One the most hopeful thanks for my clients when they are coming up with messages is think The Venn diagram. So go to a big white board, go to flipchart. Put a big circle and that is you, that is you want. All their message should go in that circle then have another circle for the media. All the message interested to them. But that circle up, the final circle is for the audience.
What are they interested in? Put a circle there and plot your messages out. Because they are going to be some message that are only important to you. “I have been media trainer since 1984. I am the most experience media trainer on this platform.” That may be a message that I want to say. Chances are no reporter are going to care about that. So for plotting that in The Venn diagram that would be circle under messages I like. But that is outside of the circle for the reporter or the public. So you have got to look to all these message points and plot them in the Venn diagram. Then the real trick is, eliminate everything that is not right in the center. That is not a part of the circle for you, the media and the public.
This brings great clarity to it. Because some messages that are going to be interested to the public. “Oh, we want all your staff for free!” That is the message that would be interesting to your readers, viewers or listeners. But if you are more profit business, that is not your message, you are not the business of giving all your product for free.
So this really helps people I find to look at it through the lens, it brings clarity. You can figure out what not to say then figure out what is truly most important to you, media and public. The big so many people have they go in to the interview then they try to force feed a message to the organization because it is part of our marketing document, part of our prove messages, part of our marketing team created from research form six months ago. So we have to say that. No you do not.
Few consistencies in life, when I can tell you, that is a guarantee. Reporters do not care about your marketing document unless it is reporter who just follows marking issues. They want to know what is the most relevant to this issue now. If it smells marketing staff, they are not interest in it. So that is one big problem people have. They try to push generic marketing message.
You have to look at every single interview you do with a fresh perspective starting from scratch. Thinking of “OK, what we really want the world to know and it is interesting to the media and it is interesting to the public.” The other problem people have is they completely forget their own messages and they constantly spending their whole time on message of interested to the reporter. So they end up say like, “Sure I can understand why the public wants to make our activities…ran out of town.” Well that is interesting is you are a reporter. I doubt that is the message you want to convey. So keep this in mind, you need message absolutely, important to you and to the media and the audience.
