Media Training

mistake

HOW TO DESTROY YOUR STRONG CORPORATE STORY: A SAD CASE STUDY

Sorrow is defined as a feeling of deep distress caused by loss or disappointment. This is how I feel about FTSE100 company Hiscox Insurance. Sorrow because they had such a powerful corporate story that it was a joy to media train their spokespeople for six years until 2013. And now the company has blown it [...]

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When your CEO makes you want to cry

In our media training and presentation training, we counsel spokespeople to take care with their language. I imagine that there have been some challenging conversations at KPMG following the Financial Times headline yesterday that: “KPMG UK chairman told staff to ‘stop moaning’ about work conditions”. Today, every newspaper rehashes the story and reports how Bill

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How You Can Get Cut-Through For Your Stories During The Coronavirus Crisis

For weeks, the top ten most-read stories on the BBC News website have been almost exclusively related to Coronavirus. As we enter phase 2 of the crisis, with the government making plans to ease lockdown restrictions and businesses making cautious plans to re-open, on what is the media focused? Talking to our media training journalists

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HOW COMMS PEOPLE CAN HELP BUSINESS LEADERS FROM MAKING CORONAVIRUS MISTAKES ​

This is a tale of two companies with very compelling and emotionally engaging corporate stories that sustain their reputation. And that we at Electric Airwaves have previously used as case studies in our media training – Waitrose and Hiscox Insurance. Both have blundered this past week. One acted swiftly to reset itself behind its story;

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3 WAYS TO HOLD YOUR EXECUTIVES FEET TO THE FIRE DURING THE COVID-19 CRISIS

Sometimes it is only the Communications team that sees things clearly. Used to putting ourselves in the shoes of our audiences, rather than only the operational or financial detail of the business, here are three aspects of the current crisis where Comms people can make a difference: 1.            Reminding executives that Covid 19 is first

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Delivering Great Down-The-Line Media Interviews Over Skype During The Coronavirus Lockdown.

With travel and social distancing restrictions, face-to-face media interviews are a thing of the past. Instead, broadcasters want you to undertake them over Skype and FaceTime. Most participants during our media training sessions find this form of interview the most difficult – it does not feel natural to stare at a camera lens and you

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QUESTIONS YOU MAY FACE FROM JOURNALISTS ABOUT YOUR ORGANISATIONS’S RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS

To help you in your communication preparations, we hope you will find helpful the list of questions below that our team of journalists are typically putting to businesses and organisations they are interviewing at this time. Our journalist training team is available for Skype/ telephone training to help you and your spokesperson prepare and communicate

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Why Three Key Messages Don’t Cut It Anymore – & What To Do About It

Have you ever surveyed your audience to see whether people can recall your three key messages after your spokesperson has been in the media? Because you did have three key messages, didn’t you? It’s like ... a rule of PR. Three key messages. But when you’re down the pub, are people actually talking about organisations’

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How To Explain A Complicated Thing Like Blockchain In A Media Interview

How do you communicate complex or technical topics like Blockchain in a media interview simply, easily and in layman terms? This is the type of challenge we address in our media training. At the heart of good communication lies simplicity. Which is not the same as 'dumbing down'. Simplicity allows the audience to understand you

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Should Company Spokespeople Expect More Hostile Media Interviews In 2018?

Hostile media interviews. Was the Peterson-Newman Channel 4 interview a watershed moment? Business has an image problem. Whether the focus is on its role in society, levels of executive pay, the privatisation of public services or the alleged behaviour of some of those attending the Presidents Club charity dinner, corporations are under greater scrutiny than

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Tackling The Fallacy That 93% Of Communication Is Non-verbal

So Many Trainers Get This So Wrong Many people misunderstand Albert Mehrabian's research if they think he concluded that people’s first impressions are based 55% on how you look, 38% on how you sound (i.e. the 93% total) and only 7% on what you say. If someone was to give you the spoken instruction “Evacuate

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Is There A Legal Duty To Maximise Profit?

Let us examine the oft-repeated claim that the directors of (especially listed) companies have a legal duty to maximise profit and to minimise tax for the benefit of their shareholders. Under Section 172 of the UK’s 2006 Companies Act, company directors merely have a legal duty to promote the success of their company. Specifically, directors

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Crisis communications plan

Expert Guide: How to Practise Good Crisis Communications

A crisis is defined as: “an intense, unexpected and unstable state that disrupts normal operations and risks highly undesirable outcomes that requires extraordinary measures to restore stability”. Crisis communications management therefore involves the extraordinary measures that are taken to restore stability. A crisis may arise when an issue is ignored or issues management fails or when

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Off the record interview

Expert Guide: How to handle on or ‘off-the-record’

Electric Airwaves is the UK’s largest communications training company and the most frequent question we are asked by participants on our courses is whether they should ever go ‘off-the-record’. Implicitly linked to this is the question ‘do journalists honour such conversations?’ So is there such a thing as ‘off-the-record’? The answer is – ‘yes’ with

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