I was doing a media training session last week when the CEO popped into the room and said, "I haven't seen one of your emails in a while." Aww, I didn't think anyone had noticed! I do apologize for the lack of content of late. My media training schedule has kept me on the move over the past few months. So, let's do a little catch-up, shall we?

Your best messages are in the friendzone

In the world of romance, the friendzone is the last place anyone wants to be. But when you're trying to write great messages for a media interview -- messages that are going to be picked up by the journalist and which will resonate with your audience -- the friendzone is often exactly the place to find them. Allow me to explain. I've noticed a very consistent trend over the past few years, across all sectors, industries, experience levels, etc. During a media training session, when participants are writing their messages before their simulated interviews, the first draft of their messages come in way too high-level. There's a lot of concepts, big words, cerebral phrases, kind of like this: "We're leveraging the synergies of healthcare with an exemplary track record and a robust framework aimed at contributing to a more sustainable system that prioritizes the needs of the public while supporting our mission of being a values-based organization, committed to blah, blah, blah."

Do you know how many reporters are going to put this in their story? Zero. Nobody talks like this. Not only is it not inspiring, it's barely understandable. But there's often a kernel of truth to these highfalutin messages. The problem is this is how many people think they're supposed to talk in a media interview. So their messages come in at the 30,000 foot level and then they wonder why the interview flops. So, I've started asking people one question that consistently gets us to better messages. I ask them: "How would you say that same thing to your friend if you were having lunch with them?"

When I ask this, I almost always get the same reaction. People recoil a bit, as if I'm playing a trick on them. Some of them actually say, "I can't talk like that during a media interview." They think it's too informal. Too unprofessional. But that's exactly how you should aim to speak during your media interview. What do spokespeople like Barack Obama and the late Steve Jobs have in common? Despite their lofty positions, they spoke like human beings in their media interviews, speeches and presentations. They expressed complex ideas in a way that a 12-year-old could easily understand.

So, how would I reword the 'leveraging the synergies' quote if I were having lunch with my friend? I'd say something like this:

"We're working hard to build a modern healthcare system that delivers for the people of our growing community."

That message has a better shot at getting picked up because it tells a story and it sounds like something a human might say.

To be clear, when I talk about adjusting your messages for the friendzone, I'm not suggesting in any way that you should be improvising your content, going off the record or dropping f-bombs during your media interview (okay, let's not make it your best friend, let's make it a friend you see a few times a year). The rules and strategies of media interviews still apply. But lose the thesaurus, think of your audience and ask yourself how you might deliver this message to a friend. I'm betting that you will end up with shorter interviews, happier comms people and better media coverage.

Introducing AI for your next media interview

So, I made a thing. OpenAI recently announced the ability to create custom GPTs. Basically, this means anyone can train a chatbot with their own content and create a custom version for their own use. I built one called My Media Interview Helper. It's trained on 29,000 words of content from my online media training course. It has all the rules, tips, strategies, tactics, examples of media training that I've gathered over the past 29 years. I figured I'd build the thing, test it out and see if it lived up to the hype. And so far, it's blown my expectations out of the water.

Here are a few of the ways a spokesperson could use this to better prepare for a media interview:

• You can ask it tactical questions, such as 'where should I look during a media interview?'. And based on the course content, it will give you a specific and contextual answer (e.g. look at the reporter during an in-person interview, look at the lens during a double-ender interview, look at the webcam during a Zoom interview).
• You can provide it with the topic of your interview and have it come up with sample questions, ranging from predictable to more challenging to 60-Minutes level outrageous.
• You can ask it to give you a list of the most common interview mistakes (so you can avoid them).
• You can ask it for tips to minimize anxiety.
• You can ask it how long your messages should be for various interview formats (radio, print, TV, etc.).
• And the coolest one of all... You can get it to write draft messages for you. It will prompt you to enter some information about your interview (e.g. type of company, focus of story, any objectives or implications, etc.) and it will create a pretty solid list of message based on the rules/strategies of great media interviews.
• Those are just a few ideas...the uses are only limited by your creativity.

A few things to note:

• At this time, I believe you need to subscribe to Chat GPT to use these custom GPTs. It's $20 a month to Open AI.
• I would not advise putting confidential information in the system. But you can talk about your interview in general terms (e.g. I'm the CEO of a manufacturing plant, we've suffered a cyber-attack, provide me with a list of 5-6 core messages for the media).
• Always work with your comms team. This is not a replacement for them. But it's a great tool that can save you some time and help identify potential blind spots before a media interview.

My Media Interview Helper is currently only available to members of my online, on-demand media training course. It's contained in a special section at the end of the course content. For those of you who are course members, you already have access to it so pls go check it out and let me know what you think. For those of you who are not members of the course yet...

50% off my online course

I also had someone ask me this week if I was going to be doing a Black Friday discount on my online media training course. It's funny when these big brands offer 10% or 20% off and call that a Black Friday sale. So I'm offering a full 50% discount on permanent access to my course, The Art of the Great Media Interview. There are currently more than 400 participants in the course. It's got 3+ hours of my best strategies for media interviews, 30+ short videos, case studies, downloadable PDFs and now, the new AI tool I mentioned above. The regular price is C$249. The Black Friday price is C$124.50. Use the code BFCM on the checkout page (you won't see the discount applied in the cart - input the code on the checkout page). ​

As always, thanks for reading. Have a great weekend, Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and I will talk to you all again soon.

WW

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