NEWS

Previous News Items

• IT'S ALL ABOUT THE LOOK
• HOW OFTEN IS YOUR COMPANY IN THE MEDIA?
• Is Julia Gillard good news or bad for financial services?
• SECRETS OF A SUCCESSFUL PR CAMPAIGN
• MEDIA TRAINING: Lights, camera... inaction - dealing with stage fright

Anyone can make a PR campaign work for them. Anyone can become extraordinarily successful in talking to the media. I mean it. Absolutely anyone.  But like everything worthwhile in life, if you want to be good at it, you have to be willing to put in the time and energy to make it happen.

The secrets of a successful PR campaign boil down to three things:

• CLARITY
• CONFIDENCE
• COMMITMENT

1. CLARITY

You would be amazed how many people come along to our media training sessions without first thinking through exactly why they want to talk to the media. Before you spend hours (days, weeks, months) preparing your PR campaign, think very carefully about your own agenda. Why do you want to go public with what you have to say? Selling your goods and services, supporting a cause or changing the world are all valid reasons. But if it's just that you've always secretly harboured a desire to have your name in print or see yourself on telly, then your time might be better spent hosting a community radio program. Seriously.

Once you're clear about your reasons for going public, you need to be very clear about what you want to say. Every single word you say to a journalist must in some way further your agenda. Otherwise, why bother? You must also be very clear about what you can't say. My advice is when in doubt about going public on a sensitive, difficult or troublesome issue, don't - unless you are willing to speak to your lawyer first.

2. CONFIDENCE

Once your mind is made up that you want a PR campaign, have the courage of your convictions. Become supremely confident in talking to journalists. Easier said than done? Not at all. The first step is becoming comfortable with your material. Dress it up with pretty anecdotes, facts, examples, stories. It's not hard - you do it every day when you relate events to your friends, family and colleagues. A journalist is a person first and an intelligent analyst of facts second, so make your material interesting and memorable.

When you are confident that you know your material like the back of your hand, practice delivering it. My advice is to start by relating it to people you know and like and then to people you don't know and perhaps don't like. Criticism from people you don't know is more likely to be objective and will give you the opportunity to improve your delivery and finetune your messages. And difficult as it may be to hear, such criticism will also be much easier to bear than public criticism in the media.

3. COMMITMENT

This is where we separate the wheat from the chaff. To run a successful PR campaign that furthers your agenda and meets your wants, needs and objectives, you are going to have to make a serious commitment to it. I mean serious. Don't just be involved in your PR strategy, be committed to it! And if you believe in PR and you have invested your time, energy, effort and money in media training and PR strategy, why wouldn't you make an ongoing commitment to it?

Keep honing your skills, seeking out opportunities and engaging the media. Remember the old bacon and eggs story? The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. Be the pig.

To discuss your media training and PR needs, please call 64 Media on 1300 64 MEDIA.