Media Training: Preparing for an interview

Much of my work these days is in media training – much of it in the European aerospace industry and innovation sectors.

What to say and when to say it. When is it right time to talk to the media and what exactly is the message that you want to get across ?

The answers are quite simple, doing the groundwork and being prepared in advance. I work with international teams and on my own preparing executives so that when a media opportunity comes up they don’t deviate from their guidelines and stick to the message they want to get out. Its sometimes referred to as LTT,  or lines to take. Often the interviews clients face are not difficult and are not related to crises or bad news but they can nevertheless be missed opportunities because they haven’t prepared the story they want to tell – which is why you hear so much about “storytelling” these days. I am here to help you with this.

In the past clients or spokesmen would be interviewed for broadcast, radio or print – this has of course changed dramatically with even newspapers running superb video and podcasts services – so you have to prepared and coached for all of them.

The key is knowing when to do the interview and ask yourself why am I doing this. Is this a chance I should seize because the media may talk to my competitor instead. If I have bad news I need to address, is it better that I tackle it on my terms rather than allow others to do so if I don’t.

For the role playing scenarios I often prepare « As if real » tv reports focused on trainees line of business and drop their responses into the reports to show how what they say can be used in an entirely legitimate but opposite manner than they expected because they hadn’t prepared their messages correctly in advance and strayed into treacherous territory. This is all part of the training