Category: Media relations

Media relations

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Crisis communications planning – is it a waste of time?

Heard of a chap called Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke the Elder? No, nor had I! But odds are you have heard of one of his quotes…

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

Actually that’s not quite what the Prussian Chief of Staff said (more of which later) but for now I want to ask if the same can be said of communications plans? Are they any more likely to survive contact with a crisis than battle plans with foes? If my recent experience working with a second tier responder to the Grenfell Tower disaster is anything to go by, the short answer is no.

Reviewing their response to the tragedy, I was astounded to be told that they hadn’t, in fact, activated their emergency plan. They’d simply been too busy in the immediate fallout of the fire to even think of it. And by the time they did, several days later, it hardly seemed worth bothering. To this day I’m not sure they’ve looked at the plan.

In effect there was no contact with the enemy, so who knows if it would have survived? Which is a pity because the plan may have worked – at least in part – and led to a better response* than the actual one. And even in failure it might have been instructive by making comms plans for future crises more robust.

What, then, can we learn from this peculiar affair?

Well the first lesson, surely, is that unless crisis comms plans are regularly reviewed and rehearsed, they’ll be forgotten or ignored at the very moment they were designed to help. Risk-averse industries like aviation and nuclear power are required, by law, to practice for emergencies so that if, or when, an actual emergency unfolds everybody is well versed in how to respond – both at an operational level and at a media, PR and communications level. At ACM Training we help a number of clients such as the nuclear decommissioning company, Magnox, achieve the realism necessary to make the rehearsals effective and the learning long lasting. For example, we provide what we call pseudo media news crews to act exactly as the media would in reality, asking awkward questions, sticking cameras and microphones where they’re really not welcome or expected. And now, with social media playing such a significant role in crisis comms, we have the ability to test an organisation’s online response to an event through our socialmediatestbed.com tool.

For the second learning point we need to go back to von Moltke and examine what he actually said:

The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon’s saying: ‘I have never had a plan of operations.’ Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

If we swap the word battle for crisis and think of victory and defeat in terms of positive and negative outcomes, what von Moltke is saying, in effect, is that no communications plan can extend with any certainty beyond the first contact with a major crisis. And I’m inclined to agree. In my experience no anticipated, planned and rehearsed version of events has ever been close to the actual version. In most cases the imagined event is a lot worse than the actual event (perhaps that’s because emergency planners have overwrought imaginations or are just plain pessimists). Rarely is the reality worse, although it was undoubtedly so with Grenfell. In all cases the reality is different. But does this mean that crisis communications planning is a waste of time?

Again, let’s turn to von Moltke for some beyond-the-grave advice. Despite what he said he wasn’t an advocate of going into battle without any plan at all. He was an advocate, however, of flexibility. And so it should be in crisis comms. Have a plan. But be prepared to adapt it as circumstances change.

Please don’t leave it in the cupboard.

* In fairness perhaps I should have said an even better response, because unlike, say, the council, my client’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire is considered to have been good including by those directly affected by the disaster.

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What that Gavin Williamson vs Richard Madeley interview tells us about media training

Richard Madeley interviews Gavin Williamson on GMB

I could almost hear Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howard breathing a huge sigh of collective relief. For years their Newsnight clash – the one where Paxo asked the former Home Secretary n times (where n is a large number) if he’d intervened in the day-to-day running of the prison service – had, for media trainers, been the go-to example of road crash interviews. But now we’ve got a new worst case scenario – the recent, well-publicised spat between the Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the stand-in Good Morning Britain presenter, Richard Madeley. If you haven’t seen it yet I’d thoroughly recommend a watch.

It’s certainly entertaining. In a lemon-chewingly embarrassing way. But don’t worry if you haven’t got time because, in essence, Madeley called the interview to an unexpectedly early end when Williamson used the politicians’ trick of ignoring the questions and saying what the heck he wanted to say. Which is a pity because the Secretary of State was supposed to be talking about deploying British troops to help protect wildlife against poachers in Malawi – a good news story if ever there was one – but didn’t get beyond the preamble. Heck, he’d even gone to the trouble of doing the interview by satellite from West Midlands Safari Park.

So does this mean that media trainers like me will have to change our approach? Not at all! At ACM Training we teach interviewees to deal with the question and move on. But we always impress upon them the importance of striking the right balance between the two. Move on too fast or fail to deal with the question altogether and you risk what happened to Williamson happening to you.

“Let it be a warning! Us journalists used to say you’d been Paxo’d but I guess now we’ll have to learn to say you’ve been Madeley’d!”

No time to read this post and prefer to listen – with the added bonus of audio clips from the excruciating interview? [powerpress]

For a Defence Secretary, I thought Williamson was surprisingly tactically un-astute. Adversarial media interviews are (in very limited respects) analogous with battles. In both, if you try to defend disputed territory you can get bogged down, when it might be better to concede some ground and pull back to a line you can hold.

So first let’s explore what went wrong in MoD vs GMB. Madeley’s attack was to accuse Williamson of using Trump-like language. Williamson’s defence was to simply ignore this line of questioning and try to move on to how terrible the attempted murders of the Skripals had been and how wonderfully the emergency services in Salisbury had responded. But the Defence Secretary wasn’t able to move on to these, nonetheless valid, points because Madeley wasn’t satisfied he’d dealt with the question – repeatedly asked – well enough.

Now let’s examine the alternative. If I was Gavin Williamson’s media advisor I’d have prepared him on the basis that the Trump question was (a) wholly predictable and (b) entirely legitimate for a journalist to ask on the public’s behalf. I’d have told him that legitimate questions can’t simply be ignored because to do so risks antagonising the journalist and her/his audience. And, as a consequence, I’d have suggested he spend a little more time dealing with the question and a little less time moving on. If he asked what all that meant practically speaking I’d have come up with a few concede lines.

Williamson: “It’s certainly not the kind of language you usually hear from ministers I’ll give you that. But sometimes you have to be plain and forthright to make sure your message gets through to the intended target.”

Madeley: “So you’re admitting it was Trump-like language?!”

Williamson: “I’m saying that it’s important to be absolutely clear that attacking members of the public on British soil is unacceptable and making that point in a plain and forthright way is occasionally better than couching these things in the usual diplomatic terms.”

Madeley: “Sounds like you’re admitting to being undiplomatic.”

Williamson: “I’m admitting to being plain and forthright and, yes, angry too, because two innocent members of the public had been attacked in a cruel and unusual way and countless others – those who went to their rescue – put at risk.”

Now, of course, I’ll concede there’s no guarantee that this approach would have worked but I’m convinced it would have given the Defence Secretary a better chance of moving onto Malawi. As it was he had no chance at all because the interview was called to a premature and unceremonious end.

Remember this: you can only move on if you deal adequately with the question asked. To deal adequately with doesn’t have to mean to answer (although it can). Think of interviews as question and response session,s rather than question and answer sessions. Tailor your response not only according to your own needs but also to those of the interviewer and audience. Williamson was never going to admit to using Trump-like language (and nor, given Trump’s track record, should he have). But without conceding a little he gave away a lot.

This is a partial transcript of Richard’s five minute masterclass on the lessons of Williamson v Madeley. Click here if you want to hear the whole recording and listen to our other five minute masterclasses.

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How to stay in control of media interviews

Answering a journalist’s question is all very well when it’s a helpful question. But if it’s unhelpful, unanswerable or unwelcome, responding is often better than actually answering – providing you don’t sound evasive, ignorant or both. So in this short talk our lead media trainer, Richard Uridge, show you how to switch your interviews from a question and answer template to a question and response approach.

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This podcast episode is just one of a series of audio, video and written “how to” guides that form part of ACM Training’s Five Minute Masterclass series.

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Brexit – a victory for style over substance?

I promised myself I wouldn’t write about the EU referendum here. But then so many people (for which, read politicians) seem to be going back on their words left, right and centre that one more little broken promise won’t matter surely?

Actually I don’t want to comment on the politics at all. Or reflect on the outcome. More than enough has already been said on those fronts. But as a student of public speaking and as a presentation skills trainer I believe that the contrasting styles of Remain and Leave did influence the result. To what extent I guess we’ll never know although it’s worth adding that in a close contest the side with the better lines and the better delivery can and often does end up winning as a consequence.

It doesn’t really matter whether you’re selling England down the river, dodgy DVDs down the market, or a proposition to colleagues down the corridor, your “patter” must conform to what I call the Four Cs. It must be: clear; concise; catchy; and strike a chord with the audience.

So with that in mind let’s explore the political patter.

“Let’s make tomorrow our Independence Day.”

Nigel Farage’s call to action is undoubtedly clear, concise and catchy. The fourth measure, of course, depends on your point of view. But on the first three alone it trumps the Remain refrain.

“We are stronger, better off and safer in Europe than we would be out on our own.”

Again, whether it strikes a chord depends on your point of view.  But putting that aside, what the two quotes boil down to is Independence (leave) versus Interdependence (stay). Now we’re more familiar with the word independence. And its face value is probably higher too. We seek financial independence.  As teenagers we can’t wait to leave home and become independent (even if not immediately financially so). At the other end of life we fight to keep that independence for as long as possible. By comparison the word interdependence is weaker and, therefore, harder to promote. The irony here is that our treasured independence is illusory. Take the notion of financial independence. Unless I keep my fortune under the mattress my security depends largely on external factors, as anyone who’s lost money on the financial markets in the turmoil that’s followed Brexit will tell you. Indeed, even under the mattress, my financial independence exists only in so far as it doesn’t get stolen. I’m depending on burglars not reading this, the alarm company, that nosey lady at number 23 who’s in Neighbourhood Watch, the police, the law…oh and the bloody great Rotweiller that has a free run of the house when we’re out.

A better presentational strategy for Remain might have been to subvert the familiar phrase and quote it back at their opponents and, by extension, the wider audience – you and me.

“They say ‘let’s make tomorrow our Independence Day.’ I say there’s no such thing. We all depend on others. Children on their parents. Grandparents on their children. All the way up to nations on their neighbours. For our safety. For our security. For our jobs. For our families. Let’s make tomorrow our Interdependence Day.”

Okay, I accept it might need a bit of a polish (although less if you read it in a stirring Churchillian voice) but it’s certainly better than some of what I heard which, paraphrased, amounted to: “The EU is a bit shit to tell you the truth. But we can make it a little bit less shit. And it’ll be a lot shittier if we leave.Trust me, I’m a politician.” Actually I made that last bit up but you get my drift.

It seems like VoteLeave had all the good lines. Here’s another one:

“Let’s put the Great back in Great Britain.”

So powerfully did this key message tug at the heartstrings of a certain demographic that I heard it being repeated in conversations. Something that strikes a chord (the fourth of the four Cs) resonates. And if that chord is still resonating when people enter the polling booth then there’s a chance that their pen (not the pencil provided) will dance to its tune.

“Stronger together” was as close as Remain were able to get. But I’d argue, semantically, that given a choice most people would prefer to be great than strong. In other words, being strong is only good if it makes you great.

So what does all this mean for those of us who present not on a national or international political stage, but in more modest meeting rooms and conference halls? It means being clear about what you need to say. It means saying it as concisely as possible. Make your key messages and calls to action catchy by choosing your words carefully and putting those words in the right order. And, although it’s not always possible (especially if your audience doesn’t like you or what you’re saying) try to strike a chord.

Over the next few months I’ll be exploring the impact that personality has on presentation through the lens of the referendum. Was it, for example, the undeniably colourful (yes I think that’s the right word) characters like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage wot won it for Brexit?

My next presentation skills course in London on July 5th is sold out but there are still places available in London on September 6th and December 8th and in Manchester on September 14th. You can book here.

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The press release – dead or alive?

Ten years ago ACM Training regularly ran writing press release courses the length and breadth of Britain. Filling a room with trainees in London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham and Newcastle wasn’t a hard sell. Why, we even paid the occasional visit to Norwich! But then something happened and within a year bookings dropped almost to zero. That “something” was the social web. Suddenly organisations didn’t have to rely on the media to get their messages across. Facebook and everything that followed meant they could get in touch with their target audiences directly. Cut out the middleman was the mantra. Made sense. Sort of. Cue dozens of articles proclaiming “the press release is dead.”

And that’s pretty much the way it stayed. Or at least it was until about six months ago when, almost as suddenly as it dropped off, demand started building up again. Cue dozens more articles proclaiming, with a startling lack of originality and misappropriating Mark Twain, that “reports of it’s death had been greatly exaggerated.”

So which is it – DEAD or ALIVE?

Both, in my view. Dead in it’s original form. Alive in it’s new form. Or to sum it up in one word: different. Different because the media landscape has shifted dramatically in the past decade. A decade where the dizzying rise in the fortunes of another Mark (Zuckerberg not Twain) has been matched by a precipitous fall in the fortunes of the print media, particularly local newspapers.

But those that are left still need copy. In fact, with very few staff running them, they are so desperate for copy they’re likely to print your press release almost verbatim. Which is good. Unless your press release is bad. In which case it’ll still be bad. Because the chance of a reporter or sub-editor rewriting your copy and ironing out any wrinkles are zip.

So without this journalistic back stop in place there’s a good case to be made for ensuring your press releases leave you in the very best shape. Which is perhaps part of the reason why there’s been an upturn in business for training companies like ACM. But there’s an additional reason to give your press releases a polish – because once written they can easily be re-versioned for all of the other distribution channels now available such as online newsrooms and, of course, the likes of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Think of the press release as content with a newsy nose. That kind of content is likely to go much further on the social web as well as getting you noticed by journalists working in print, online, on television and radio.

In my next article on this subject I’ll take you through the key elements of a press release fit for the digital world. If, in the meantime, you’d like to book a course and join the renaissance movement then click on the image below.

writing-press-releases

Richard Uridge has been a journalist for more than 30 years, though he claims it feels like only yesterday that he started as a cub reporter on the Reading Chronicle. Heʼs worked in all three major media – television, radio and print – and for ten years presented Open County on BBC Radio Four. His journalistic work has taken him all over the world. Less exciting, though perhaps more relevant, is that over the years he reckons heʼs read several thousand press releases and as a result knows what makes good, bad and downright ugly reading.

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Why content is king(er) than ever!

Good quality content – and plenty of it – has always been the single most important part of any social media strategy. How else can you be genuinely “likeable” on Facebook and elsewhere and get followers who stick with you so that your organisation gets the visibility it needs to “sell” whatever it’s selling?

And now content is more important than ever before: “King-er,” to misquote Bill Gates. Why? Because liking a page on Facebook is no guarantee that you’ll see all that the page posts on your own timeline. For a while now you’ve got to like that page and tick the “get notifications” option.

Picture of Facebook's get notifications option
Why your followers must click like and get notifications

And what’s going to persuade your followers to take both of those crucial steps rather than just the first? Good quality content. If you’re posting stuff that’s useful to them in some way then they’ll genuinely want to see it on their timeline. If your content isn’t useful to them they won’t want it cluttering up their timeline. Simple as that!

So why did Facebook add the “get notifications” option in the first place? Because if it didn’t our news feeds would be jam packed with stuff we weren’t really interested in. Zuckerberg and his buddies are constantly tweaking the news feed algorithm that determines what we do and don’t see. And forget trying to outwit it. The only – and I mean the only – way to get seen is to post good stuff. Which means building content creation into your daily schedule.

Of course there’s a bit more to it than that. Determining the best time of the day or night to post, for example. But that’s another subject for another day.

 

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Sorry seems to be the hardest word

Forgive the crass comparison but not since Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Adolf Hitler has a handshake (or rather a non-handshake) been so forensically dissected. Of course the rivalry between Liverpool and Manchester United in 2012 may not match that of Britain and Nazi Germany in 1938 but there doesn’t seem to be much prospect of “peace in our time” between Louis Suarez and Patrice Evra. And the tardy apology issued by the Uruguayan and his boss Kenny Dalglish has been about as passifying as the piece of paper the Prime Minister famously waved on his return from Godesberg.

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So what went wrong? The problem can’t have been quantitative – these days the public relations squad at major football clubs is almost as big as the playing squad. Perhaps, then, it was qualitative – poor advice. I suspect it was neither; that the guidance given was both abundant and accurate but simply ignored.

Players and managers paid £100k plus per week are unlikely to value the wisdom of those lucky to see half that much in a year. The solution? Either put PR staff on the same salary as footballers (owners like John Henry and the Glazer family please note) or make following professional advice a contractual obligation.

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Rule number one in crisis communications: apologise immediately.

Rule number two: make sure the images the public see convey the same, contrite message.

Liverpool and Suarez broke both.

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Richard Uridge does Skomer

OC_SkomerAn experimental trailer for BBC Radio 4’s Open Country programme shot and edited entirely on location by the presenter using only an iPhone4 and iMovie.

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A FUNGI TO BE WITH – eating wild mushrooms for the BBC

Sometimes you have to suffer for your art. Take tomorrow’s Open Country programme on BBC Radio 4. There I am scrunching through the leaf litter in the  New Forest looking for wild mushrooms when my guide, the mycologist John Wright (off Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage show), says to me “go on try that one.” So I do. With interesting consequences. Listen out for the sound of spitting tomorrow, Saturday, morning just after six or the following Thursday lunchtime.

And if you can’t catch it on the wireless then you can listen here once it’s been broadcast.

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POURING TROUBLE ON OILED WATER – part two

So at last Tony Hayward has admitted BP was ‘not prepared’ for the Gulf oil spill. In an interview for the BBC’s Money programme – his first since the disaster – the former oil company boss said BP wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the media “feeding frenzy” that followed it. Hayward said as the face of BP he had been “demonised and vilified”, but he understood why.

“If I had done a degree at Rada [The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] rather than a degree in geology, I may have done better, but I’m not certain it would’ve changed the outcome,” he said before adding “But certainly the perception of myself may have been different.”

Tony you could have saved yourself the time and expense of a degree in dramatic art and simply booked a couple of ACM Training’s media, crisis communications and emergency planning courses. They’d have set you back £99 per person or £999 per workshop but think how much you might have saved? The debacle is estimated to have cost BP £30 billion – of which a significant chunk was knocked off the company’s share price simply because of the spectacularly bad PR.

In just one day we could have helped you gaze at the “disaster horizon” and see (without yet another degree – this one in clairvoyance) which direction the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse might be coming from. Then armed with the certain knowledge that if you drill for oil one day that oil is going to get spilt we’d have helped you draw up a very simple media plan complete with a number of straightforward, credible and punchy key messages that even a geologist could deliver.

Sorry for the sarcastic tone Tone but I still cannot quite grasp the fact that a company the size of BP should have been so useless in PR and media terms. There are small business across Britain bp than BP (better prepared than BP).

So if you’re reading this Tony give me a call or drop me a line and avoid another costly mistake in future. And if you’re not Tony Hayward but would like to know how we can help you and your organisation deal with the media in a crisis then why not come along to one of our public crisis communications workshops or book us to deliver crisis comms training in-house? [product sku=”wpid=38″]