Posts Tagged ‘relationships’

Things to talk about when waiting for a journalist to arrive for an executive interview

October 8th, 2009 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Public Relations

The members of the press are busy people and they don’t always arrive for appointments on time, God bless them. Any given day could consist of a press conference, editorial meetings, interviews, research, launch events and the unforgiving deadlines of print media or the relentless deadlines of online media.

As a PR person its important to remain cool, calm and collected when sitting with your spokesperson or spokespeople and waiting for your journalist to arrive. You know they were confirmed by phone or email on the morning of or afternoon before the briefing.

Here are some things that PRs can do to fill the time when waiting for a journalist to arrive for a briefing. I am assuming that the executive briefing has been completed and the two or more of you are literally sitting in room waiting for the journalist to arrive.

  1. Re-cap over the key messages for the briefing. Ask your spokespeople to repeat – succinctly – the key messages that you want to convey in the briefing.
  2. Role play the journalist for five minutes. Ask your spokesperson a red flag question and see how they respond. Advise them on how they might improve the response – if possible.
  3. Ask your spokespeople which questions they don’t want to be asked and work with them to develop the appropriate response.
  4. Talk about your industry. Use the time as an opportunity to ask intelligent questions about your client’s industry sector and current issues and trends.  Demonstrate your understanding of the industry and your opinions.
  5. Provide some insight and information about the journalist that they are about to meet. What have they written about lately, where are they coming from (you may know that they are a specific event). This is a good way to provide your spokesperson with some ice breakers if they have not met the journo before.
  6. Put a call into the journalist or his co-workers to try and find out their ETA.
  7. Highlight some recent team successes. Talk about something that has gone well recently and provide some suggestions on how you might extend or repeat the success.
  8. Remind your spokesperson that the journalist will likely ask if there is anything they want to add at the very end of the questions and provide some suggestions on strong answers, incorporating the key message.
  9. Work with your spokesperson to develop some analogies that help bring the story to life or try to tease out some examples (i.e. customer stories) that they can build into their answers to illustrate a point.
  10. Ask your spokesperson to explain something about their business that you have never understood.
  11. Get Personal. People love to talk about themselves. Use this time as an opportunity to find out more about your spokesperson, their family, interest, hobbies, background.

You’re in trouble if you find that you’ve used up all of these and the journalist still hasn’t arrived. You’ve obviously been trying to reach your journalist throughout this process via text, SMS, email.

Next step:

Apologise on behalf of the journalist and provide a deadline when you will get back to the spokesperson to re-schedule the meeting. Apologise for wasting their time but highlight the fact that you’ve made use of the time and the fact that they are fully prepared for the re-scheduled briefing.

Follow up and demonstrate how you have put the insights and information provided by your spokesperson to good use.

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Article for Digital Media Magazine: CEO as Chief Communicator

April 16th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Public Relations, Social media

I wrote the following article for Digital Media Magazine. It ran in the newsletter yesterday (April 16th) which you can download here.

 

Links have been added for the benefit of this posting.

 

CEO as Chief Communicator

 

Current economic challenges have lead to intense scrutiny of executive decision making, corporate culture, compensation, risk management and due diligence in business. 

 

This close examination by Government and the media of corporate largesse has highlighted a vast chasm between senior executives and the general workforce leading to unprecedented levels of mistrust towards the business sector.  It has highlighted the urgent need for cultural change within the corporate sector in the developed world. 

 

CEO Blogging

 A January 2009 survey by a rival PR firm – Edelman – found that 38 percent of American respondents between the ages of 35 and 64 said they trust business.  This is the lowest rating in the survey’s 10-year history.  The corporate sector must act quickly and decisively to address deteriorating levels of trust between itself and the pool from which it must draw its customers and employees.

 

The question is: whose responsibility is it?

 

The buck must surely stop with the CEO.  Research conducted by Burson-Marsteller in 2005 found that perceptions of the CEO represent 65 percent of a corporate reputation. 

 

The role of the company CEO is to set the company vision, values and direction.  They then must develop the plan of actions.  The critical step lies in the effective communication of the strategy, and the consistent demonstration and reinforcement of the stated values. 

 

The rise of digital media has had a major impact on corporate communications since 2005.  It has provided the opportunity for corporations to establish an ‘authentic voice’.  This singular, human voice enables corporations to engage in meaningful two way conversation with individuals in the media, customer base, bloggersphere and so on. 

 

Interestingly, that authentic voice is rarely if ever the voice of the CEO.  A 2008 research project by Burson-Marsteller found that just 18% of CEOs have used social media to communicate with stakeholder groups.

 

There are exceptions, most notably in the technology sector, but typically the engineer, product strategist, technician or designer is perceived as the authentic voice. 

 

CEOs are overlooked for a wide variety of reasons; they don’t have time; they are not close enough to the detail; they are generalists; they don’t see the value in mass-communication; they are constrained by corporate disclosure guidelines.

 

This must change.

 

Businesses find themselves less trusted than ever before.  This fact is a critical business issue and will be a major inhibitor for many companies in the years to come, more pressing in some industries than others.  One time, one directional communications will not re-build trust.  Businesses need to engage in a continuous dialogue. 

 

The good news is that CEOs today have a wide variety of communications tools at their disposal and these tools will be second nature to the next generation of CEOs.  These individuals assisted by corporate communications experts will recognise the need to  communicate their vision and values for the company as well as encouraging and facilitating transparency across all operations.  

 

There will continue to be a place for the ‘at the coal face’ bloggers within organisations – those individuals that discuss their daily challenges, share insights and generate ideas with likeminded people.  In doing so, they generate goodwill, enhance reputations and engage various audience groups.

 

The organisations that recognise the need to re-instate and re-equip the CEO as the Chief Communicator will be the first to begin the process of re-building trust.  Those businesses that deploy a strategy and the tools that enable continuous CEO communications will invigorate their reputation and establish refreshed relationships based on trust.

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