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If you don’t have anyone to tell your story, no one will hear it. Spokespeople promote their organisation’s achievements and defend its reputation during crisis media management incidents and they can tighten their media skills with presentation skills training and learn the qualities of a good presenter.

The bridging technique is one of the cornerstones of media training and an essential tool with which to control a media interview.

If you are a regular reader of this media training blog, you’ll know we have discussed the complexity of the ‘guarantee’ question before.

For many businesses, the initial few weeks of lockdown were spent ensuring they could ‘continue as normal’ and figuring out what that new ‘normal’ is.

We’ve always stressed the importance of effective internal communications during a crisis. And that has never been truer than during the coronavirus crisis.

You probably don’t need us to tell you that the government’s latest coronavirus messaging has been met with a chorus of disapproval.

During this time of global crisis, many brands have been thinking of ways they can help out and show social responsibility.

Training by videoconference has grown over recent years. And as the coronavirus crisis has intensified and offices have closed, it is becoming even more prominent.

Do you remember when the Government said that 20,000 deaths would be a ‘good outcome’ and a 'good result' from the coronavirus crisis? Sadly, it turned out to be a target that couldn’t be met.

Did you watch our webinar on making your online meetings a success? If you did, you’ll know we were asked a number of questions by the audience. In fact, we had more questions than we had time to answer.

Chances are you are reading this at home. As the coronavirus crisis intensifies, we are all adapting to a new way of working. For some, this will be a relatively straightforward transition. But for most particularly those who usually spend much of their time in face-to-face customer and employee meetings, there are significant challenges.

News anchors presenting programmes from their living rooms and reporters trying to remain three metres away from those they are trying to interview for a vox pop.

“I don’t do statements. Statements are no good to man nor beast. Come on and say it yourself.” Not our words.

Boris Johnson had been criticised for his lack of visible leadership in recent weeks. Absent from the responses to the floods, he had also been coming under attack over the coronavirus with some suggesting he had already decided to self-isolate.

Earlier this week we mentioned in this media training blog how media spokespeople need to be prepared to face questions about the coronavirus even if they are talking about something completely unrelated.

Coronavirus is dominating the news and the coverage is getting more extensive. Already we have seen brands close stores, organisations shut down their offices and companies suspend factory lines.

On the face of it, it should have been a pretty innocuous photo. But when new chancellor Rishi Sunak posted a picture of himself making a round of hot drinks for his team, alongside a large bag of Yorkshire Tea, it caused a storm in a teacup for the brand.

If I had to name a journalist that I would be reluctant to face, Nick Ferrari would be right up there. The LBC presenter has a pretty ferocious reputation and has posed the forensic questions that have led spokespeople to produce some recent memorable media interview disasters.

It is understandable that health authorities don’t want the public to panic about the coronavirus. But could the desire to avoid that alarm and fear actually cause more hysteria?

We often find at the start of our media training courses that delegates have a fear of saying the wrong thing, being asked something they don’t know or being made to look silly when they are put in front of the cameras. These are all perfectly natural fears.

We’re all using it. Zoom has provided something of a lifeline during the coronavirus crisis, not just for businesses working remotely, but families and friends as well.

When it comes to disastrous responses to doorstep interviews, we thought we had seen it all. In this media training blog, we have covered examples where spokespeople have simply ignored the journalist and pretended they are not there; others have shouted at the camera or tried to shove it out of the way’; and some have offered a ‘no comment’ response, leaving viewers to wonder what it is they had to hide.

You have seen interviews where the spokesperson has brought proceedings to an abrupt end when they don’t like a line of questioning. But how about when the PR team becomes unhappy with the question?

In fact, it is a golden crisis communication training rule. But one organisation has decided that doing nothing and saying little is the best approach during its recent time in the spotlight.

When basketball star Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash along with eight other people, the reporting of the incident was rapid and often inaccurate. News organisations rushing to break big news is nothing new, but the digital age has increased that speed dramatically and that resulted, in this incident, in plenty of mistakes being made.

How’s this for an approach to a damaging story? A journalist calls you up to ‘clarify’ something you said and you deny that you had used a particular word.

“What are you doing wrong?” Perhaps not the nicest of questions, but should it need to be asked eight times before a spokesperson provides any semblance of an answer?

How often have you seen a good brand apology? While there seems to be more apologies than ever, few are effective. Many feel like they have been issued through gritted teeth. And then there are of course the non-apology apologies.

As we take the first tentative steps into the new decade, it seems a good opportunity to look back on some of the worst interviews of the past 10 years. We’ve left out some of the most recent ones – a little relief for Prince Andrew – as we’re sure you don’t need to read about them again now.

It was his first in-depth interview since winning the general election. So how did Boris Johnson get on when he sat down with BBC Breakfast inside Downing Street yesterday (14/1) for a live interview with Dan Walker?