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Media
Let’s get a few things out of the way early on; if you want tricks you’re coming to the wrong people.
We won’t give you tricks. We’ll give you skills.
You’ll learn how to assess an audience’s attitude and outlook. You’ll learn how to prepare for interviews. You’ll learn how to deal with aggressive interrogative interviews as well as the much more challenging ‘soft’ interviews. (Yep, that’s right. A soft interview is often much more difficult than a grilling; we’ll explain when you get here.) Fundamentally you’ll learn how to be interesting, understandable and memorable.
You’ll also learn all the easy stuff as well: Handling nerves, writing press-releases, handling live and pre-recorded interviews, briefing researchers, handling phone-ins, studio discipline, TV appearances and the rest.
We can get the clothing thing out of the way right now though; dress like your audience and don’t wear anything more interesting than you are. (The colour of your tie ain’t going to make much difference to anything.)
We have three streams of media programmes;
1)Beginner
2)Intermediate
3)Advanced
The Beginner course is for, well, beginners. Media first-timers who want to deliver professionally and effectively in an unfamiliar environment.
The Intermediate course is for people who have experience in media, but no formal training. The people who get interviewed at the AGM, or the guys who have to field questions when a press-release goes out, or the CEO’s for whom handling media is a pre-requisite of the job. They’ve done it. They think they’re pretty good. But they think they might be better.
The Advanced course is for people who deal with the media for a living, or for part of their living. Press-officers, Directors of Communication, politicians, print journalists, freelance broadcasters and regular programme contributors. The people who know that the quality of their performance will define how they or their company or their party is perceived. Or the people who know they have to be good to be asked back. And they want to be asked back.
All of the courses take two days. That’s the duration that is most effective and best value. We regularly get asked to mash it into one day, which we can do, but be clear that bits get squished off the edge when you compress the course.
Tricks are those things that make you look like a pillock during an interview. Saying “I’m glad you asked me that question” to buy time, evading questions so you can deliver a ‘message’, waffling to avoid answering, or attempting to turn an interview into an extended ad for your company.