By: Ben Bishop; Andy Azinger
Talk to the media weekly? Just once in a blue moon? A trio of top-level messages will guide your media interactions and keep you on-point. Ben Bishop, Vice President and managing director with the Lowe Group explains how.
Duration: 15:00
Transcript
Ben Bishop
Having done this work ahead of time for the media, what happens is that you find in your mind a number of different ways to say important concepts that might sound salesy if you hadn’t worked ahead on what those ideas are.
Andy Azinger
That’s Ben Bishop, Vice President and managing director with the Lowe Group, a financial communications agency, whether you talk to the media weekly, or maybe just once in a blue moon, you should have a trio of top-level messages about your firm to guide your media interactions. Well, Ben’s got some ideas. So, stay with us.
[Music]
Andy Azinger
Ben, welcome.
Ben Bishop
Thanks, Andy, good to be here.
Andy Azinger
Well, you know, let’s get right after it. You think there’s a need for core messages to the media, even if a client doesn’t talk much to the media? Why do you feel we should be talking about this?
Ben Bishop
Everybody understands, or has gone through some painful process relating to a mission statement, maybe a vision statement, maybe your core values, you have the idea that these pieces of messaging are important, and they are some more important than others in active use. But none of them give you the words that you can actually say to a reporter who’s asking you a question about what your company does, or how you serve your clients. And if a reporter’s asking you a question that isn’t even about those topics, say it’s what’s happening in the markets right now, what do you think about it, you want to have an opportunity to express what’s most important for those end listeners or readers to understand about your company. What words are you actually going to say. It’s not going to come from your mission statement.
Andy Azinger
So then what are media-facing core messages? What makes them different?
Ben Bishop
What’s different? It’s probably best expressed with some examples. So, say, the mission statement for Google, it’s one that you might have heard, it’s “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Andy Azinger
Okay.
Ben Bishop
How about this vision statement from Teach for America? “One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.”
Andy Azinger
I think I might have heard that.
Ben Bishop
Okay. So, both of those are great, right? Like you understand, just in those few words, okay, here’s, here’s what this company is about, in some sense, right. But neither connects directly to the operational activities of the firm in a direct enough way to make it relevant. For a typical question from a reporter.
Andy Azinger
Yeah.
Ben Bishop
They’re going to ask you in financial context about the market, or they’re going to ask you about something that your business is engaged in, like, maybe you just are involved in a merger, or you’re bought a building, there’s a topic at hand. So, somebody from Teach for America will want to get across that vision, the idea that all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education. But they’re also going to want to have some core messages about what they’re actually doing. Because how they work and what they’re maybe lobbying for. Those points are much more likely to come through in a news story than something about why they exist.
Andy Azinger
Interesting. So, do you have an example of doing this “reporter-centric?”
Ben Bishop
Say that you are a portfolio manager, with an asset manager, a money manager with mutual funds that have to do with responsible investing, and you’re in a conversation with a journalist who’s writing a story, either about the industry or maybe about a particular company that the reporter knows that you have a position in, and the reporter’s interested in why you like that company. Well, you’re going to have some things to say about the specific company. But you’re likely to have an opportunity to say something, for example, along these lines, “No company is perfectly good or evil. At our firm. Our job is to find outstanding investment opportunities among companies working hardest to be socially responsible.”
Andy Azinger
Okay.
Ben Bishop
There’s a core idea there that the company’s working hardest to be so responsible. That’s what they’re doing. And that presumably relates to the topic at hand. In our hypothetical, the journalist is asking about a particular firm. So, what we’re doing here is we’re differentiating the speaker’s firm from the rest of the competitive landscape, or at least much of the competitive landscape. And so this core message is a way to express what’s different about the speaker’s firm in a salient way that connects to a timely topic. And that connection of competitive differentiation to a timely topic at hand is not something that mission statement or a vision statement, or core values or brand promise or an elevator pitch does on its own.
Andy Azinger
That’s interesting, Ben, you know, this is the point of the program where I would try to recap things, before we take a break and let that kind of information sink in. But you didn’t pretty nice job.
Ben Bishop
Of recapping? HA!
Andy Azinger
Ha! Yes! So why don’t we just take a quick break, and when we come back, and our listeners aren’t going to want to miss this, because we’re actually going to have some practical suggestions for crafting words that you can actually say. Right Ben?
Ben Bishop
Sounds good. No guarantee they’ll work but we’ll do it.
Andy Azinger
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! We’ll be right back
Ben Bishop
That’s a good radio laugh, Andy.
Andy Azinger
Heh, heh!
[Music]
Ben Bishop
Yeah, that’s a great question about pitfalls. I guess. There’s all sorts of things that can go wrong in the context of an interview, which is why you prepare, it’s why you have three points in front of you. Because three’s enough.
Andy Azinger
Okay.
Ben Bishop
And it covers a lot of ground, right. But pitfalls at a conceptual level, like way back before the interview, I guess, a big mistake is to fall into the trap of presuming that you are the news, right? If you’re in the financial, I mean, you might be the news. But you probably don’t want to be the news in at least in the context that we’re discussing here. Right? We’re talking about how to get across important ideas about your firm, while you are weighing in as an expert, on another topic.
Andy Azinger
Right. That’s Ben Bishop, Vice President and managing director with the Law Group. During that break, I had just a quick question for him to avoid the pitfall of not being prepared for the media. And that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about next, practical suggestions for crafting words that you can actually say, so why don’t you kind of walk us through them?
Ben Bishop
All right, so we talk about message triangles, because three points gives you plenty of room to move if you’re asked a question that isn’t quite in line with what you have prepared to say, you’re going to likely be able to bridge to one of those points. Also, three points is enough, because you’d the end listener or reader, is only going to be able to absorb so many points of information anyway, right? So, focus on three points, each of which is truly different from one another.
Andy Azinger
Okay.
Ben Bishop
And then as you move along in the process, once you’ve really nailed down those three points, great sub-points for each of the main points. And these sub-points, can restate, clarify or expand on the top-level point. Here’s the key thing to remember here, Andy, you only get so many quotes, right? And the questions are going to come to you in a way that you can’t predict in precise terms. And if you think about the top-level point in the message triangle, the actual point in the triangle, well, that that’s the one that you work the hardest to craft, but these sub points or supporting points, they get at the exact same idea. And you really don’t care whether it’s your top point, or one of these sub-points, that you might be quoted on, because they all express the same theme.
Andy Azinger
Right.
Ben Bishop
That takes some practice and some work. And it’s helpful to have some third-party support to listen to the words that you’re actually saying, because a lot of times a third-party firm might have a sense for what’s important to accompany based on their marketing materials. But then when you actually listen to what they say. It’s maybe a little different from the branded expression of who and what they are.
Andy Azinger
All right, well, take us further on down the road here.
Ben Bishop
Good. The next point that I’ve written here and these guidelines are if you’re going to address a product or service, do it in the context of the firm overall. And you probably want to have a message triangle about a product or service, if that’s the subject of an interview. But what we’re talking about in the context of this discussion is figuring out what are your top three focuses for the firm?
Andy Azinger
Mm hmm.
Ben Bishop
And the next point, I’d say is know that it’s okay to leave out topics that come to mind as important but not salient. And this gets back to something you were saying a moment ago, Andy, like, you know, you’re going to be confident that all three of these points have a value to the reporter. If any of them gets in print, you’ll be happy about that, because it’ll support the expression of your brand that you’re working to convey out into the world.
Andy Azinger
Okay.
Ben Bishop
Okay, other suggestions. We touched on already. Use your firm name in the main points. And when you say it as a quote to the media, this helps to assure that your company name will appear, if you’re quoted.
Andy Azinger
Makes sense.
Ben Bishop
Small, practical point.
Andy Azinger
Yep.
Ben Bishop
Ask yourselves and others internally, whether anything’s missing. You might realize one of your top points should actually become a sub point in another column, leaving room for another clear differentiator to take a top spot. And finally, with regard to the actual wording, we suggest working pretty hard on the wording for the top-level points, the actual three points in the triangle. That’s because the discipline of doing so helps identify the specific words that are useful when it comes time to write a news release. For example, you can literally turn to the message triangle and adapt some quotes from those words, knowing what’s in there, and then by implication, what’s left out. And that way, the materials that you’re developing are more likely to express the right tone the first time. And then don’t sweat as much the precise language of the supporting points, because it’s also true that these things that are said aloud are going to be said in the voice of the individual speakers.
Andy Azinger
Right. And you can and you probably should use it, because you know whether it’s a quarterly report or a quick email that you’re sending to clients, to be able to have that resource to go back to and pull verbiage from build consistency, you know, across the brand.
Ben Bishop
Yeah, that’s exactly right. And having done this work ahead of time for the media, what happens is that you find that you have, in your mind, a number of different ways to say, important concepts that might sound salesy. If you hadn’t worked ahead on what on what those ideas are.
Andy Azinger
Which, you know, it’s really funny, you can always tell, you know, the interview that’s unprepared when the journalist says, “I just think they said the part they weren’t supposed to say out loud.”
Ben Bishop
Heh. Yeah. Yeah.
Andy Azinger
And, without this being an overt sales pitch, but I mean, this program is both to help support and educate and inform your clients. It’s also a broader, kind of, service to the community, to broaden their understanding and knowledge. And it’s this very type of coaching that the Lowe Group does.
Ben Bishop
Yeah, we hope this is useful that that’s this very conversation, Andy, thanks for inviting me to have it with you. This core message exercise is something that we do at the beginning of all engagements, people are often surprised about how useful it is not just in speaking to the media, but in their own communications to their clients as well.
Andy Azinger
Yeah. I will ask if you’d like to leave us with a very brief parting thought.
Ben Bishop
One more thing I’d add is that as you’re testing out whether you’ve got the right core messages, find out if the people who know your firm are nodding along as they listen to what you have to say, as in, you want your core messages to the media to express ethos of the company, such that people who know you are nodding along—“Yep, I get it.”
Andy Azinger
That’s fantastic. Well, as I said, we’ve been talking to Ben Bishop, Vice President, Managing Director of the Lowe Group. And I’d like to wrap this program by reminding our listeners that they can keep up on the LoweDown, both the podcast and the blog, at lowecom.com. Ben, thank you so much.
Ben Bishop
A pleasure, Andy. Thanks for having me.
Andy Azinger
And I’m Andy Azinger. Until next time, take care. All right, that was a pretty good rehearsal. Wouldn’t you say?
Ben Bishop
HA!