Posts Tagged ‘media training’

1. The revenge of the people with red hair

   Published on Thursday, May 27th, 2010
   It’s a topic that has garnered more interest than mining: hug a ginga, says The Edge.

   This polarising issue featured two nights running on Close Up, which means they’ve struck a topic that gets people engaged.

   As far as a media performance goes, on Tuesday night I tipped my hat to teacher and father of two red heads, Stephen Simpson, who gave Edge radio jock Dominic Harvey a lesson in managing your messages for television. Harvey was ill-prepared and over confident, and Simpson was not awed by the celebs. 

   Harvey’s final blunder was to call host Mark Sainbury, “Sainsso”. Another cosy radio relationship?

   Round 1 to Simpson.

   On Wednesday evening the performances were reversed. As if bolstered by the success of his previous performance, Simpson was too cocky and overbearing.  In contrast, radio jock Harvey was conciliatory and measured, and the arrogance of the previous night was gone.

   Round 2 to Harvey and The Edge.

   Lessons: when it comes to television, one success does not make you an expert; and quit while you are ahead.  Simpson would have been better to decline the studio interview on the basis that he’d said all he had to say.  Had he done so, he’d still be a winner.

   For me, the last word goes to the Wellington woman who says: my response to being hugged will be: thanks moron!

2. The tale of two media interviews

   Published on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010
   There have been two hugely different media interviews this week that provide good learning experiences. That of Cadbury New Zealand Managing Director, Matthew Oldham, with John Campbell of Campbell Live, and former All Back and Chief’s No 8 Sione Lauaki, on the main TV bulletins.

   Take Lauaki first. Coming out of the Hamilton District Court after pleading guilty to assault, he says: “I’m really disappointed that I let my family down, my mum and dad down, and my team-mates down.” This over-rehearsed apology is now so overused that it is hackneyed.  As is the other tactic of flooding the court with team-mate supporters. Chiefs captain and current All Black Mils Muliaina spoke about Lauaki this way: “He’s an outstanding leader in the franchise.” 

   If this is how outstanding leaders act, then rugby needs to revisit its media training manual.

   Entirely more worthy was the interview that Cadbury chief Matthew Oldham had with Campbell. The brand may have taken a battering since being named the No 1 trusted brand in last year’s Readers Digest brand survey, but Oldham was an outstanding ambassador for the brand in the face of a typically hectoring performance from Campbell and consumers.

   Oldham was temperate and polished when others, in similar circumstances, may have abandoned their cool. Top marks for fronting in the studio for what was always going to be a difficult interview.

   We are all familiar with the substance of the issue – the production of a local icon moves offshore. Hiss, boo from consumers of the product.

   The chocolate maker does its best to explain the reasons for this decision. Campbell seeks to portray the company’s management as weak and inept.

   Lesser communicators may not have tried to outline the realities in the face of such invective, but Oldham did, and made a pretty good fist of it.  While we might not have expected consumers to understand the economic realities faced by a small chocolate business at the end of the earth, we might have expected that some of this would have resonated with Campbell, and his Australian owned channel. There is no future for a business producing a little bit of everything with ancient equipment. Do a few things well and you might survive, just! That is the challenge for this Dunedin business, but it seems that some would have preferred to celebrate the demise of this business rather than report on its survival, albeit with fewer total products.

   This interview has some valuable media training lessons.  We commend it.