You finally land the media opportunity you have been working towards. You have been asked to put someone up from your business to join Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid on the Good Morning Britain sofa tomorrow morning. That’s hundreds of thousands of eyes on your brand.
But who do you send?
This can be a really difficult decision and will often involve having frank conversations with your colleagues.
Here are my top tips for deciding who the best person to send is:
1. Don’t just automatically put up your most senior person
This is an opportunity to publicise your product to a huge audience. Think about who the audience of GMB are and then think about who in your business will do the best job at connecting with them.
When you get chances to increase the awareness of your brand at this scale then you need to put hierarchy and egos to one side. If you own the business don’t just assume you will be who the show wants to hear from. There may be someone better placed.
2. Think about what the show wants/needs
If you get offered a slot on This Morning with Phil and Holly they will want to feature someone who will resonate with their ‘mum’ audience. People who may not have any previous knowledge of the issue you are talking about.
Organisations like the BBC and Sky are working really hard to have a more diverse range of experts and spokespeople on their shows. When I started doing PR for a law firm I would always offer news organisations young, BAME, female lawyers if I could. The BBC is open about its 50:50 Project which aims to achieve an equal gender balance in the guests booked on their news programmes. In 2018 only 27 per cent of the shows involved in the project hit the 50:50 target. In 2019 74 per cent did.
Women in Journalism published a report earlier this year that showed that in one week of monitoring every expert that appeared on Newsnight was white.
So if you have people working with you that help shows meet their targets you are going to have a much better chance of getting booked to appear than if you can only offer up white men in the 50+ bracket.
3. Put up your Beyonce
Every organisation has people that are natural performers and those that aren’t. Some people ae excellent at running a business but not very good at public speaking.
You can train people to be better and I have spent hours training people to shine on screen during presentation and media training.
But if you have a Beyonce put her up there. Don’t bench someone with bags of charm and a huge network because they aren’t as senior or you want everyone to have a go. This isn’t about being polite. It’s about grabbing an opportunity to profile your brand with both hands.
Think about the audience. Not the internal politics.
4. Don’t depend on the same people
This may seem to contradict my earlier point but it shouldn’t. You can put up your Beyonce while not relying on her for everything.
People may get bored of the same face over and over. You also have the issue that if one journalist doesn’t like them you might not get slots on that show again if you only ever offer up the same person.
Also, what if they leave? What if they aren’t part of your business in the future and take that relationship with the media with them? Don’t rely on just one person.
5. Put up the expert
Don’t put someone up unless they actually know what they are talking about. They need to know the issue at hand and have some relevant expertise.
Don’t try and fake it.
They don’t need to be an academic but they need to be able to speak with authority and clarity on the issue.
6. MEDIA TRAIN EVERYONE!
Media training is an invaluable life skill and everyone should do it once a year, no matter how much of a pro they might think they are.
It doesn’t have to be expensive but make sure the training includes opportunities to role play and get feedback and to be able to watch yourself back. These things are essential if you want it to be worthwhile.
If you want to book on to one of my media training sessions drop me a line at alison@enlightenpr.co.uk
If you want a copy of my book 100 PR and Content Ideas for your Business click here.
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