September 11, 2007

The media-trained copywriter

If writing Working For Yourself was like giving birth to a child - albeit with more than the usual amount of screaming - then promoting its launch in the media is like sending said kid off for his first day at school. Parental pride is, quite naturally, tinged with nervousness.

Rebecca Leach and the PR guys at Which? clearly have a good idea of what goes on inside the paranoid heads of authors, because Mike and I were invited to attend a media training day last Thursday to turn us into shiny, confident media wizards.

There were four of us on the course: Chris Warner, who has just taken up a post as Which’s legal specialist on bank penalty charges; Melanie McDonald, a barrister who has written Making a Civil Claim, another Which? title released at the same time as ours; Mike, and me.

The whole thing was run by veteran broadcaster Neil McNeil of training company Hotseat. With the help of his technical assistant, Ian, he offered a ton of useful advice and recorded each of us in a series of very realistic interviews.

What did I learn? Well, among many other things…

  • If you sit in front of a TV camera with your face in repose, you will look hunched and miserable. The trick is to overcompensate: sit bolt upright and plaster a huge grin all over your chops. It may feel silly, but the deadening effect of the camera cancels out the exaggeration.
  • Interviews work much better if you formulate a key message in advance and work to deliver it.
  • It’s a good idea to avoid pronouns. If an interviewer asks, ‘how is the internet changing business?’ don’t start your reply with ‘…it’s making a huge difference..’ or some other such construction based on ‘it’. Respond by turning around the structure of the question: ‘the internet is changing business by…’. That way, if journalists are pushed for time - or just need a quick soundbite - they can cut the initial question from the final edit.
  • Be concrete, paint pictures, tell stories (mix metaphors?) - all pretty familiar stuff from the world of copywriting.

    • If you’re likely to be representing your business or organisation on TV or radio, you won’t regret taking some media training. If you’re in the UK, I strongly recommend Hotseat. Apparently Which? uses Neil’s courses to train all its media-facing staff. After spending a day with him, I can see why.

    Posted in: Media, PR
    by Bill @ 1:17 pm

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