Media Relations 101 with Warren Weeks

On this edition of the speaking of media podcast, we dive into the nuts and bolts of media relations …with one of the industries top media trainers warren Weeks. 

This episode provides a great opportunity for those of you who are looking to understand, media relations, more particularly. 

And maybe if you’re up against it and need to listen to something to quickly prep for your next big media challenge ^^^

This discussion between myself and Warren might be quite valuable. 

Here’s my back-and-forth with one of the industry’s top media trainers.

Transcript

Media Relations 101 – with Warren Weeks

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message. 

Warren Weeks The first interview is most likely going to be one of your worst ones, and so why don't you work those nerves out, do it in-house, or with someone like us, right, which is, you know, jump on Zoom, run them through their paces, give them some tips, here's how you want to adjust, and then the second one you'll find is 30 or 40 percent better.

Keith Marnoch:

On this edition of the Speaking of Media podcast, we dive into the nuts and bolts of media relations with one of the industry's top media trainers, Warren Weeks. This episode provides a great opportunity for those of you who are looking to understand media relations more particularly, and maybe if you're up against it and need to listen to something to quickly prep for your next big media challenge, well, this discussion between myself and Warren might be quite valuable.

Here's my back and forth with one of the industry's top media trainers. And so welcome back to the Speaking of Media podcast, really happy to have with us this week a fellow who really does the essence of what our podcast is about, how to talk to media. We kind of dance around that issue with other guests that we've had on the show, but really pleased to welcome the creator and the presenter of The Art of the Great Media Interview, the ultimate playbook for better media coverage, Warren Weeks.

Welcome to the show, Warren. Thanks, Keith, good to see you again. Great to connect again, and Warren and I have, we've been like ships passing in the night.

We have very similar backgrounds, but we haven't worked directly together. We've worked at some of the same places and I think, but I think we're on the same, we're on the same mindset when it comes to encouraging and trying to educate people around media training. What are some of the biggest misconceptions that people have when you sit down to media train somebody, Warren? Careful, because I can talk about this all day, as I'm sure you could too.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to media training. I think the biggest one that is problematic is that when most people hear that term, they think of what politicians do poorly. They think of the art of the spin doctor and not answering the question and kind of blocking and going over to this thing.

And I can't talk about the actual thing you ask me, but I'm going to talk about my talking point of the day. I'm just going to beat you over the head with it. So a lot of what media trainers, I think, have to do today is to fight that stereotype.

So to me, it's kind of like the Better Call Saul kind of political advisor, used car salesman type of media training, which for the most part, the folks that I hang out with and that are in my circle, that's not the brand of media training that we do. So that's the biggest preconception that I think damages the profession. And I think it leads to a lot of terrible interviews as well.

And there are certainly media trainers who teach that. And I'm not here to say one is right or wrong, but on the whole, I don't think it works very well. And so that's the one that I think that would be my number one answer.

There really is a difference between and you're dealing mostly with, I'm going to say you're dealing with mostly corporate clients, not so much political clients, correct? I stopped working with politicians about a decade ago. And that was a that was an actual choice that I made. And, you know, have I worked with a few over the last decade? Like, you know, you'll be in a session and one person might be a counselor.

But I definitely have emails in my in my inbox from people representing cabinet ministers or people running for political office that I have just said, no, thanks. I'll gladly forward that on to someone else. But I just I don't enjoy working with those folks.

And again, some of them are great at it. I use some examples of politicians in my media training lessons who do it really well, but the ones who don't. And I just think and this might sound a little kind of, I don't know, weird, but I think if you spend your time working with politicians, they have a certain set of rules.

And I think it's kind of like you end up marinating in those bad rules. And I think that spills over to the corporate work. And so I decided about a decade ago to not work with politicians as a rule.

And I have to say, my life has been much better since then. Because really, I always find like the political interview or preparing for the political interview to be almost very technical. And often the biggest downfall of those is that it sounds technical, and it doesn't always hit its mark.

But it is a little bit different than than the corporate world. You must admit to that. Absolutely, for sure.

Well, it's like who who's your boss? Who are you trying to make happy during the course of the interview? And I think for a for an interview to be done well, I think that there's there's different audiences that need to be made. You know, you have to take the audience, the public, they have to be pleased by this, the journalist, they have to be they have to get what they're looking for as well. And then whoever your boss is, whether it's your the president of your organization or the leader of your party, all three of those, I think if all three of those individuals are moderately happy, you've had a pretty good interview.

If you if it's asymmetric, and one of those, like if you're if it's clear that you're just doing your interview to make your boss happy, and you don't give a shit about the audience, or you're doing it to get reelected, and you don't care about this or that, I think that's when you get out of whack. So I think you have to have a bit of a balance there. You know, in a way, I sympathize with with some of the politicians who I never thought I'd say that sentence, but they're basically given the rules, like here are four things you can say today.

And you can't talk about this or this or this or this, or there's going to be repercussions for you and your career. So I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's just you can you can see those people when they're doing their interviews that there's they've kind of been boxed into this little thing.

I think Kamala Harris is a great example of that. She was told for the first number of weeks, and I took so much heat on LinkedIn, people like, oh my god, you're a Trump support. I'm like, no, I'm just I'm looking at interviews.

And he was talking to everyone. He would any door that was open or any microphone that was on, he would go and have a three hour conversation. I don't really have a sense of who she is as a person or what she stands for.

But the first couple weeks, it was like zero interviews. And then it was these really scripted kind of managed things. And our PR people are waving their arms and they're cutting stuff short.

That's the kind of stuff that doesn't fly today because people are looking for authenticity. People are looking for a sense of like, would I want to have a beer with this person? Would I let this person watch my dog for the afternoon or babysit my kids? And I guess that, you know, trying to make that seem conversational, this is sort of the ultimate balance you have to try to draw in media relations or speaking to the media. Trying to be authentic, but also trying to be disciplined with your message.

And I know that you teach how you basically try to avoid being, I think a lot of people worry about being misquoted. I think a lot of people worry about what's going to come out in print form or online or whatever after they've spoken to a journalist. Without giving away all your trade secrets here, trying to limit the amount of information or messages that you have and trying to be nuanced in the way that you continue to drive them is one of the things that you profess or that you teach, correct? Yeah.

And I'm happy to give away all my, I wouldn't even call them secrets. You know, anything that I say in a session or a course, I have kind of borrowed and picked up from someone else. So like, you know, we talked about this before we started recording, like none of this stuff is original from my mind, but I think every trainer has their own kind of take on it.

I have this line that a media interview is not a conversation, but it should sound like one. What I mean by that is a lot of the mistakes, like, you know, if you go around a table and you ask people in a session, any previous interviews they've had or any experiences they've had, you get the same set of complaints from people. You know, I did this interview in the past and they kind of took me out of context, or I did this interview with this one outlet and they kind of twisted my words around or they were out to get me or they don't, they're too stupid to understand our business.

And if you really drill down, most of those mistakes, I think now some of them are, are they terrible reporters? Yes. But I think the majority of them are the person who's doing the interview, the journalist and the spokesperson, you're actually speaking different languages. The journalist is speaking media interview and they know how that process works.

The spokesperson is speaking just conversation at the pub. And when you, for example, like if you have a 25 minute interview with a journalist and you're doing like 80% of the talking at the average rate of speech, that's like 2,500 words of speech that you've delivered to this person. Now, how many quotes are you typically going to get in a story the next day, whether it's on radio, TV or print, it's going to be two, maybe three.

So you're giving them 2,500 words, but they're only going to choose 40 or 50. That's like, that's not a very huge percentage. And so the way I think about it is you're going to have a couple of key points that you want to get across, obviously, and you have to do your prep, but I would think of it as kind of like a chef.

So if I have this main dish that I like, let's say it's a steak and I want the steak, I want to present it to you. And I want you to be so enticed by this, that you want to eat it. Now, if I just take the steak off the grill, slap it on a plate and show it to you, and you're not, it's clear to me, you're not interested in this.

Well, what do I need to do now? A politician would take that steak and just kind of grab you by the head and shove it in your mouth. What you need to do is take it back to the kitchen and jazz it up a little bit. So maybe you throw a nice baked potato beside it.

Maybe you put a little pepper on there, maybe a kind of a sauce or the plating's a little different, or maybe some asparagus and you bring it out a second time. And the person's like, oh, this is great. And they start digging in.

It's the same dish. So when I tell people to come up with their content, it's not three things that you repeat verbatim until you're blue in the face. It's three or four or five key points that you, before the interview, you ask yourself, what are a couple of ways that I could describe each of these? How could I, point number one, how can I describe that in a kind of a different way? How can I get to the same destination through maybe an example, an anecdote, an analogy, a statistic, a quote, a graph, a chart? And so that allows you to be consistent throughout the course of the interview.

But if you had someone who was watching or listening, it wouldn't sound like you're just kind of beating them over the head at the same point. So that does a couple things for me. It adds consistency to your content without making it sound robotic.

And it takes out the oxygen from the interview for new stuff to be added. Now, if you're going to have a seven-minute TV interview, that's going to be tight, right? You're going to have a couple key points. If it's an hour-long podcast, you're going to have to have more content and kind of loosen things up.

There's still rules, but I think they're a little bit adjustable based on the nuances of the interview. Yeah. We're speaking with Warren Weeks.

He is the creator of The Art of the Great Media Interview, the ultimate playbook for better media coverage. And we appreciate his time. Warren, my experience and maybe others is that leaders who are maybe not so bold often tend to gravitate to, let's just not do the interview or let's not say anything and take our chances.

I'm imagining that you run into that a lot. What's your best argument to try to get people to be more transparent or more authentic when it comes to responding to difficult or challenging interview requests? I will say that I don't think every interview request needs to be answered. But having said that, I think that there are a lot of lost opportunities, which is I think what you're kind of alluding to.

So if you're a CEO or you own your own company and there's something controversial going on and the media asks you to do an interview, automatically that kind of fight or flight thing kicks in. If you're smart, you're in your mind, okay, what's the possible upside? What's the possible downside? And usually in their imagination, the downside is big enough for them to say, screw it, I'm not going to do it. Because if I don't do it, I'm going to manage the downside.

The bigger the situation, the bigger the crisis, I think the advice that is, if you think of like, this is an old example, but if you think of like the one I always think of is Tiger Woods in 2009, when he had that situation, he hit the tree and his wife was chasing him with a golf club. Now here's an individual at the top of his game, clearly an intelligent guy. I think at the time he was a billionaire close to it.

So no lack of access to resources. So he could have hired the best trainers, consultants, whatever in the world. And from the time he smacked into that tree until his tearful press conference, do you want to guess how many days it was? Wow.

I know it was a while. 84 days. Wow.

84 days. And so what ends up happening over the course of that 84 days, and keep in mind, like that was in a pretty early era of social media, wasn't in a TikTok world. Twitter was just kind of new.

If happened today, it was, it was. And so if you look at what happened between those two events, those 84 days, his life, his career, his marriage, his, his, his assets, his golf game, everything was destroyed. And you saw it just bit by bit, a thousand cuts, this person, you know, there's this vacuum and it ends up getting filled with, with, with information from other people.

Now, that's a very huge example of a, you know, a global superstar, but this happens to smaller organizations as well. And if you, if you, if you do the proper training, I think that you, you mitigate that downside. And so, and this is where we always tell people, look, do the half day, do the session, do the online course, read a book, listen to podcasts like yours.

Just listening to this podcast, I would imagine would take someone and just elevate their media relation skills, like two and a half percent. Right. And so it's getting in that mindset and going through some simulated interviews and having some tough questions and understanding, this is like lifting weights.

Every time you do it, those muscles get a little bit bigger. And I really do feel that most of those interview requests should be accepted. I have this line that I say to people, if the media call and you turn them down, a puppy dies somewhere.

So that usually gets the, the animal lovers in the room, but of course you can't just do it willy nilly. You have to have the training. And so I'm at a stage in my career, like I'm obviously, you know, I've been doing this 30 years.

I'm in the back nine of my career. And I used to want to just convince everyone that this is the way to do it. I've realized really how many people there are and how many companies.

And so I actually don't waste a lot of breath trying to convince people who don't want to do this. I'm just working with the ones who do. And so someone else, you know, and you, you end up seeing a lot of those companies fall flat on their face and they fodder for, for podcasts like ours and for social media and whatnot to do.

Right. I guess the big one right now in Canada, as we talk over the Christmas holidays, the, the holiday season here in 2024, Prime Minister Trudeau up against it. And it's a very political situation.

It's not sort of like, you know, they've come up with some sort of a product that's defective or whatever. It's really about his own personal legacy and how he moves forward and so on. But his choice to try to rag the puck and, you know, have the holidays kind of mute or make people forget about his situation.

It doesn't seem like that's going to work out. And it's frustrating for people like you and I, who probably don't believe that that's the way to go, but probably in the end, this isn't going to work out for him. The damage I think he's doing to his family's name is tremendous.

And I think that this actually spills over onto his dad's legacy as well. I try not to comment on politics too much, but this is a story that he's been getting dragged in the press for quite some time and it's getting to this fever pitch. I heard that he recently, I don't know if this is true, but I heard that he canceled all of his end of year interviews.

He usually sits down with, you know, he's canceled all of those, but he's doing these little online videos and these cutesy little comedy bits. The words that come to mind for me are delusional and just a huge lack of self-awareness and kind of read the room, read the room a little bit, buddy. Like, I don't know what the correct political moves would be, but from a media relations standpoint, I think that this is a huge reputational damage to him, his legacy, his father, and just the country as a whole.

Like, you know, you have got Donald Trump trolling Canada daily on Twitter or X. It's just, it's embarrassing. Right. I mean, it's a great example of, no, I'm not going to talk to the media as a third party arbiter of this, but I am going to put out my own stuff.

I'm not, I'm not willing to be, I'm not willing to be sort of tested against a third party inquiry, but I've decided that I'm just going to say what I want to say. And I think that that really exposes the level or the situation that he is in personally, but other places that try to do that should realize how that doesn't really fly as well when you're trying to be asked by journalists and be tested by journalists, really, you know, that it just doesn't really work out. Right.

I, you know, I'm a big proponent of, and we're going to talk to some people in the weeks ahead about sort of smaller media markets kind of dying and it doesn't really matter too much. Well, I think it does. And I think that no matter how big the outlet is, if they have an audience that's interested in what you're doing, you need to figure out how you're going to deal with them and have a relationship with them.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how things have changed since COVID. Are companies in your world, in the business that you do and that I'm dabbling in currently, are you finding that there's more companies looking to do this or less? Are they feeling like they can kind of live in their own world of social or do they feel like suddenly they're more accountable to the audiences or the clients that they have? My sense is that, and this is just from a Canadian perspective, I, you know, you'd probably have to ask someone else in the U.S., but I imagine it would be the same, is if you look at some of the things that have taken place since the pandemic, and I don't think they were necessarily pandemic related, but just in Canada, the number of journalists who lost their jobs is in the many, many thousands. Like there was, you know, Bell on, and they would famously do it just before their Bell Let's Talk mental health thing, but they let go what, 4,800 people, Rogers cutting people, Chorus cutting people.

You'll hear stories about these little community papers going out of business or just going all digital, and so when you're media training someone, who are you media training them to talk to? Like there are very, there are fewer outlets, fewer beat reporters. If you look at that shiny, beautiful Globe and Mail building we have in downtown Toronto, most of the reporters are not in it. Like they're sitting at home, so there's no buzz of the newsroom.

The Hamilton Spectator, anyone who drives down the QEW would see that, the famous building, and the sign lit up, it's empty. So, you know, I'm kind of glad that, I love talking about interviews and media, and I just, I really, really love this topic, but I... Much appreciated, yeah. I'm kind of glad that I'm not 25 or 30 and just starting out, because I don't think, now, will it be replaced by something else? Yes.

Am I being a little bit like nostalgic and kind of romanticizing it? Sure, but I, now I think corporately, there's a, there's a bit of a lag. People are still doing it. I think it's a skill you still need to have, but I would think that every year there's going to be a bit of a decrease in the demand for it, and it is being replaced by other things.

People, it's being fragmented, TikTok, you know, all these different outlets. It's going to be more of a kind of a one-to-one situation, and if you think of it as a citizen, to me, and this is kind of outside the realm of media relations, but I think that, you know, if you ask yourself, why is the media there? They're there to hold governments and corporations to account. What are you guys doing? It's like, while all these citizens are out doing their jobs and living their lives and paying their taxes, the media is supposed to be the watchdog, and when you don't have that watchdog, what's going on? And I think there's a lot of shenanigans taking place that Canadians and Americans and whatnot are not hearing about, and so I think that's one of the, and you don't really see that.

You can't feel it. There's a lot of BS going on behind the scenes that, in the past, reporters would have uncovered, and I think that's the biggest loss. Yeah, I mean, I think with the advent of Trump era, truth and gaslighting certainly comes to mind, and there seems to be less, you know, accountability being had when it comes to trying to hold up people who are, you know, in some cases touting outright lies, but otherwise proving that words really do matter, that they're really important, and that they can actually change or invent new things that really weren't a reality for people before, and not having media be as, well, as trusted.

I think that the biggest part of the Trump thing has been that people have lost a sense of investment in journalism, and again, we'll talk about that in other episodes, but we've definitely moved into a new world when it comes to dealing with the media. Is there anything specifically that you talk about when you're training people when it comes to having a relationship with the reporters? What kinds of things are effective and, I guess, genuine or transparent when it comes to dealing with reporters? We know that, you know, sometimes there are legal concerns or limitations. There are, you know, when you're in a labor situation, maybe, you know, you've got to kind of think about dealing with the media less, but for the most part, I'm definitely somewhat a proponent of speaking more to media than less.

What kinds of things have to happen before you run into a big problem, a big story that comes against you, and then expect media to sort of see it your way? What kinds of things have you put into play in the past to build those kind of relationships? To me, it's about the story. What is the story? The relationship, you know, I find that, you know, because it's called media relations, but those relationships, I find, are, you know, they're not gonna, I don't think a relationship with a reporter is going to help you pitch a story and, you know, get it covered, unless it's a good story. So does it help to have a relationship with a journalist that they know who you are, that they know you're a straight shooter, that they know you're gonna answer the question? Over many months, I think, you know, over a year, year and a half, if you build that relationship up, you'll have some credits in the bank with them.

I think the biggest thing that people can do when you're preparing for an interview, or if you're the corporate communications person preparing someone to speak with a journalist, is to get in the journalist's mindset. So, and this is tough to do, so like literally take off your hat of your job and say, okay, now I'm gonna play the role of the journalist. I'm gonna strawman their kind of point of view.

What is their job? What are they trying to do? What's gonna make their editor happy? What are they expecting from me? I'm not saying just to deliver that to them 100%, but I think you have to understand what they're looking for. They're not necessarily looking for a written statement that doesn't answer the question. They're looking for something that serves their audience.

And so, again, you have to kind of triangulate. You have to use two parts of your brain. You have to make your organization happy.

You have to make the audience happy. And the journalist, by extension, you know, if you have an interview and you're not answering the question, what's the journalist gonna do? They're going to attack more. They're gonna kind of get riled up.

You're gonna get their creative juices going. So, I think the quickest shortcut to a short interview and better coverage is doing the journalist's job for them. Banking like a journalist.

What makes a quote? How long is a quote? Like if you're doing an interview on CTV, evening news, if you go back and look at episodes from last week with a stopwatch, there's gonna be an average length of a quote. And that average length of a quote might be 12 seconds. And if all your answers are five minutes long, then, right? So, if you can take your most important thing, say in 12 seconds, make it relate to the audience, it sounds basic, but it's about the story and it's about thinking like a journalist, if you can do that.

You feel like when you're training that the biggest thing you can leave with people who are maybe uninitiated prior to you showing up is confidence in terms of how they feel going into an interview. Because we both know that if someone's being asked to speak to the media, they have a level of expertise. They have a level of insight.

But the thing that usually trips them up is they don't always know exactly what their rights are or how far or how little they can go into pushing back on what the journalist is asking. I would say it's more competence than confidence. So, it's like the skills, what are my rights? What can I do? Let's simulate this.

Ask me a hypothetical question. How do I handle that? If they make a mistake during the simulated interview, stopping it, backing it up, and starting it again, but doing it so in a kind of a safe manner. I think the confidence is a byproduct of it.

You've seen that TED talk of the woman, you do a power pose and you're like Wonder Woman. That's going to get you killed in an interview because false confidence is a trap. Now, I think competence leads to confidence.

Again, I go back to, I don't think there's a shortcut, but you don't have to go to university for this. You don't have to have a six-month course. In a half day, most smart executives can wrap their mind around this and rewire their brains in terms of the way they handle it.

If they have a good corporate communications team, and you and I both know there are some really great people out there. I tell people that one of the single most important things you can do before an interview is to do a practice interview with your comms team before the real interview. The first interview is most likely going to be one of your worst ones.

So, why don't you work those nerves out, do it in-house or with someone like us, which is jump on Zoom, run them through their paces, give them some tips. Here's how you want to adjust. And then the second one you'll find is 30 or 40% better.

Those would be like, get the skills down. And just like anything else, if you're trying to like, you know, I've got a guitar on the corner here. I find that when I don't practice it, I don't get any better at it.

You know, and buying guitars and buying pedals doesn't make you better playing the guitar. So, it's all about the skills and just practicing it. It's just, it's basic for, you know, play the violin, you want to be a better baseball player, better dancer, whatever.

If you do it once, you're going to be okay. If you do it 10 times, you're going to be better. If you do it 100 times, you're going to be pro.

What do you tell people would constitutes a successful interview? What kinds of things do, should people feel like they accomplished when they're talking to an editor or media or a reporter in the media? One thing is to sort of manage expectations in that not every story is going to be a glowing, beautiful, complimentary story that you're going to want to print and put on the wall of your office. If you think of a story that's created by a journalist, what do you actually have control over? Very little. You know, you don't have control over the headline.

You can influence it, but you don't have any control over it. If the reporter is talking to your adversary or the head of a union or your competitor, you have zero say over what that person says. You have very little say over how the journalist is going to kind of position the story and the context and their wording.

All you have really a hundred percent control over is your quotes. And so I tell people to seize that control as much as you can. And again, doing all the things we talked about before, it can't just be kind of patting yourself on the back, kind of hyperbolic BS.

How can I describe the story in 20 seconds or less that serves the audience's needs, but also serves my company's needs? That would be my biggest piece of advice for that. You've got a couple of good year-end contributions out there on LinkedIn and other places where people can find your work under Warren Weeks. Looking ahead, as we kind of wind down 2024, what kinds of things are you looking for? What kinds of things do you think you need to add to your tool offering, I guess, to people that you're training moving into the new year? Knowing that, as you mentioned a couple of times, you know, we live in a social media world.

That seems to always be evolving. Who's on top and where people are actually getting or listening to the news or the information that they're consuming out there. Anything particular that you're sort of looking towards or wondering how it's going to work out in the year ahead? That's a tough one.

I look at, and you know, algorithms get changed and adjusted, but, and I don't know your take on this. I'd be interested to hear, but like LinkedIn to me has just become almost unusable. You kind of have to be there because there's no real alternative.

You know, like what's, what's the second best LinkedIn? I'm not sure. I'm not sure what that is. So if you're in the corporate world, you need to be there, but I find the stuff that's getting the most traction these days is just, it's just BS, like little emojis and high level and sort of, you know, congratulatory humble brag kind of stuff.

And so for whatever reason, that stuff's getting promoted quite a bit. And so LinkedIn is, you know, it's, it's, it's tough. I've, I'm doing everything I can to avoid going on TikTok.

Like, I'm at, you know, you get to my age, you're mid fifties, I'm like TikTok. And I know you're on, like kudos to you, but like, man, I don't know how much I'm delivering there, but my sense of LinkedIn is that it feels like it's been a bit of a refuge for people who've kind of given up on Facebook and a few other sort of really broad social platforms. And they've taken it to be less of sort of like a, here's a, here's an announcement about a hiring or here's a promotion I got, or here's some, you know, insights into my, into my sector.

But it feels like it's gotten a lot more social LinkedIn and people have kind of decided that they want to share in the way that they do maybe on Facebook or Instagram with their professional network or their, or their, the colleagues that they deal with professionally, I guess. But it's definitely, it's definitely, I feel like in 2024, that took a really big leap forward and it really did change the nature of what was going on in LinkedIn. But it seems fake to me.