I’ve had a few people ask me just what goes on during a Media Training Seminar since I posted the article How to Survive the Media Interview. Some were nervous about the idea of practicing the techniques in front of others, of being videotaped, of hearing the sound of their own voice. Others wanted to know how much it should cost.

But first, if you are unclear on the concept and need for Media Training then take a look at this outline I posted on the main web page. As you can see there is a lot to absorb. If you think that you can get by with the media on native ability, or after reading a book, or a web page like this, then you are certain of a pretty significant media disaster. And while once upon a time you could hope that people would eventually forget how you messed up, no more. Since the advent of more and more powerful internet search engines and social media archives your stupidities will live long after you are dead.

I can guarantee you that the very first thing any journalist, good, bad, indifferent, or incompetent, will do when setting up an interview with you is to search on-line.

With few exceptions a good media trainer can give you the tools to not only survive contact with the media but also excel.

When looking for a Media Trainer you need to consider track record and experience level very closely. Read that web page again for details.

Experience and track record are worth far more than the money that the training will cost.

It will buy you and your organization protection against the kind of gaffe or behaviour that can collapse share prices, ruin reputations (yours included) and permanently hurt business and standing.

So what does it cost?

A lot, and a little. Your choice. The market is spread all over the place with some outfits charging rates equal to the cost of running a Boeing 737 and others so desperate for work, so poor in reputation and expertise, that they will give you a quote that would shame an illegal migrant worker.

The only way that you can make your decision on hiring a Media Trainer is through personal recommendation, gut feeling, and blind luck.

But let’s say that you have been given the name of someone highly recommended by your peers, you like what you hear after talking with them, and it seems like a good idea. What do you get for your money and how much money are we talking?

How wet is the ocean? That’s about as useful a question on the internet as asking how much media training costs. It’s just not done by my peers apparently.

So, here is what I charge — (coy mode ON) generally.

For a 2 day seminar involving no more than six people and only involving myself as a trainer I would quote 18 hundred dollars a day and settle for 15 hundred if pushed. The cost of renting a hotel conference room for the sessions and any food and beverage costs would be billed to the client. I supply my own equipment.

But, (there are always buts in this business,) if the client wants to add more participants to the seminar I will charge an extra 250 dollars each for no more than two extra people for a total of eight. These seminars are heavily dependent on small group social dynamics and more than eight does not work unless I bring in another trainer. Add 15 hundred for the assistant trainer.

Occasionally I will deal with a single client who wants the full media crush experience. They want to know how to handle a hostile reporter first hand, how to stand up to a sudden crush of cameras and microphones, known more properly as a scrum.

In short, they want a full 3-D recreation of a day on the media firing line; hot lights, unwashed reporters, screaming television anchors, belligerent in your face and sneering hacks. The full meal deal.

This is an extremely valuable exercise but it is the rare client who is brave enough, and rich enough, for the experience.

In addition to my fees for the two day session I would then charge a tonne of extra money (about 6 thousand dollars) for the third and as real as I can make it Journalist Hell Day.

I will have hired two full video camera crews comprising real and hard bitten working television crews, half a dozen off duty but congenitally aggressive journalists, a couple of world weary TV and radio producers, and I will have rented a full size commercial television studio. All of that is billed to the client.

Depending on how game the client is we can act out the day in real time and in the real world. In other words the client will be accosted at his front door first thing in the morning by news hungry door stoppers, besieged in the office by a pack out at by the receptionist’s desk, roasted during a news conference, interviewed ineptly as well as professionally time after time, misquoted at length, scrummed unmercifully, and generally treated as a most untrustworthy and unbelievable news source.

As you can imagine this real world day is not only hideously expensive and stressful to a huge degree, but it replicates exactly what does happen in the real world of journalism and can make a real media superstar.

It is most unlikely that anyone reading this would be interested in or can afford the deluxe version. So what can you expect from the normal and very non threatening version?

A lot of fun.

Seriously, once we get over the first half hour of awkwardness the sessions take on a life of their own and people really get into playing television interviewer one moment and then being interviewed the next, laughing when their boss screws up, and laughing at themselves when they come across as a silly fool on camera.

If you are interested in the typical agenda for one of my Media Training Sessions you can download a PDF file and have a look. This particular one was devised for a client who couldn’t be sure that enough time could be made for a second day so you will see the all so critical camera practice sessions are optional. In the end we did make time for the second day and I am grateful it happened because without role playing practice in front of a camera a lot of the lessons, tips and techniques, just don’t stick.

There is one more cost associated with Media Training. If you don’t go through it then expect to hire someone like to come in at a very much higher cost to handle the Media Crisis that you created by not knowing how to deal with the media.

This article comes from by Rick Grantwww.rickgrant.com and is copyright

How Much Does Media Training Cost?

A lot of people and organizations have trouble grasping the basic principles of Strategic Communications and Marketing. I recently ran across a real life marketing phenomenon that goes a long way to graphically explaining the concepts.

CleanBottle is a plastic water bottle for bicyclists, runners, hikers and others that solves a gross problem with ordinary water bottles. Unless you are absolutely scrupulous about scrubbing the damn things out, even to the extent of adding bleach to the washing water, you will get mold (mould) growing in them. Drinking from a bottle containing microscopic fungal filaments which may be producing mycotoxins is unappetizing to a huge degree. And if your bottles are dark plastic then the little beasties can breed entire civilizations before you realize it.

What the people at CleanBottle did was to invent a water bottle that unscrews from both ends so it can be cleaned easily and quickly. It’s the kind of idea that makes you want to slap your forehead and say, “Why didn’t I think of that!”

Image from www.cleanbottle.com

But they did think of it and they proceeded to plan how to sell it very well indeed.

I see many examples in business, government, and the non-profit sector, of communication planning and marketing going horribly wrong. In fact what I see most often is communication planning being done backwards, if not upside down.

Not long ago I consulted very briefly with a group that was to represent multi-billion dollar corporations that were suffering from the effects of a very poor public image. The companies had a good case and they weren’t all bad. But the group they set up to get their point of view out was a horror.

The association of companies was a long way into its work before I showed up. And what I found was appalling.

The group had designed and drafted brochures, set up a website, devised a logo, and formed an internal bureaucracy.

What was not there was even the slightest sense of what the group was trying to say, who its target audience was, and no coherent toolbox of communication techniques and especially none that reflected the reality of communication in our social media universe.

The highlights of their technique section called for full page newspaper advertisements and opinion editorials in newspapers. Both are techniques that are so outdated and ineffectual that I thought somebody was playing a joke.

The basics of a Strategic Communications Plan, or a Marketing Plan for that matter, are clear and simple . . .

1. What are you going to say?
2. To whom are you going to say it?
3. How are you going to say it?
4. How do you know you’ve said it?

Far too many people start with #3; the posters, websites, magazines, advertisements, etc.

That’s a bit like going to a building supplies store and buying a bunch of Italian marble tiles, a table saw, a welding outfit, some oak and and ocean of paint, then deciding that you will be building a picnic table with it all.

This sort of backward thinking makes me a lot of money because I get called in to sort out the resulting mess but it is insanely inefficient and unbelievably expensive.

Now let’s take a look at what the people at CleanBottle.com have been doing – and rather brilliantly too.

Point #1 was taken care off with the invention and production of the bottle.

Point #2 was interesting. I’ve said that the bottle is for cyclists, hikers, runners, etc but the company makes no such widespread claims. It decided to focus strictly on cyclists. None of its promotional material makes any mention of any other user groups. There is a mention of other types of users in one of the very earliest blog entries but I can’t see any other mentions.

Now this might sound short sighted but by clearly targeting a specific customer base and focusing only on that CleanBottle was able to craft a diamond clear set of techniques to get its product image out without the need for a huge sprawling and expensive media buying campaign. If you don’t have a lot of money, and few new companies do, it is always far better to concentrate on a clearly defined part of your potential market and zap it intensely with laser like selling techniques. If you make a lot of money doing that then of course you start branching out.

If is the same thing if you are trying to get a political message across, a position, raise awareness, or just draw attention.

You must define your target audience, your stakeholders, constituents, or whatever, as closely as possible.

Group them in order of descending importance to you and in descending order of influence. Then pick the top one or two and concentrate all of your efforts on getting through to them. The rest of your stakeholders, or customers, will benefit from the spill over until the time when you can afford to broaden your efforts to include them directly.

Point #3 – Where do you find cyclists, especially ones that spend money and how do you grab their attention? Well, you find them at competitive road races. And that’s where CleanBottle went.

The first time I heard of the company was during the Amgen Tour of California in June. Dave Mayer, the guy behind CleanBottle, dressed up in a giant CleanBottle costume and ran alongside some of the race leaders as they struggled up the hills.

Inevitably the Versus TV cameras picked him up because he was with the leaders and inevitably the commentators did a “What the hell is that?” and talked about CleanBottle and Dave Mayer.

A simple and extremely powerful technique catapulted the whole bottle concept into the minds of every rider watching.

But things really didn’t hit the big time until late July and the Tour de France. CleanBottle managed to get itself into worldwide coverage of the race several times and the company got talked about a lot more by the commentators. By all accounts sales have exploded and sales figures are what take care of Point #4.

What Dave Mayer and CleanBottle did worked so spectacularly, and for not a huge amount of money, because they followed the basic principles of Strategic Communication and Marketing very closely and did not get bogged down in side issues.

There is a lot more that the company is doing to get its message out through Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube but these days those sorts of techniques are expected, if not demanded, by the market.

What is not expected though is the level of sales service and direct personal contact that comes through the company’s Twitter and Facebook comments. I experienced this first hand when I emailed CleanBottle to ask whether there was a Canadian distributor. Not only did I get an immediate response from the company I also got a relayed response from the Canadian distributor together with an offer to include a couple of bottles for me to buy in a sales promotion mailing he was about to make to the major bicycling store in Calgary, Bow Cycle.

It’s been a brilliant ride for CleanBottle and I’m pleased to have been able to use the firm as a concrete example of what I mean about the importance of Strategic Communication Planning.

It’s nice to see someone doing it well.

This article comes from by Rick Grantwww.rickgrant.com and is copyright

Using CleanBottle to Illustrate Strategic Communication

Given the rapidly failing state of the news media business in North America and Europe it is becoming ever more important that people be very careful when agreeing to do a media interview.

Ethical and professional standards have slipped badly in the last several years, particularly in television news and even more so in local television news. So much emphasis is put on shaping the story before any interviewing, or indeed any other journalism is done, that distortions are inevitable. That coupled with a shrinking journalistic job market means that unprincipled and inexperienced reporters will do anything to make their stories more interesting, not for the public, but for their bosses.

There are so many horror stories of people agreeing to do print, radio,  or TV interviews in good faith only to find their words ignored, twisted, or changed in the final product that it would make a good story in its own right, except no one would report it properly.

News outlets that are confronted by outraged organisations that feel unfairly treated now tend to fall back to the very letter or the meaning of journalistic accuracy. If they can demonstrate that you did indeed say the words quoted, or say words that were close enough to what the news outlet believed you said, then they will congratulate themselves on being accurate and get rid of you and your complaint speedily.

The old notions of Fairness and Balance in news reporting are gone from much of the journalistic landscape.

So what to do if you are asked for an interview?

The first thing I tell clients who ask for help on this is to remind them that they have an absolute right to say no to a reporter. There is nothing in law or society that can compel you to undergo an interview.

Understand this –

• The public Does Not have a right to Know anything from a private citizen or company.

• There is no Need to Know

Now, having said that there are still many good reasons why you would want to go through an interview, especially if it has a chance of promoting your organization or product. It is also vital during a Media Crisis that you put yourself forward and get your side out. But don’t do it unless you have a pre-prepared Media Crisis Plan and some good professional backing.

Okay, the reporter from Podunk Local TV News has asked for an interview; what do you do?

If you have any doubt or uncertainty, take the details and promise to call back while you think about. Reporters are very good about being persistent and most would make terrific telemarketers selling dodgy timeshares but they need you more than you need them.

When you negotiate with the reporter make it very clear that you both understand what the interview will be about and stand firm on only discussing that aspect of things.

Okay, you’ve agreed and there is a time and place. Since this is a television interview be prepared for a lot of technical screwing around, retakes, cover shots, reverse angles, etc and etc. Television means technology and very intrusive technology at that. Be prepared to have a lot of your time wasted.

Stick to your central message, the reason why the interview is being done in the first place. The reporter may well want to dive off into other subject areas but you do not have to follow. There is nothing wrong with saying, “That’s not why I am here today”, “I cannot discuss that.” Sure the reporter may try to play lines like that in a sinister way through the editing process but it is a very hard thing to pull off convincingly, especially if you and your organization has a Communications Strategy Plan built around a clear message that you repeatedly get out in front of other media.

In the same manner don’t be afraid of saying, “I have no idea whatsoever”

Be aware that very little of what you say will end up on air. It is not uncommon for a reporter to used just :08 seconds from a 12 minute interview. I myself have used as little as two or three seconds from a 15 minute interview when producing news reports.

Print reporters are different and they will want the most mundane and specific things from you like your age, number of kids, and every conceivable detail about your message or product. You can say no whenever you want to anything they ask.

Radio can be a real joy. It is a mix of print and television reportage.

Unless you are dealing with the highly trained radio journalists of the giants of the business, CBC, NPR, BBC, ABC Australia etc, you will likely have all sorts of opportunity to say exactly what you want the way you want it. That’s because, apart from the giants, radio is a wasteland of inexperienced and even ignorant reporters. Many are focused on breaking into television and have little inclination to learn the techniques of proper interviewing. You can just romp all over reporters like that and they won’t even notice.

But please don’t do any of this without professional media training. If you don’t have a Communications Director to train you then do some leg work of your own and find a local Media Training company. In just a couple of days they can prepare you to handle anything.

And please, for the love of the gods of the multiverse, don’t talk to reporters unless you have a clear and concise Media Communications Strategy, preferably with an attached Media Crisis Plan.

This article comes from by Rick Grantwww.rickgrant.com and is copyright

How To Survive the Media Interview – Talking With Reporters