Why media training is the enemy
In this guest posting, Vuki Vujasinovic argues why media training is usually a waste of time for the journalist-wary entrepreneur.
So you’ve built your product/ service/ game-changing business model and things are ticking along nicely. You’ve invested in your team, got your systems sorted and you’re excited to see a little revenue trickling into the business. Everything is running smoothly. You’re enjoying steady organic growth, and you’re starting to get excited, so you decide it’s time to crank it up a notch and “do some PR”.But you’ll soon be speaking regularly with the media, and you want to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward. So when the PR firm you’ve engaged suggests you do some media training, a warm smile and a reassuring nod of the head is about all the convincing you need to sign on the dotted line.
You’re not alone. One of the first decisions entrepreneurs make shortly after committing to a public relations campaign, is to invest further money in media training.
Sometimes it’s because they’ve had a bad experience in the past and are wary of the media, other times it’s because they think it’s “the done thing”. But most of the time it’s because the PR agency has recommended it.
Big agencies traditionally look to pimp out their media training experts when revenues are down. For the big agency, it’s an easy way to earn an extra buck without the hassle of setting objectives, achieving return on investment, or reaching stakeholders for the client. It’s a quick, easy, profitable one-off transaction.
Unfortunately, entrepreneurs make great targets, for two reasons:
- generally they have limited experience dealing with PR agencies and have bootstrapped to where they are now
- they are naturally excited about the prospect of talking to the media about their burgeoning business
But before you commit your money, you should take some time to consider the outcomes. Will sitting with a media trainer for a few hours, undergoing an “intensive” media training session, yield the results you are looking for? Will you really feel better equipped to tell your story when you step out the door?
My message to all entrepreneurs going down this path is not to avoid media training, but to exercise extreme caution. Here’s why…
Not tailored for your needs
Media trainers, particularly at larger agencies, often use a cookie cutter approach, rolling out one-size fits all scenarios and dispensing generic advice. Most are used to training CEOs and other business leaders – some of which come from publically listed companies with masses of stakeholders. As such, your media trainer is unlikely to appreciate your unique position as an entrepreneur, taking an excessively, heavy-handed and unrealistic approach to your training.
They’ll prepare you for the worst case scenario – the investigative journalists and doorstop reporters – and train you to handle all manner of questions. But unless you’re a CEO of a large multinational, a politician, or a dodgy used car salesman, you’re probably wasting your time.
But the truth is, the bulk of entrepreneurs will rarely be in a situation where they will be scrutinised heavily or cross-examined by a journalist seeking to tear shreds off them. And if they are, it’s better to respond with the honesty that only an entrepreneur can, rather than a spokesperson who has to worry about how 40 different stakeholder groups will react to what they’re saying.
Don’t forget, journalists at the end of the day are people trying to do their jobs as well.
It won’t stop the butterflies in your stomach
For some entrepreneurs, being exposed to such over-the-top media training can even have a detrimental effect.
Think about it. Most entrepreneurs have completed a few interviews even before they’ve engaged a PR agency. Perhaps they’ve even appeared on live TV. But there’s a good chance their first interviews didn’t go as well as they planned. Maybe because they were underprepared. But most likely owing to nerves.
While it’s natural to feel jittery, nervous, and anxious about the outcome, if nerves are an issue, a rigorous session with a media trainer is unlikely to help. There’s a strong chance the entrepreneur will come away even more nervous than they were initially. They could even become gun-shy, opting to avoid media wherever possible for fear of encountering the horror interviewer.
For an entrepreneur, ill-targeted media training is not only a waste of time and money, but it can do more damage than good.
But if you really think you need media training, and you’re confident your agency understands your needs and will tailor their approach to suit, there’s another thing to consider.
Personality poison
Entrepreneurs often agree to engage media trainers because they are convinced they need to improve their “polish”, “likeability”, or deliver “key messages” better.
The problem is, entrepreneurs can end up becoming far too polished. Their charm and enthusiasm gets sucked right out of them, leaving them dry and wooden. In the worst cases, media training actually ends up becoming prohibitive, limiting their potential media exposure.
The producers of TV programs, editors of newspapers, bloggers, reporters and radio hosts know what their audience/readers want. And it’s not agenda-saturated, sales drivel, nor is it excessive “corp seak”. In fact, the only people turned off more will be the reporters themselves (this applies to all media outreach, including press releases). The sum of it is, if an entrepreneur comes to an interview sounding like a marketing robot, they’ll very rarely find themselves being asked back.
The charm of an unpolished, honest, and relatable spokesperson can not be emphasised enough. By all means have key messages you want to get across, but don’t start sounding repetitive. Variety is the spice of life, and this holds true in the media.
Put simply, being down to earth is your biggest asset as an entrepreneur. No-one knows your business as well as you do, and no-one is as passionate as you are. Use that to your advantage.
Shooting from the hip might sound like a risky tactic, but as long as you remain level-headed, and are well prepared for the interview, your long-tail media exposure will benefit from it. And the audience will take in what you’re saying much more enthusiastically.
Don’t get me wrong; media training, when done properly can be an absolute asset. But all too often, the specific needs of entrepreneurs are overlooked by media trainers and PR agencies, as are their qualities.
Entrepreneurs have a massive advantage over their cohorts in the broader business community. They are not bound by the same corporate constraints. They don’t normally answer to a board, they don’t usually have shareholders and they’re don’t usually have regulators breathing down their neck. They are challengers, disruptors and generally have great stories to tell.
So cash in on the advantage! Don’t throw it away by becoming another corporate bore, doublespeaker, or key message junky. Being anxious about a TV interview is the number one reason people engage a media trainer, so if you want some straight up advice, the following will help:
- Practice dealing with difficult questions;
- Have your audience in mind when you’re speaking;
- Don’t spit out brochureware, completely ignoring the questions;
- Don’t swivel in your chair;
- Don’t look right down the barrel of the camera (unless you’re doing an off-site cross where you’re meant to); and
- Please do not wear thin stripes on television!
If you absolutely must have media training, do your research, ask the right questions and make sure it’s tailored to suit your needs. And whatever you do, don’t let the trainer turn you into a journalist-repelling automaton.
Vuki Vujasinovic is the MD of Click PR
I agree, I’ve actually had to un-train subjects before, to stop them sounding like a brochure.
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So I guess the question is… what would you recommend? Most of my colleagues who are out there, just say that it gets easier every time you do it… but we have a bit of a chicken & the egg problem there.
I have had media training recommended to me to lift the profile. Had a few media appearances that went OK, but no one is exactly beating down the door to interview, so how do you find that balance?
Surely any entrepeneur worth their salt wouldn’t take any training course literally and would use the concepts to find their own style. If you know your stuff and can present well you can still benefit — like all training you do it not to change who you are or how you do it, but to do some things better?
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Media training and presentation courses are an expensive waste of time.
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You are making some generalisations here. Not all “media training” is the same.
I’m a former broadcaster who – among other things – educates people on how to work with journalists. Is this media training? Yes, it is but not as you have characterised it.
I’ve see the effects of the kind of “media training” you describe. It produces defensive, suspicious people who have only learned how NOT to work with journalists and who develop a lack of trust in journalists and the legitimate work they do.
My half-day course is about making relationships and explaining that relationships have ups and downs and you do not always get a favourable outcome when interacting with the media. Importantly, it explains the limitations under which journos work, their modus operandi and it essentially demystifies the media.
I agree that there is too much of the defensive kind of training, which in turn develops a journalist who becomes cynical and harder hitting in order to achieve their objective of getting to the bottom of a story.
But there are others of us who adopt a different approach. It’s worth doing some research to find a trainer who adopts a different approach.
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I think training is useful so that business people (and public servants) understand the hidden code of journalists and what they are seeking in an interview.
Someone who can’t provide short pithy quotes is unlikely to have their actual words used and someone who wanders can leave the journalist to attempt to figure out the actual benefits of their product or service – not a good, nor fair, position for one professional to put another professional in.
However I am often torn about speaking to the media (which I do reasonably frequently). Much of the time I don’t really care whether they report what I say or not. I have my own channels to influence the people I seek to influence and the media doesn’t really offer me access to audiences I need or want.
I am happy to help them out in broadening their knowledge of topics I know very well, and in providing facts and case studies which help them avoid misinformation and support organisations doing good work, as well as connecting them to people who can tell them more.
However I am resistant to giving them a ‘one-liner’, that doesn’t represent my views but supports the slant of their reporting, to fill an article when they are on deadline.
It becomes pretty clear quickly which journalists are only looking for a pro or con view. I don’t give them what they want and they stop calling me. Works out mutually beneficial.
The journalists who call for story ideas are amusing. They clearly don’t know what to write about and are hoping someone will research and give them a story they can simply regurgitate in return for being paid.
If they were happy to subcontract to me I’d write the story for them for the money, otherwise why should I feed their children?
They need to be prepared to interact more actively with industries and learn here the stories are themselves. I generally feed them a few article ideas, but leave the research up to them. They also give up calling when I don’t spend a few hours writing the research and providing the contacts so they simply need to massage the words and make their money.
The (much rarer) journalists who seek to understand the issues and report based on the facts, not a slant, I have far more time for and are happy to help (including with research and contacts when they are time poor). This journalism is the type society needs to foster and support.
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interesting. I think you’ve missed a massive point here – good media training is only partly about the best way to sound and look without being a human brochure. Any worthwhile training is as much about how the media actually works and for my money, only senior ex-journos with serious PR experience know how to do that brilliantly.
You can certainly tell when agencies are doing it tough. The social media and general media training emails fly thick and fast.
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I’m often told that competitors provide “worst case scenario” training no matter what.
Sometimes my brief is to undo the B.S that’s been delivered. I think the 2 most important aspects to training are audience and objective. If you don’t understand why you’re talking to a journalist and indeed who you are talking to you, you probably shouldn’t be talking at all!
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There’s media training and media training – we’ve been providing bespoke training for years mainly to SME entrepreneurs and no two sessions are alike. So i am not sure where Vuki’s experience comes from – he obviously has the wrong trainers. Furthermore, not only do clients get a good understanding of the media but more importantly the skills they learn are ‘life skills’ for communicating – and i have a testimonial from a client we trained – saying they could directly attribute an increase in revenue when they changed the way they delivered their message to stakeholders etc. Often the value is in uncovering just what that message is. Media is a great litmus test for message delivery. Also much of the time, we make the job easier all round – our clients come to the interview knowing what the journo wants – and how to deliver it. Anyone spouting brochure nonsense would get canned pretty quickly.
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There is bad media training.
There is good media training.
There is superior media training.
Vuki’s post is all about one-size-fits-all bad media training.
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All I know is there is a vast difference in outcomes between clients we have media trained and those we haven’t. Those who haven’t been trained are often “story killers.” We feel so strongly about it we rarely charge for it.
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Vuki makes some good points and some shockers. I think the key point he misses is the strategic context for media training.
He’s right about big PR firms – they pitch to a newly successful entrepreneur and media training is included in a template pitching document (i.e insert company and entrepreneur name, throw in some stats about the industry blah blah). It’s included because it’s high margin work, you just roll out the standard formula you’ve already got in place – about all the trainer does is research the industry a bit so they can ask some vaguely relevant questions – grist to the mill of the former or moon lighting journo. Because it’s the media which is both glam and scary you get to charge biggish bucks.
In reality media training is useless unless you either have the beginnings of a media profile or you are seriously committed to getting one. In either context media training has be only part of getting an organisation media savvy and as Craig said, that’s often about getting the boss, key managers and staff aware of how the media works and what the media’s priorities and pressures are.
I deal with CEO’s who are 20 years working with high profile issues, still in their heart of hearts think the media should exist to relay their message and not report or comment on the issue to the public.
Media training is also much more effective when in-house communications staff inform the trainers. Another example of getting the organisation media savvy.
One size fits all training is another feature of the phenomenon. New to the big time entrepreneurs tend to be big swinging whatever the gender neutral term is and are vulnerable to the whole TV media training thingy. Of course their business is going to have to be mighty cool to get any TV time worth anything straight up. Most likely they’ll talk to newspaper/online journos and radio interviews/news grabs from their office. So why wheel in the video/TV scenario. Save it for later when there is more of a media profile and you can bill them again!!!
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This same article was run on Nett not long ago.
If you had been media trained, you’d at least know not to roll out the same blog, to 2 different audiences, with no changes!!
http://nett.com.au/blog/do-you.....-training/
If that’s what you, a pr pro did – can you imagine what the untrained would do?
For the love of God friends, colleagues and clients – if you’re going to engage a PR agency to run a media relations campaign – at least make sure you the talent, who the media will rely on as a source and much of the tone and content will come from you, can do them and your brand justice. So in short – GET MEDIA TRAINING. Otherwise, don’t go running to your PR agency or the journalist crying that you’re misunderstood, misquoted or misrepresented!
Hopefully, if you’re an entrepreneur you have enough brains to know that you need to pick the best training possible and it should include a practical element that is at least as long as the theory so you can practice practice practice.
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