter will lose ad revenue. On the other hand, Twitter doesn’t have to bear the blame of running false, deceptive, or divisive political ads.
We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵
Facebook, meanwhile, in what appears to be a grab to earn all the money they can, has publicly said they will run political ads, while also confirming that they will not check to see if the ads are false. Put in simple terms, if you want to lie, Facebook will take your money in order to help you promote and spread your lie.
It is refreshing to see a CEO like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey do what is right, rather than doing what earns the most short term money. It shouts INTEGRITY. I’ve been fortunate enough to deal with many CEOs who are willing to take my advice to do what is right, even if it means earning less money in the short term.
Ultimately, when you do the right thing you reap long term rewards, which offsets the short term losses. Only time will tell if this is true for Twitter, but Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is going to give it a try.
Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg will simply add to their downward spiral of criticism. Facebook’s business model is to harvest as much of your personal data as possible, then sell that data to those who want to manipulate your beliefs for their own gain. This is true whether an ad targets you for laundry powder, toothpaste, or someone running for president of the United States.
Facebook, in many ways, is the platform that has made America so divided politically, because of the Facebook data harvested by Cambridge Analytica, which was used to benefit everyone from the Russians to political candidates in the 2016 presidential election.
Facebook’s engagement is down significantly because people
are tired of having their data harvested and they are tired of seeing everything
from divisive ads to divisive political memes from fake Facebook accounts.
Ultimately, Facebook will be nothing more than a place where like-minded people
gather to support their like-minded beliefs that are being reinforced by
like-minded candidates who tell them what they already believe.
My suspicion is that Facebook is betting they can make big bucks by doing what I would professionally consider to be the WRONG thing. I suspect their short term gain will result in long term losses as more users leave the platform.
In the meantime, let me lift up Twitter and Jack Dorsey for every company and every CEO to see. There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.
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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The annual wildfire season in California is presenting us with an interesting crisis communication case study. I’d encourage you to follow media reports and listen to what each expert says in those media reports. As we review this crisis, we’ll look at it through the lens of the 5 Steps to Effective Crisis Communications, especially the concept of Step 1 – Your Vulnerability Assessment. (If you are not familiar with the 5 Steps of Effective Crisis Communications, follow this link for a free video tutorial.) Additionally, this crisis is a personification of defining a crisis as an event that affects a company’s revenue and reputation.
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has been dealing with a financial crisis after facing lawsuits leading from allegations that the company’s power lines may have started past fires that destroyed homes and took lives.
The liability is so devastating that PG&E has filed for bankruptcy. This is the personification of a crisis that is affecting a company’s revenue and reputation.
Now the electric company is fighting criticism because it has been shutting off power in fire-prone areas as a way to prevent fires. This again, is affecting the company’s revenue and reputation.
If you worked at PG&E, how would you manage this crisis? From the perspective of a Vulnerability Assessment, on one hand you have to assess the potential loss of property and lives if a fire breaks out because a faulty power line starts a fire. On the other hand, you have to assess the financial hardship the company is thrusting upon all of the businesses that cannot operate because they have no power.
One farmer showed the media how $50,000 worth of produce
could go bad in his farm’s refrigerator unit that was now without power. This
story is multiplied in many ways by many businesses, not to mention all of the
homeowners affected by the outage.
My guess is PG&E will face a new round of lawsuits from
homeowners and businesses that have faced losses because of the shutdown of
power.
A further root cause analysis from a Vulnerability Assessment standpoint would have to examine all of the allegations that PG&E has not properly maintained their power lines, transformers, and equipment. Critics allege that failure to maintain the system is the root cause of the deadly fires. Other critics dig deeper, saying PG&E has spent too many years trying to give money to stockholders, rather than reinvesting in their infrastructure.
What do you know about the company where you work? Is it a publicly traded company that prioritizes stockholders over customers? Are there potential crises like this on your horizon? Do you see competing interests that need to be dealt with now, before they reach a flash point?
Your immediate course of action should be to gather your leadership team together and discuss these vulnerabilities before a crisis ignites. A good Vulnerability Assessment may provide a roadmap that allows you to eliminate a crisis before it ignites. If the crisis can’t be eliminated, it allows you to develop a plan to deal with the crisis if it ignites.
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