JEB Bush and Media Training

“I’ve learned not to answer questions… you answer what you want to say” @JebBush on #Trump vs #Clinton https://t.co/oL4oI0xmks

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) December 18, 2015

I believe strongly in learning from the mistakes of others.  Here's a great opportunity to do just that. 

Republican Presidential Candidate, JEB Bush was being interviewed on CNN and was being asked some uncomfortable questions about whether or not he would support Donald Trump.  Now, Gov. Bush has obviously received media training on how to handle difficult questions from the press.  That's good and important for any politician.  The bad part is JEB has only learned the mechanics of dealing with the media and not the deeper reasons behind his media training.

After repeated questions about whether he would support Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton should Trump earn the GOP nomination, Bush said, "I've learned not to answer questions.  That's one of the things you do now in political discourse.  You answer what you want to say."  OK, so that is certainly part of media training, but you don't tell that to the media!  You are essentially saying live on national television, "I've been trained to be deceptive to the American public."  

A better answer would have been, "I didn't answer your question because I don't think it's relevant.  I don't expect Donald Trump to be our nominee because I plan to earn the votes of Republicans across the country."  He also could have used the standard, "I don't want to answer hypothetical questions."  Both of those would have been much better messages for the audience while still avoiding either throwing support behind Donald Trump or worse, behind Hillary Clinton.

The key to managing your media appearances well is to skillfully return the conversation to the issues you want to talk about.  But, that has to be done in an easy, comfortable, and confident manner.  Just like any sport or competition, you don't ever want to tell the other side what your strategy is.  You don't see quarterbacks yelling out post patterns for the defense to hear.  Chess masters don't write down their next 7 moves on a napkin.  Politicians shouldn't reveal their interview tactics with the interviewer during the interview either.

CNN cut a clip of that interview and posted it to Twitter.  From there, it got picked up by The Daily Caller.  Fortunately for Gov. Bush, it didn't make the front page of Drudge and that specific clip is not in CNN's video rotation.  This gaff could have been a lot worse if more media outlets had picked it up.

It takes lots of work to be able to appear effortless.  Your media training shouldn't be just about what to say, but about how to say it and why it needs to be said in that way.  In order to be successful in a difficult interview, you need to be confident that you can comfortably control the message regardless the line of questioning.  Until you have that confidence, you need more practice.

Don't Fail Criticism

Robert Fulghum's book, Letters to our Children, is a collection of advice given from parents and grandparents to their offspring.  In one essay titled, Don't Fail Failure, a grandfather tells his grandson that some form of failure is inevitable in life.  Failure itself is not the end.  The key is to learn from that failure, get back up, and try again.  I believe the same thing is true with criticism.  It's important for you and your company to learn how to effectively deal with corrections and complaints.  Don't fail criticism.

No one likes hearing what he or she is doing wrong.  But, criticism, both valid and invalid, is inevitable.  In my many years in broadcast journalism, I've seen and received plenty of criticism.  I've covered corporations who have received criticism and watched how they responded.  I've been the target of criticism myself.  Whether it's from angry viewers, politicians unhappy with my reporting or paid consultants who nitpick at the slightest issues with my on-air performance, criticism is never fun.  But, those experiences have helped me develop a set of guidelines for receiving and responding to criticism.

Don't Get Defensive

This first step is probably the hardest.  When we are being criticized, it feels like we are being personally attacked.  Our natural fight or flight instinct kicks in.  Neither fighting back nor fleeing will help you or your company benefit from criticism.  Only bad outcomes are possible when you are feeling defensive.  No matter how nasty the comments or corrections are, you must remain above the fray.  If you need to step away from the criticism for a few minutes to let those fight or flight feelings fade, then do it.  Just make sure when you do come back to the face the music, your defenses are down and you are open to learning from the experience.

Give the Critic the Benefit of the Doubt 

This step may actually help you with step one.  Assume the person who is flaming your company on social media is actually a good person who only has your best interests at heart.  That's probably not true, but it doesn't matter.  What's important is how you respond and assuming your critic has altruistic intentions will put you in a better frame of mind to react to the communication.

Look for Nuggets of Truth

Even in the nastiest, most unfair, and most offensive critiques, there is often a small kernel of truth.  It may be something you hadn't noticed before or hadn't thought of from that particular viewpoint. Once you sift through the nasty, angry, and intentionally hurtful words to find that valid idea, you can start to benefit from what would otherwise only be a negative encounter.  This is only possible if you've already done steps one and two.  If you are closed off, defensive and assume your critic is a bitter jerk who spends his days in his underwear in his basement trolling the internet to pick on innocent, unsuspecting companies, you stand no chance of finding that small, correctable point.

Respond From the High Road

Remember your critic is also a potential customer.  No matter how much vitriol has been posted to your company's homepage, don't respond in kind.  Instead, be kind.  Even if you aren't able to win this person over, anyone else who sees this interaction might still be persuadable.  If you remain professional, you are much more likely to earn new fans.

Examples

I have two examples of corporate responses to criticism to share with you, and they both came as a result of my recent blog, Brands in Drought.  In case you missed that post, I was criticizing a promo running on KSLA, the CBS station in Shreveport, LA.  I argued the commercial they were running for their weather department was doing more to hurt the reputation and brand image of their weather team than it was helping.  I suggested another commercial should be cut that promoted the experience and professionalism of KSLA's weather staff.

I believe KSLA did a great job of reacting to this public criticism.  They didn't get defensive.  KSLA never sent me an angry email or demanded that I withdraw my blog post.  They didn't publicly attack me or try portray me as a disgruntled, former employee.  Instead, they read the criticism and looked for the nuggets of truth.  I'm not privy to the inner workings of station management any more, but I do know the blog post was discussed.  As a result, the station pulled the ad that was the topic of my criticism and have now replaced it with one that does a better job of promoting the professionalism and experience of their weather department.

In this case, KSLA never directly communicated with me about my criticism.  That's probably the best strategy from their point of view.  My criticism was posted on my website and social media, not theirs.  KSLA has a lot more power on air and online than my company does, so any direct response to my blog would have generated much more attention than the blog ever could have on its own.  As a result, most of KSLA's audience doesn't know that I criticized the company.  They just know they aren't seeing the bad weather commercial anymore.

I did receive criticism from a visitor to www.silvertongue.marketing about that same post.  Here it is followed by my response.  Here's your chance to be a critic.  How well did I do at following my own guidelines?

Rodney C. Lewis A day ago 

Perhaps, if one was truly serious about brand identity, one would have a copy editor look over one's post. 

Especially considering the first two paragraphs have no less than five AP Style errors. 

You credibility looks shakier than your writing.

Godammit A day ago 

your*

Stephen Parr An hour ago 

Rodney,

Thanks for visiting silvertongue.marketing and taking the time to read my blog post. You are correct. I didn't follow AP Style in this blog posting. For example, you'll notice I double space after every period throughout the article. I do this because I believe the double space makes it easier to visualize the end of one thought and the beginning of another. AP disagrees.

I believe excellent communication is more about function than form. TV commercials don't follow AP Style. Neither do print or radio ads. They are successful in influencing the behaviors of the buying public nonetheless. Even your comment doesn't follow AP Style. Your second sentence isn't actually a sentence. Despite that, I was fully able to receive and understand the points you were making. Again, function was more important than form. If it was the other way around, I'd probably write everything in Haiku because that would be a lot of fun. Not effective at all, but certainly fun.

When viewed through the lens of function being more important than form, this particular blog post can only be seen as an unmitigated success which bolstered my company's credibility. There was a dramatic spike in unique visitors, page views and time spent on www.silvertonge.marketing immediately after I published this blog and shared it to social media. People who did not know about my company before the post spent time browsing my site. That's effective marketing.

It was also effective and persuasive communication. In just a few hours after this blog was posted, management at KSLA visited my site and read my post. They then pulled the specific promo I was criticizing. Before the blog, it was in heavy rotation. After the blog, it never ran again. It's taken a few weeks, but KSLA produced a new weather promo highlighting the professionalism and experience of their weather team. They show how that knowledge and the weather technology can be used to protect KSLA's viewers, especially during severe weather. It's exactly the type of brand promotion I advocated in my blog post. What percentage of criticism on the internet can boast a 100% success rate in changing the behavior of the company being criticized? I don't know the exact number, but I would wager it's microscopically small. KSLA obviously found my free advice to be valuable to them despite my lack of proper AP form.

I am passionate about communication. I enjoy helping people and companies get their ideas out to a wider audience. It's why our branding says, "Giving Voice to Vision." We tell your story in the most compelling way we can to help you change the behavior of your audience. Rodney, I'm not sure what line of work you are in, but I'd love to talk to you about whether I can help you tell your story in a manner that's as effective as this blog post has been.

Thanks again for your time and interest in Silver Tongue Communications.

-Stephen Parr

How does your company handle criticism?  If it's an area you believe you need to work on, let us know.  We can help!

Brands in Drought

KSLA is playing with fire.  A new promo for the CBS station's weather department is trying to take a light hearted approach to the drought that has gripped their viewing area in Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Arkansas and Northeast Texas.  Their brand is "We Track Storms," but there haven't been any storms in weeks and only a handful since June.  So a new spot KSLA has produced and placed into heavy rotation is trying to have a little fun.

In the late 1990s, just one market west of KSLA, the NBC station, KETK decided to have a little fun with the weather as well.  They were in the middle of a heat wave.  Day after day, it was sunny and 100 degrees.  The forecast was so routine, the station decided the Chief Meteorologist could "phone it in."  So, in a light hearted manner, they had their Chief do the 5, 6, and 10 PM weathercasts from his couch in his living room.  The next day, a person in their viewing area died from heat stroke.  KETK's competition pounced.  KLTV, the ABC station ran a full page ad in the paper saying the heat wave was a life and death situation and KETK wasn't taking the threat seriously.  KLTV was, and therefore KLTV was the only weather department you should trust.  KLTV has dominated most of the ratings wars in the two decades since.

Here's the script for KSLA's latest weather promo...

(Shots of the meteorologists walking through dust, putting on sunglasses and staring longingly at the sky.  Western music out of High Noon plays in the background.)  A very dramatic voice slowly says, "Wet weather.  It’s coming.  Someday.  We’ll be ready.  We Track Storms."

OK, so it's a little cheesy, but what's wrong with that?  They're just showing they are human beings too and know how to have fun!  

There are two big problems with this spot.  The first is it undermines the credibility of their weather team.  The second problem is they are taking a huge risk with their brand image for very little payoff.  

A modern meteorologist does not go outside to look at the skies for a sign of rain over the next seven days.  You check the skies to see if your seven day forecast was right or wrong.  Anyone at home can simply look up and see sunshine.  The viewer expects the experts to have better tools than eyesight alone.  The meteorologist shouldn't be looking for a stray cloud, but rather a major shift in the overall weather pattern.  That will require a big change in the jet stream and you're not going to spot that with the naked eye.  Obviously, the meteorologists at KSLA are doing more than just playing, "Spot the Cloud," but the promo belittles their professional skills rather than highlighting them.

The promo is also belittling the brand, "We Track Storms."  This is an identity that has been carefully crafted for more than a decade and it's one that has worked when done well.  KSLA has been the go to station during severe weather for many years now, and that has helped buoy the station's ratings.  This promo makes fun of that.  Worse, it does it in a way that also belittles the severity of the current drought and the impact it's having on KSLA's audience.

KSLA's recent promo is taking a light hearted approach to a weather situation that isn't light hearted.  All it will take is for one major grass fire, one house fire, one death and KSLA's brand of We Track Storms will become a joke in the minds of KSLA's viewers.  They are already at risk because on KSLA's own webpage, they are running a story of a major grassfire in one parish in their viewing area and a house fire in another county in their viewing area.  This is an opening for the competition.  It is an unforced error.

The biggest irony to me in all of this is that KSLA should have known better.  You see, KLTV, the station that benefitted from KETK's joking approach to the weather, is KSLA's sister station.  They are owned by the same people - Raycom.  Indeed, the management of KLTV in the 1990s is now in corporate management over KSLA.  Institutional memory should have kicked in and prevented this mistake.

Full disclosure: I know a lot about KSLA's weather promos because I used to be their Chief Meteorologist.  For 7 years, they branded me "StormTracker Steve."  I personally lived the brand for the better part of a decade.  I know what the brand truly means and how to effectively communicate that mission to the audience.  For the 8 years prior to that, I worked at KLTV in East Texas reporting and doing the weather.  My criticism of this latest spot isn't as a disgruntled former employee lashing out on the internet.  Raycom and KSLA were very good for my family for many years.  I'm writing this article because I believe strongly in learning from the mistakes of others and I hope this message can help you and your business.

Rather than just pointing out where things are wrong, I'd like to offer more constructive criticism. Here's the spot I would have developed if I had been in charge of protecting and promoting KSLA's weather brand.

(Shots of the Chief Meteorologist along the bank of the Red River)  "Just a few months ago, the Red was out of its banks.  Homes were destroyed.  Family memories were washed away."
(Shots of a meteorologist inspecting dry ground)  "When the rain stopped, it stopped.  Now flood has turned to drought.
(Meteorologist on a farm) "That has had devastating effects on crops and livestock.  Burn bans are in place across the ArkLaTex.
(Weather Team back in the studio) "We can't control the weather.  But, we can give you the information you need to protect your family from the ravages of nature - whether it's too much or too little.  That's why We Track Storms."

A spot like this supports the professionalism of the weather department.  It demonstrates empathy and community with the audience.  It makes the brand, "We Track Storms" mean more than just drawing a little cone on a radar screen.  It's bigger than that.  It's more important than that.

If your messaging doesn't match your branding, then you need someone else doing your marketing.  Let us know how we can help craft, build, support and protect your brand.