Blogs, insights and newsletters

Giving feedback to senior leaders about their latest media interview can be a tough conversation. It can be particularly daunting and challenging if that feedback is negative.

What makes a good media spokesperson? Well, you need someone articulate. And they should be confident and comfortable with the subject being discussed.

Britain’s first new television news channel for two decades launched on Sunday. GB News is a channel we have been told will set ‘a fresh agenda’ and that it will ‘give a voice to those who have been side-lined’.

It is not often tennis features in this media training blog. But Naomi Osaka’s decision not to speak to the media after matches during the French Open produced an avalanche of media coverage.

ouldn’t it be good to know what journalists look for in press releases and story pitches? Perhaps understand more about why some go on to achieve great coverage, and others are instantly spiked?

One of the big challenges bosses and communicators are currently facing is the messaging around the return to the office.

Where can you find examples of brilliant writing? Books, newspapers or online and the obvious sources, but often it can be found as we go about our everyday lives.

We like to keep a close eye on all the big stories at Media First towers. And, at the moment, they don’t seem to be much bigger than two of the nation’s best-known retailers slugging it out over a chocolate cake.

How much do we know about the way covid has changed the media landscape? We’ve all seen a change in the way news is brought into our homes, with remote interviews carried out on Zoom at least temporarily replacing face-to-face ones.

Podcasts are going from strength to strength. There are now more than a million active podcasts and 30 million podcast episodes. And in the UK, podcasts now reach an audience of 15.6 million people.

There is some advice we give far more often than others during our media training courses. One of our golden rules we discuss during almost every course is the importance of spokespeople not repeating the journalist’s negative language.

You’ve just carried out a series of TV interviews. What do you want the viewers to be talking about? That crucial message you were aiming to get across?

We love it when we hear and see excellent interviews we can highlight in this media training blog.

Every time the Prime Minister announces he is holding a press conference on the latest pandemic developments, our social media timeline is filled with people playing ‘Boris Briefing Bingo’.

How many of us had heard of Zoom this time last year? Fast forward 12 months and it is a crucial part of our lives. Not just at work, but also for keeping in touch with friends and family.

It's the second day of our look back over the spokespeople and interviews that stood out for all the right reasons this year.

Often at this time of year, our media training blog focuses on the word of the year. Unsurprisingly, ‘lockdown’ has scooped that particular honour in 2020. As we’ve all probably heard more than enough of that particular word lately, we thought we would instead focus on the phrase that has been voted the country’s most-loathsome jargon.

One day you are a local business and the next you are the most famous landscaping company in the world.

On our crisis communication courses, we talk to delegates about the importance of understanding their organisation’s vulnerabilities and trying to anticipate what could place it at the centre of a storm.

Criticising the journalist. Complaining about tough questions. And walking out before it ended. It’s no wonder that Donald Trump’s 60 Minutes interview has been dominating the news.

“Say it. Mean it. Put it down in legislation.” This was the key message in a media interview that grabbed our attention last week. It is a message that certainly includes some of the factors of effective messaging that we look at in our courses in media and message development & testing courses.

Have you heard the one about the onions that were too sexy for Facebook? As weird as that introduction sounds, it is not the start of a joke.

How about this for an approach to dealing with journalists – don’t deal with them at all? If that seems odd – and perhaps something you would not expect to read in this media training blog – it is worth considering that this strategy seems to have been adopted by Tesla, the world’s most valuable car maker.

Passion is an important quality for an effective media spokesperson. It helps to draw the audience in, maintain their attention and keep them listening.

There have been many obituaries written about newspapers. Their power has been said to be waning for several years and the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a decline in circulations and advertising revenues.

When Maggie Ogunbanwo's family home and business was the target of a hate crime, growing her profile couldn’t have been further from her mind.

Sometimes there are plenty of things for your organisation to shout about and use to try to gain crucial media coverage.

It is always great when you lovely readers and our social media followers let us know about interviews that you would like us to focus on in this media training blog.

Imagine you are in a broadcast interview and a journalist asks you something you simply do not know how to answer.

We’ve looked in some detail in this media training blog about how coronavirus has changed the broadcast media landscape.