Brian's B2B blog...

“Look…” is another popular preface, especially with sportsmen and coaches (see also “Ah, look…”.) Then there’s “sort of”, “know what I mean?” and my own particular pet-hate “Like…”, as in “I was like, so angry…” Well, what would ‘like’ angry be like? Extremely tetchy? Very irritated? Much vexed? Unless you’re going to use like in its true meaning, i.e. similar or comparable to, forget it. Unfortunately, we all pepper our speech with so much meaningless verbiage it’s a wonder we say anything worth hearing at all.

How many times have you heard someone say or read during the course of an interview: “At the end of the day”? What’s wrong with ultimately or finally? Likewise, when I hear someone say “To be honest” or “I must confess” I feel like saying “It’s OK you’re not in court!” Who can also forget “a level playing field” (see also “game changer” and “game of two halves”) and my own particular favourite “It’s not rocket science.” Well of course it isn’t―the only thing that IS rocket science is well, rocket science. All you’re really telling me when you say it is that you’re not a rocket scientist. I probably knew that already. Why not say “it’s simple”?

As for words like “paradigm”, now here’s where it gets interesting. I’m sure there’s a proper place in an interview to use paradigm but it won’t be very often. I once heard someone use it five times during a short presentation. It’s just a fancy way of saying ‘model’, ‘pattern’, ‘standard’ or ‘concept’ (amongst other things). Listen hard and you can spot verbiage a mile off (cliché alert). Sadly all-too many people think it’s a good way of communicating―it isn’t. It’s just irritating, like answering every question with “Absolutely!” A simple “yes” works just as well. If you want to communicate effectively say something that’s worth hearing in the quickest and simplest way…everything else is just static.

Why am I telling you this? Because by restricting the information we receive to only what you like, we risk missing something we didn’t know you needed. Or as Donald Rumsfeld once said “There are things we don’t know, we don’t know.” He was right. To a greater-or-lesser degree we’re all guilty of ‘confirmation bias’, the tendency to seek-out and favour information which confirms, or strengthens, our own personal viewpoint, interests or beliefs. You can sum it up with the classic: “I know what I like, and I like what I know. And that’s all I need to know” whether that’s a favourite newsfeed, website, blog-post or podcast.

Receiving news and information that’s relevant to your business in quick time clearly lets you stay ahead of the game. However, the more you let your preferences and likes dictate what information you get, the greater the risk of missing something of equal importance simply because you didn’t ask for it. That’s why in media training I encourage people to seek out information beyond their own ‘preference pool’. A trend in say, construction or civil engineering could have cross-over implications for an-altogether different industry sector, like agriculture, aviation or bio-medicine. Naturally, it means taking the time to decide what extra information might benefit you and your business. But if you’re not prepared to broaden your horizons and look for it, how on earth will you know its significance?

Having new or different insights on the world will not only benefit your business and personal outlook, but when a journalist calls, your broader insights could also become their broader insights too. Suddenly, you don’t just know a lot about your own back-yard, but the wider world too, and how they both come together and why. In short, it’s all about context and for the journalist desperately looking for a ‘bigger picture’ story it could mean all the difference between being reported…or ignored.

Enter the challengers, disrupters and contrarians. If you’re looking for someone to confront current thinking and rattle the status quo cage who better to talk to?

I’ve yet to meet a journalist who liked having their ‘knowledge’ questioned. Nor do they enjoy being told ‘You’ve missed the whole point of the story.’ It makes them wonder if they’ve overlooked another previously hidden narrative.

No journalist wants to admit they’ve been barking up the wrong tree. And by challenging a previously accepted storyline the challengers, disrupters and contrarians make the press think again.

Of course, if you are planning to rock the media’s boat you’d better have something solid to back-up your challenge—like an independent survey, research data, official stats, or customer experiences. In short, not ‘spin’.

Moreover, when it comes to engaging with the press the best disrupters, challengers and contrarians aren’t the ‘shouty’ ones—they’re the ones who make genuinely-interesting ‘left field’ points, calmly and with authority, and with a convincing and above-all-else believable narrative.

So can you make a journalist think twice? It’s not unusual for them to approach an interview with a preconceived idea of what the story is all about, and where it sits. They may even have the headline already written in their heads… But is that where the story really is from your perspective? Have they actually got it right? And can you show them where they’ve missed the point—and prove it? If so, you’re more likely to get them to reconsider their position and report yours.

Just remember in your desire to provide that alternative narrative it’s easy to forget the first rule of contrarianism. Namely, if you’re going to tell a journalist ‘That’s not the world as we see it’ you’d better convince them you not only know more than they do but have facts that prove it. If you can do that then you could generate fresh media coverage for yourself when everyone else thought the story was yesterday’s news…

Once a year, large corporations create an annual report, usually available as a PDF on the company website and as a glossy publication. Sadly, all-too-often it ends-up unread in a dark drawer…or the digital equivalent. Yet look inside any major company report and you’ll find it a fantastic repository of facts, figures and commentary that can help you deliver a strong narrative to the media. Need to prove you’ve increased production? Or boosted profitability? It’s all in there, and not just facts and figures.

Annual reports also often contain statements from a chairman or CEO confirming corporate strategies, onward business focus, core messages, market conditions and future commitments. They’re a veritable gold mine.

Moreover, the information within them will have been approved (or should have been!) by the corporate communications team, as well as the accountants and auditors. So it’s ‘safe’ to refer to.

But there’s an even more important reason why you should read it—because a journalist can too. It’s the quickest way to get valuable ‘background’ on a business ahead of an interview. That’s not all they’ll read either. Your quarterly results, investor statements, press releases, website, social media pages. In fact, anything you’ve recently put into the public domain they could ask you about. So you need to absorb it before they do. After all, you wouldn’t want them knowing more about your business than you do…would you?

But how can you make all that information work for you? The answer is to create a ‘Knowledge Box’, a handy place for all the recently published corporate material your business has put out which you can refer to and use whenever you need to create messages ahead of an encounter with the press. It can be in a folder within the company’s intranet, or even a simple box-file with hard-copy literature.

Only don’t keep it to yourself. Share the knowledge amongst your colleagues and they could well have useful business information you were unaware of that you can use the next time you talk to a journalist. And don’t just restrict it to corporate information. Put in business surveys, media articles, Government reports, anything that can help establish you amongst the press as a ‘thought leader’ in your market sector.

Better still task someone in your organisation to be the official keeper of that knowledge box—someone who’ll keep it regularly up-dated and encourage everyone to contribute to it too. But whatever you put in it, the very first thing should be the annual report. Just make sure you read it first…

As a media trainer I’ve had to reimagine how to deliver my course during the various lockdowns, firebreaks and quarantines. I’ve had to consider what works best for clients and in particular rethink the time needed for effective delivery. Normally, I’d allow up-to five hours for a face-to-face group session.

That was never going to work online. It’s now a maximum of three hours, with four or five short screen breaks in-between to avoid ‘screen-itis’. Start promptly at 9:00 and by midday everything can be done and dusted allowing everyone to get on with the rest of their day, which is what they want to do. So far, client feedback has been very positive.

A shorter timeframe naturally meant deciding what course content to keep, and what I had to leave out. Simply talking faster was never an option! Rather than try and put up a whole load of stuff online and risk losing everyone’s attention, I’ve been sending out separate complimentary material which allows trainees to absorb it in their own time.

Like most other people working online I’ve had to understand how to get the most from Microsoft Teams and Zoom―including encouraging as much interactivity as possible, along with the best moment to ask people to ‘mute’ their mics! There’s nothing more off-putting than hearing your own voice echoing back to you as you’re speaking, or those unintended ‘noises off’.

As we all struggle to find some normality in our lives we’re having to do many things differently. Remote training is certainly different. But with some forethought, reflection and re-setting it can be the work-around that still works for you.

I also thought that social media would struggle to communicate serious business messages. I was a mile wide on that one too. I even ended up being hired by various companies as a video presenter for YouTube promo shorts that certainly had a serious message, albeit presented in an unusual way. Like the ‘Volvo 750-tonne pull’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJD9YQQYvyk

Over the past decade it’s become increasingly obvious that we all like to get our news in as personal way as possible―like through self-selected news alerts. And why wouldn’t you want to be told about things that interest you? However, the route to reader (or viewer or listener) is also a generational thing; a phenomenon that traditional hard-copy publishers have had to grapple with. And don’t get me started on social media and the rise of ‘citizen journalists.’

Ironically, the very institutions, companies and organisations that 30-years ago relied heavily, if not totally, on the media to tell the world about their activities have, thanks to their own corporate websites, become some of the biggest competitors to the press. Nowadays it’s not unusual for the first word of a new product or service to appear on a manufacturer’s website, before the press gets to cover it. Suddenly the old symbiotic relationship has changed.

So where does that leave the press? If it can’t be first with the news then it has to be first with the context, the explanation, the broader landscape…the ‘what it all means to you’ stuff. So while companies will inevitably put a positive spin on their ‘news’, it will be up to the media to provide the independent analysis, clarification and enlightenment. In other words what it’s always done, only now is will have to do it faster, smarter and in ways that ensure we keep coming back for more.