San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Acts Like a Complete Jerk in a Media Interview

I'm always on the lookout for good on-camera examples of spokespeople doing a terrible job. It's a great teaching tool -- seriously. So if you've got any examples, by all means forward them to me.

Playboy SF Mayor Gavin Newsom has made a dandy contribution to the archive with his interview on CBS 5 here in the Bay Area. Newsom dropped out of the California governors race a few weeks ago, and the conventional wisdom is that he has been pouting and avoiding the press, who he foolishly blames for his early demise. (Note to Gavin: look in the mirror for the true culprit).

He came out of hiding to start giving interviews now that San Fran is facing a half-billion-dollar budget deficit. But does he make nice and try to get his messages and position across? Would we be talking about it if he did?

Opening line from reporter: Let me start by asking, where have you been?

Newsom: $522.2 million.

That was his answer. The amount of next year's deficit. He then went on to ridicule, lambast and generally shit on the media and anyone who thinks he has been a bizarro character since he dropped out of the gubernatorial race. Finally, when the reporter wants to talk about the deficit, Newsom has already lost his cool and walks out on the interview!

The cherry on top: as he is leaving, he says, "Off the record, I'm amazing disappointed, amazingly. I just am. Professionally, you know."

He says this on camera! Off the record, are you kidding me?

Thanks for the classic what-not-to-do interview clip, Gav.

Here's a link to the clip, so you can watch it for yourself: Gavin Newsom's Terrible Interview

Sure Fire Elements of Media Stories, Or How to Get in the Times if You're Looking for a Job (Hint: Be Cute, Young, Blond and a Twin)

Part of my media training curriculum is explaining to people that the media covers only a set group of topics -- they are broad, but they are really all you will find in American mainstream media, so if you want coverage, you better figure out which buckets your story fits in.

They are:

• Novelty: things that don’t happen everyday


• Familiarity: things that DO happen every day, such as the weather, the City Council and the stock market


• Big money and winners: the ups and downs of public and private institutions are always grist for news stories; everyone loves a winner


• Risk-takers: people who put their money, reputation, health or safety at risk


• Cat-fights: want coverage? Pick a fight


• Your wallet: everyone likes to learn more about how to make money, save it or spend it


• Sex, celebrities and scandal: because they have universal appeal

The story that prompted this post is this: cute blond female twins who want to work in journalism. This story appeared in the New York Times. Seriously.

Bucket analysis of this story:

• Cute blond twins = sex


• Want to work in the media = the media's favorite big institution, itself.


• Killing themselves to get a job = risk-takers, esp. if you are a cute blond twin


• And don't forget novelty! They're cute young blond girl twins! How unusual!

Here's another story making the rounds: Rush Limbaugh's desire to become a minority owner of the St. Louis Rams of the NFL. It has generated, for sure, the most publicity ever for someone who wants to buy a non-controlling interest in an NFL team. Limbaugh knows exactly what he's doing -- here's an interview to that effect.

Bucket analysis:

• Limbaugh = celebrity


• NFL = familiarity and big money


• Wants to buy small piece of NFL team = catfight!

See how easy it is!

Even White House Reporters Don't Like Interviews "On Background"

One of the most important techniques every spokesperson should master is negotiating the "terms of the interview." All too often, spokespeople go into interviews assuming one thing, while the journalist assumes another. Later, after the spokesperson has blabbed about your their product, bad-mouthed the competition and otherwise made a fool of himself, he blurts out, "this is all off the record, right?" Oy.

Repeat after me: agree on the terms of the interview before you start talking, not after. If you're unsure of the terms, ask the reporter what their understanding is. And don't say anything until you're satisfied. That's because you have leverage before you start talking -- you have something the other person wants. Afterward, the power is reversed.

One of the fuzziest interview terms is "on background." This term got started in Washington, and still has the most currency there. It means that someone is speaking not for attribution, and that the information can be used for background only, not reported directly. Presidents and their staffs love this technique, because it allows them more freedom to explain complex decisions without having to worry about making a "gotcha" goof.

Traditionally, the DC media has gone along with this, and I'm sure they will continue to in the future. After all, how many people can resist an invitation to sit down with a general or a cabinet secretary in a historic office building and be told important secrets?

Nevertheless, the DC media corps occasionally rouses itself to complain about this technique, basically for the purpose of trying to change the power dynamic, if only for a brief time. Last month, the press briefly fulminated about it and the story was reported on Politico.com:

After a “senior administration official” briefed reporters on a conference call about Chrysler last week, the Associated Press’s Jennifer Loven circulated an e-mail among her colleagues suggesting some kind of joint action to protest the use of not-for-attribution sessions.

“We’ve been concerned about the needless use of ‘on-background’ briefings when it comes to sharing straightforward information,” AP spokesman Paul Colford told POLITICO, adding that the AP had “relayed” its views “to other news organizations in Washington” and is “eager to work with them in addressing the issue.”

But when the White House held two more background briefings this week — one on the president’s budget, the other on Pakistan and Afghanistan — AP’s reporters and all the other usual suspects were there.

An Olympian Effort: Media-Training Streetwalkers

Cities go to extraordinary lengths to beautify themselves to be in the international spotlight during the Olympics, but Vancouver has taken it to new levels. Reuters reports that a Vancouver non-profit has been handing out "media-training" brochures to prostitutes in the beautiful British Columbia city in advance of the Olympics being held there next winter.

"It is a supportive tool that we are offering," said Natasia Wright, of the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and Education Society (PACE). "What we are doing is putting together a brochure for our members on their rights to do with the media in general in preparation for the Olympics," she added in a telephone interview.

The brochure will contain information and guidelines about how to handle requests for photographs and interviews. It will also be accompanied by a discussion session, according to PACE, which is located in Vancouver's poor Downtown Eastside area. It will inform sex workers about where they can be photographed, how to handle media aggressiveness, and that they can refuse to do an interview and can ask for questions in advance if they do, according to Wright.

File this in the following category: one more reason that your boss' excuses for not being media trained are lame. Tell him/her: Vancouver prostitutes are being media-trained. What's your excuse?

Yahoo's CEO Shows the Big Boys How It's Done

Nice to see some refreshing candor from Yahoo's newish CEO, Carol Bartz.

At the hipper-than-thou D Conference sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, Bartz stage-whispered the f-bomb at media high priestess Kara Swisher, not a direct shot but definitely a signal that she was to be taken seriously.

Then, at the same conference, she interrupted an interview with CNBC's Jim Goldman, who was midway through a statement/question that Yahoo seemed to be "contenting itself" with offering services that Google didn't. First Bartz cut him off with a terse "excuse me" and then took over the question by asserting that Yahoo played second fiddle to no one and that Yahoo is "very different, and just as special as they are."

Why do I like these exchanges? In the case of the Swisher interview, she sends the signal that she is strong and in control, a critical message for anyone with an interest in Yahoo (i.e., investors, employees, users, competitors). With Goldman, she was even stronger: cutting him off wasn't that big a deal, but it did show her confidence as a spokesperson. But then, she went on to assert the strength of Yahoo in the strongest terms, and even if your first reaction is "yeah, right," the overall impression is one of some who is not going to back down until her words are indeed 100% true.

The Goldman interview is prime example of the confidence CEOs ought to exude when they are speaking as representatives of their companies.

The easiest way to watch these videos is at Valleywag right here.

GM's Wagoner Uses the B-word and Gets Burned

Being a spokesperson is hard -- seriously. And being the spokesperson when you are also the CEO of General Motors in 2009 must be close to impossible. But hey, that's why they get paid the big bucks, right?

GM's CEO inadvertently used the phrase "bankruptcy...could work," at a media breakfast with the Wall Street Journal in attendance, and they didn't miss the opportunity to write the following:

General Motors Corp.'s chief executive, once a staunch opponent of bankruptcy as a way of reorganizing the ailing auto maker, has softened his view, suggesting the company could possibly emerge from a Chapter 11 filing.

This interpretation of Wagoner's comments so disappointed GM that the company posted a rebuttal on its blog called "Never Let the Facts Get in the Way of a Good Story." Tom Wilkinson, GM's Director of News Relations, takes the Journal to task for taking Wagoner's comments out of context and making more of his reference to bankruptcy than Wilkinson says Wagoner intended.

In the blog post, Wilkinson posts the entire exchange [as transcribed from a recording of the session], and here's what Wagoner said"

A lot of people who write about bankruptcy, I don’t think have ever been in bankruptcy. And what I have learned after studying it in detail is that it brings significant risk on... what I have learned is that it could work. And it might not work.

After vehemently complaining that the Journal was out to write a pre-conceived story and that Wagoner didn't mean what he was quoted saying, Wilkinson ended his post with this query:

Did The Wall Street Journal ignore what Wagoner really said so it could write the headline and story it wanted? I’ll leave it to you to decide.

OK Tom, I'll take the bait and answer your question: No. I will grant you that the Journal may have unfairly taken Wagoner's comments out of context and written a story that GM didn't want written and one that may prove to be inaccurate, but I'll also say that Wagoner should never have said what he said and essentially got what he deserved for uttering the words "bankruptcy... could work."

No one forced him to say what he said. Every media training always includes the admonition, "don't repeat a negative." Meaning, if the question is, "Could bankruptcy work for GM?" you DON'T say, "bankruptcy could work." You say something like, "that's your word, not mine. We are focused on getting GM back on solid footing, etc."

Even if the question wasn't as simple as the above example, it's the job of the spokesperson to avoid using negative words. Journalists are listening for the most controversial thing you are going to say, and they are going to lead with that. Your job as a spokesman is to make those words the LEAST controversial you can.

If you're Rick Wagoner and you're sitting at a media breakfast, it's no time to get informal and utter the word "bankruptcy" if you absolutely don't want that word to ever come out of the mouth of GM's CEO.

Another thing: I'm guessing Wagoner has had to answer some form of this question 1,000 times, and on the 1,000th time, he finally let the words "bankruptcy could work," slip from his mouth, even though he added "it might not" afterward. I'm sure he's tired and under incredible stress, but again, it's not the media's job to look the other way. It's the spokesperson's job to keep repeating their talking points 1,000 times if necessary, not 999 times.

Pitch perfect media interview by Hyundai CEO

For an example of a corporate spokesman giving a great media interview, check out the interview of Hyundai CEO John Krafcik on All Things Considered last week. Krafcik was on NPR to tout Hyundai's Assurance Plan, under which consumers can return the car during the first year if they lose their job.

The write-up doesn't do it justice. You really should click on the link and listen to it. These NPR interviews are one of the few places we can hear spokespeople being interviewed with minimal editing, and it is often very instructive.

Among the things I like about this interview:

• Krafcik is relaxed and conversational, but he never loses his professional demeanor


• He is facile with facts and figures and has many to share


• He's self-deprecating and honest: in response to a question about whether the company might "take a bath" with this program, he says, "well, we're only 3% of the U.S. auto market," implying that they are too small to have this program sink them


• He doesn't engage in double-talk or corpo speak. He's clear and direct. Of course, his audience is consumers, so he has to be, but that hasn't stopped some spokespeople I've heard from being unintelligible.

Bad Journalistic Skills Are the Flip Side of Bad PR Pitches

The bad PR pitches highlighted in yesterday’s post about the new Dear PR Flack site are half of the equation. What about the other: bad reporting and writing skills?

Just as in any profession, there are some good journalists and a lot of mediocre ones. And just as in any profession, the good ones tend to rise to the top, while those with lesser skills make a living farther down the career ladder. It’s not a perfect system, but you can usually guess that a Wall Street Journal reporter is more talented and experienced journalist than a typical trade or small-town newspaper reporter.

What this means for PR people is that you a) have to know who you are pitching or targeting and b) adjust your approach accordingly. And when you are dealing with individual journalists, you have to be on the lookout for hints into their level of professionalism.


Some of the things you can do to arm yourself include:

• Get your messages together: it’s easier to communicate what you want to say to the journalist and their audience than if you rely on the journalist to make sense of what you are saying


• Get your act together: don’t rely on the journalist to drive the agenda. Figure out as much as possible in advance of the interview: when it will take place, where, who will speak, what examples and other info you will give


• Know the terms of the interview: is it “off the record,” “on background,” “not for attribution,” or “on the record?” Make sure you figure this out before you or your spokesperson speaks


• Follow-up: don’t just pray for a good result. Send the journalist a summary of the interview, highlighting your key points and cleaning up any key quotes. Who knows? They may just cut-and-paste from your email.

My Dear PR Flack post also inspired a set of ideas from The Book Publicity Blog, which notes that very often, journalists ask to interview authors — and that’s it. Read their thoughts on what other information journalists might provide to publicists to insure that the interview goes well.

Public Speaking Tip: Don’t Emulate Obama

If Barack Obama is indeed elected President, he will turn out to be one of the most articulate Presidents ever. I’ve been listening to Obama read his two books (Dreams From My Father and Audacity of Hope) on CD and he is a joy to listen to. As a writer and public speaker, I am in awe of his skills in both departments. And if I’m smart, I will never try to emulate them, at least not his speaking style.

Obama appears to be blessed with an equanimity that is not shared by most people. He seems secure in his personality and willing to see things through the other person’s eyes. And he’s more than willing to share credit.

Since he’s so articulate, he can get away with things other speakers can’t, and shouldn’t try. The first is his use of the phrase, “John’s right about this…” in the debate Friday night. As a speaker with the objective of building one’s own case, it’s not helpful to repeatedly praise the other party — let them and their supporters take care of that. A better way to phrase it would be “We agree on some points, but Sen. McCain and I differ on key aspects…”

Of more concern is his continued repeating of negative sentiments about himself, as when he used the word “naive” about half way through the debate. After he said that, McCain repeated it several times, feasting on a word that played right into his strategy of portraying Obama as inexperienced.

The only cure for “repeating a negative” is practicing not to. Obama, with his strong oratorical skills, can get away with it. The rest of us shouldn’t try.

Paulson Makes Himself Available and Controls the Debate

Say what you will about the current financial mess on Wall Street, you have to credit Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for making himself fully available to the media despite the crushing responsibilities and obligations he must have. He was on four Sunday talk shows yesterday and did countless other media appearances and press conferences over the past week.

By making himself available and credible, Paulson is currently controlling the story about the crisis (hello, paging Ben Bernanke…) and therefore will have the most impact on the final form of any bailout or other remedy.

Paulson’s moves echo the advice of uber-crisis wizard Sam Singer, who says the number one thing spokespeople must do in a crisis is “be available.”

“Even when you don’t have a lot to say, be there to say it,” Singer advises.

Singer spoke last week at a PRSA Silicon Valley spokesperson training event at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. It was the third of our four professional development sessions on media training this year, and I’m serving as one of the trainers for the series (the fourth is on November 7, “Inside the Newsroom: A day in the life of reporters, editors, producers, anchors.”).

Singer’s other tips:

• You always want to be the first one out of the chute with your version of events


• The best thing you can do is raise key questions that change the way people are looking at the crisis


• Be a reliable source, even in non-crisis times and when you don’t have a story — it’s how you build credibility


• To win a battle during a crisis, you’ve got to be willing to push back — don’t be passive

Who’s Media Training These Guys?

Another day, another “negative repeat” from a Presidential candidate. Today it’s John McCain on “The View”:

Joy Behar brought up two of his recent ads against Mr. Obama… “We know those two ads are untrue, they’re lies,” she said, and yet at the end of each, Mr. McCain’s voice says he approves of those messages.

“They are not lies,” Mr. McCain said.

Wrong!

Correct answer [if that’s what you want to communicate]: “Those ads are true/factual/correct/etc.”

Seriously — listening to these two amateurs is making me long for the days of laser-focused Bill Clinton or even simple-but-on-message G.W. Bush.

Look, I’ve got some time on my schedule between now and election day. It’s not too late. Call me and I’ll get them media trained in a hurry. I’ll even take a crack at Biden for free.

Round One of the PR Battle Goes to McCain

There’s no doubt that since John McCain picked Sarah Palin to be his running mate, the Republican ticket has generated an incredible amount of buzz and positive momentum. And there is also no doubt that McCain has been winning the PR battle: getting his messages out, getting Obama off message and responding to McCain’s charges, and getting Obama to fall into the rookie trap of the “negative repeat.” Example:

“John McCain is not a maverick.” 

That may sound like a straight-forward statement, but it actually works against the speaker, because it gets them saying the words “John McCain” and “maverick” in the same sentence. If you’re on message, you say, “John McCain represents the status quo.” That gets the words “John McCain” and “status quo” in the same sentence. See? Here’s a business example:

Q: “Is your company poorly managed?”

Bad Answer: “Our company is not poorly managed.”

Good Answer: “Our company is considered one of the best-managed companies in our field.” 

Here’s a link for Obama fans only: a post with 10 Tips for Obama to win the PR battle

Note to McCain supporters: send me links to pro-McCain PR items and I’ll link to them too, as long as they’re not partisan rants.

Political Candidates Are Bad Role Models

Every four years, we are treated to the spectacle of journalists and moderators asking tough, pointed questions of presidential candidates, only to have the candidates completely ignore the questions and launching into their pre-planned talking points.

And every four years, corporate spokespeople wonder — is that how I’m supposed to answer questions I don’t like? By ignoring them?

No, says Tripp Frohlichstein, media interview trainer and master of media messaging. Not only shouldn’t corporate spokespeople follow this mistaken model, Frohlichstein believes that politicians are ill-served by this tactic as well.

“What politicians are doing is not serving their purpose,” he says. “Why do you think people hate politicians? In part, it’s because they don’t answer questions directly.”

Frohlichstein believes that if politicians really wanted to connect with the public, they would “be themselves. They would be honest and direct. I think the public wants a straight-shooter.”

That goes for business spokespeople as well. It’s never a good idea for business spokespeople to ignore the questions they are being asked and instead only repeat their sound-bites. You’ve got at least acknowledge the question and if you don’t want to answer, say so.

The Building Blocks of Quotable Quotes

If you want to make sure the information you are trying to get across is picked up, you need to make sure it is interesting. Too often, business information is full of fluff words and jargon that makes it impossible for other people to care.

But what are the building blocks of interesting information, or “quotable quotes?” Here is what I call the FAME Formula. I’ve also uploaded a worksheet for you to use to develop your own quotable quotes using this formula:

• Facts and figures: Details tell the story. For instance, you might say there were “six engineers who worked on the project for 10 months, with some of them pulling all-nighters and canceling vacations to make sure the product got out on time,” instead of “the new product was produced by a dedicated group of professionals.”


• Analogies and metaphors: these are rhetorical devices that essentially help us explain things that people don’t know in terms they do understand. This is actually fairly commonly done, saying for example that a distance is the “length of 10 football fields” or something is “twice as tall as the Empire State Building.”


• Make a reference to pop culture or current events: this is actually another twist on trying to explain things in terms people will understand. You don’t have to stretch and claim that Angelina Jolie uses your product or is coming to your ribbon-cutting if those would be falsehoods. Instead, you can say something like, “not everyone can have a glamorous lifestyle like Angelina and Brad. If you won’t be in Hollywood this weekend, be sure to attend the Alameda County Fair…”


• Examples and emotions: People in business are prone to generalize and hide their emotions. Often that’s a good business decision. But when you’re trying to communicate, it comes off as bland and lifeless. Instead, give real-world examples of how people can use your product or service, or share some emotional component of the effort to bring that product or service to them.

Here’s that FAME Formula downloadable worksheet.

****

Oops –I did a terrible job of proof-reading before posting this one. But I think I caught and corrected all the tpyos. Thanks for the heads-up. (jg)

The “Chocolate or Vanilla” Rule of Answering Questions

Let’s say a reporter asks you the following question: Do you like chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream? How many possible answers are there? Did you say two?

I’ll tell you how many there are: five.

1. Chocolate


2. Vanilla


3. I like both equally


4. Neither — I prefer a different flavor


5. I don’t like ice cream

The point of this illustration (courtesy of Tripp Frohlichstein) is this: you’ve got to listen carefully to questions being asked and prepare in advance to address the range of possible questions with a range of possible answers.

You don’t have to be cutesy — you just have to open your mind to the fact that just because you were asked a certain question in a certain way (as in this case, a) assuming you like ice cream and b) assuming that you have a preference between chocolate and vanilla) doesn’t mean that’s the only way to look at the situation. Yet in many interview settings, the interview subject will act as though they are being interrogated and that everything they say can and will be used “against” them.

This is the wrong attitude.

Instead, if you’ve prepared in advance, you’ll recognize the subject matter of questions being asked of you and will have a ready answer, regardless of whether the interviewer asked it in a form (in this case, as an either/or) that doesn’t fit the information you have to share.

How to Handle Questions You Don’t Want to Answer

There are really two types of questions that you think you don’t want to answer: questions you don’t have an easy answer to, and truly touchy questions that you’d really rather not answer. Here’s a process for figure out which is which:

Preparation is the key to success:

• Brainstorm potential questions


• Develop answers (or non-answers) in advance. You’ll probably find that a lot of questions you think you didn’t want to answer you can answer, one way or the other, if you give yourself time to think through the right answer

“Bridge” away from questions you don’t want to answer to the safer ground of what you do want to talk about:

• First, acknowledge the question and provide some sort of answer to the question asked – don’t just ignore it


• Then, “bridge” to what you do what to talk about: “I’m glad you asked that because it’s something we’re taking very seriously. I can’t provide you with a lot of information on that right now, but what I can say is…”


• Stand your ground: once you have answered, do not allow yourself to be drawn into answering it again if the reporter repeats or rephrases

Good ways to say anything but “No Comment” to questions you really don’t want to answer:

• “I’m sorry but I’m not able to speak to that subject”


• “Thanks for asking but I’m not able to answer that question”


• “I’m sorry but that information is proprietary”

How to handle emotional questions:

• Acknowledge the emotional content (“I understand your concern…”), then bridge back to your messages (“… but what I’d like to talk about is…”)

Know your rights as an interviewee:

• If you don’t understand a question, ask the reporter to rephrase it


• If you don’t know an answer, say so

Pentagon Plays the PR Game To Win

I’m having a hard time getting terribly worked up about the New York Times story that the Pentagon used media training tactics to prep retired military officers for appearances as military analysts on TV talk shows.

This has nothing to do with my position on the Iraq war. The tagline for this blog is “smart ways to win the public relations game,” and I’d have to say that the government’s tactics meet that standard.

If anyone deserves being taken to task over this story, it’s the network executives who hired these analysts and then didn’t bother to vet them (no pun intended). From the Times story:

Some network officials… acknowledged only a limited understanding of their analysts’ interactions with the administration. They said that while they were sensitive to potential conflicts of interest, they did not hold their analysts to the same ethical standards as their news employees regarding outside financial interests. The onus is on their analysts to disclose conflicts, they said.

So let’s get this straight: the Pentagon recruits gung-ho retired officers who would probably support their position regardless, then gives them inside information and preps them so they are even more credible when speaking about military affairs. Then the networks “hire” these third-party endorsers and fail to use even the simplest journalistic techniques to discover whether these analysts came with a pre-conceived point of view. Who’s looking bad here?

In other words, none of this would even be a story if the media did its homework. Presumably, with thousands of retired military officers to choose from, the networks should have had little trouble recruiting their own independent analysts who were not being briefed and prepped by the Pentagon. All the Pentagon did, basically, was to take advantage of a media all too willing to be co-opted.

The Pentagon knows how to take care of its supporters, too [memo to businesses seeking third-party endorsements — take notes]:

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. “You’re back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV.” It was, he said, “psyops on steroids” — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. “It’s not like it’s, ‘We’ll pay you $500 to get our story out,’ ” he said. “It’s more subtle.”

If there’s anything that stinks in this scenario, it’s that these analysts not only had network gigs, most were also slurping at the trough of military contracts, consulting with military contractors and bragging about the “inside access” their analyst role afforded them. And according to the Times story, analysts who didn’t keep parroting the Pentagon’s talking points, or who actually dared to criticize the war, were threatened with having their access cut off.

But that’s more about the inside workings of the military-industrial complex than the Pentagon’s PR machinery. I suspect that these and other retired officers working the consulting game hype their connections for all they are worth, whether or not they are one of the relatively small handful who appear on TV.

Tibet Supporters Use PR to Outfox China

The New York Times, of all places, gives a shout-out to the “value of PR” in a business section story today about how Tibet supporters leveraged the upcoming Beijing Olympics to shine a spotlight on China’s treatment of Tibet:

“The protesters quickly established a communications plan, focused their message and ran camps where they taught members interview skills…As a result, the protesters have pulled off a publicity coup. Instead of basking in the glow of the coming games, China has quickly found itself on the defensive, and protesters have turned the subject from athletics in Beijing to the crackdown in Tibet.”

The strategy in a nutshell:

“At first there was a profound sense of despair after the Chinese government was awarded the honor,” said Kalaya’an Mendoza, a coordinator for Students for a Free Tibet, an activist group. “But after five minutes passed, we realized this would be a monumental opportunity for the Tibetan people to be put in the international spotlight.”

The U.S. media loves a catfight, particularly one pitting political crusaders against an authoritarian government. But business journalists are anxious to cover he-said-she-said stories too. So these are the lessons for business PR people from this episode:

1. If you’re the underdog, pick a fight with the big dog.


2. If you’re the underdog, you’re probably smaller and more agile than the big dog. Use that to your advantage to out-hustle the big dog — get your messages together, train your spokespeople, look for opportunities to get your message out (e.g., the Torch Relay)


3. Give the media what it craves: action. People taking risks. Colorful photos (e.g., protesters on the Golden Gate Bridge). An easy story to tell.

And if you are the big dog? Not all is lost. Here’s what you do: Change the subject. Where are the stories about Beijing Olympic readiness, heroic athletes striving to make the Games, anxious Chinese readying their country for the Olympic spotlight?

Charlie Rose Says “Be Authentic”

I’m at the Bulldog Reporter 2008 Media Relations Summit, and the first keynote was a very interesting and fun conversation between PR legend Howard Rubenstein and TV personality Charlie Rose.

Charlie really represents the high-water mark of media interviewers: he has a one-hour show, commercial-free, on PBS, and he likes to get in-depth with his guests. So you really need to be prepared — you’re not going to get away with either simple sound bites or off-the-cuff answers.

I’m sure Charlie would rather have guests who haven’t gone through formal media training, but I can assure you that you’ll be happier, and Charlie may even enjoy interviewing you more, if you’ve taken the time to practice and get comfortable in the interview setting. And I believe this goes for virtually all journalists as well — there’s nothing worse that interviewing a boring spokesperson who doesn’t have anything interesting to say.

Here are a couple of Charlie’s tips and comments — again, they really work for any journalist conducting an interview:

• He wants to feel engaged with you as a guest — in other words, don’t waste his time


• He wants you to “tell me what you know” and “tell me what it feels like”


• Be authentic — he doesn’t want canned answers and someone who’s covering up. For spokespeople or other guests, the trick here is to know what you feel comfortable saying, so can authentically share your experiences but without being more revealing than you want to be.

And one from Howard Rubenstein, a Rose friend and former guest on his show: “People think they are going to come in and give you message points,” he said, “but when I was on, I forgot the camera was on” and opened up much more than expected.

Chelsea Clinton Should Have Expected “The Question”

You can’t tell me that the Clinton campaign is so unprepared that it hasn’t given a great deal of thought to how to handle questions about the Monica Lewinsky affair. It was the defining moment of the Clinton presidency and may determine the outcome of this year’s race.

So how could it be that Chelsea Clinton had such a lame answer when she was asked about it at a campus campaign appearance this week?

Here’s the exchange via the Associated Press [slightly edited by me to put it in Q&A form]:

Butler University student: “[What’s your opinion of] the criticism of [your] mother of how she handled the Lewinsky scandal [and how it] might be a sign of weakness and she might not be a strong enough candidate to be president?”

Chelsea: “Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know maybe, 70 college campuses I’ve now been to, and I do not think that is any of your business.”

Terrible answer!

First of all, you don’t insult the questioner.

Second, you have to have a much better answer than “none of your business.” Because actually, it’s definitely his business — Hillary is running for president and he’s a voter. Chelsea is her daughter and campaigning publicly on her behalf.

Third, the exchange tells me that she wasn’t prepped for this question. I can’t believe that Clinton’s handlers told her to go the “none of your business” route. It makes her look childish [and therefore not a credible surrogate for her mother] and once again, it has us talking.

How about this for a better answer:

“What happened between my parents is personal and private. But I think mom has demonstrated the strength of her leadership time and time again, both as First Lady and in the Senate, and I think she’s going to make a great President.”