I love doing media training during election cycles. Just watch the news or any debate, I tell my clients, and you’ll see the good, the bad and the downright ugly of candidates caught in the glare.
Campaign season is like a carnival midway replete with contortionists, escape artists and well-coiffed automatons. Marvel as Worm Man wriggles out of answering that tough question! Press a button and hear Katatonic Kandidate slavishly repeat canned phrases over and over and over again!
What we see candidates doing – some more adeptly than others – is applying the lessons we try to impart through media training, typically a four- to six-hour session that focuses on how to deal effectively with the media and includes several rounds of videotaped mock interviews.
Two of the most important lessons: First, your job as spokesperson is to tell your story, not dutifully answer questions. Second, you can control any interview by setting your own agenda, deciding the most important things you want to say – your key messages – and making sure you say them no matter what you are asked.
Key messages are the handful of points that tell your story in a nutshell. They need to be short and simple enough so that both you and your audience will remember them. They need to be repeated early and often to help shape the story and even the headline. And whether you’re a candidate selling your own political “brand” or a spokesperson representing your organization, messages need to quickly answer these questions: “So what?” “Who cares?” and “What does this mean to me?”
Most important, your messages need to resonate with your audience and connect with them on a deeper emotional level. As Maya Angelou said: “At the end of the day, people won’t remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.”
The best spokespersons know all of this – how to use their messages to tell a story, how to deflect difficult questions while pivoting back to a key message, and how to paint a vivid picture that leaves their audience not just thinking but feeling something.
They also understand the important difference between message discipline and message tyranny, a distinction we were reminded of during a debate between candidates in January’s U.S. Senate run-off election in Georgia, Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler and Democratic challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock.
Or, as we now know them, “Appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler” and “Radical Liberal Raphael Warnock.”
Neither candidate strayed far from their tried-and-true messages honed over months of stump speeches and campaign ads, but Loeffler was panned mercilessly for repeating her key messages verbatim – and incessantly.
CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein tagged Loeffler as a “human avatar for Republican talking points,” adding, “It was almost as if you were putting coins in a jukebox and getting A4: ‘Socialism,’ A6: ‘Radical Liberal Raphael Warnock.’”
“The voice from my home alarm system telling me ‘the front door is ajar’ sounds less robotic than Kelly Loeffler,” tweeted Republican strategist Ana Navarro-Cárdenas. “It matches her robotic smirk/smile,” one of her Twitter followers responded.
Even Fox News piled on. Host Steve Hilton showed a montage mocking Loeffler and said, “I think this could be put in the category of: Thanks Kelly Loeffler, I think we got the message.”
Ouch!
Whatever your occupation or political proclivities, repeating canned messages verbatim makes it obvious to anyone listening that you’re not only avoiding the questions posed to you but that you’re simply regurgitating words put into your mouth by someone else. I encourage clients to internalize the written key messages we work together to develop and tell the story in their own way, adding anecdotes that help personalize it whenever possible.
Debate watchers heard from Warnock that he was ready to get to work for the people of Georgia, but what made many remember that was the story he told of his father waking him at dawn and telling him it was time to get his boots on. It was a message, but a message he made his own.
Crafting the key messages that tell your story, finding ways to make them your own, and delivering them in an authentic way that resonates with your audience is a core task of all communicators, whether you’re a CEO sitting for an interview with The Wall Street Journal or the head of a community nonprofit talking to a local TV reporter.
That’s why media training is an essential need for designated spokespersons at organizations of all sizes, and not just to help you deal effectively with the media and achieve the goals you have set for external communications. A key message development and spokesperson training exercise can also enhance your ability to connect with all of the audiences you communicate with directly, including employees, board members, investors, customers, potential recruits and other stakeholders.