News Conferences: Tips for Success, Part 1 of 3

Today’s post is the first of a three-part series on smart, well-organized news conferences that can generate high-impact media stories and build relationships with key reporters. It covers why your organization might want to invest in a news conference, and when not to; timing; the media advisory; and pitching or ‘selling’ the event to key reporters and assignment editors.

Last week, when I was facilitating a media training session for the Center for Progressive Leadership, a couple of the participants wanted more information on news conferences. Now’s as good a time as any! Today’s post is the first of a three-part series on smart, well-organized news conferences that can generate high-impact media stories and build relationships with key reporters.

Why invest in a news conference?
Let me count the ways….. A successful news conference can launch your story into dozens of media outlets – and into the hearts and minds of thousands of potential supporters – in one fell swoop. A news conference driven by a solidly newsworthy story is an event; it can help create the news. Once the ball starts rolling and enough key media are convinced they need to attend, then you have a golden opportunity to shape the message by choosing the right location, backdrops, and spokespeople, as well as preparing solid background materials anticipating tough questions afterward.  As well, by bringing reporters and your people together face to face, a live news conference can take you and your spokespeople one step closer in the ongoing quest of any smart communicator to build relationships with key reporters.

There are a host of considerations and several steps to planning and carrying out a successful news conference.

Risky business
A news conference is the way to go when you have a really, really newsworthy story with clear hard news value.  But be warned: They are risky.  I have always been very conservative about choosing news conferences. Here’s why: First, news conferences are time and energy-intensive to do well. In some cases, they are also very expensive.  And they are a gamble; even if you think your story constitutes “hard news”, you can’t ensure the press will attend.  An unattended press conference is not only demoralizing – it may also send the message that your issue is not worth covering. It can make you, your organization and your cause look weak. And of course, it can end up feeling like a waste of time and money.

Timing is everything
If you can, first try to find out whether any other major stories are taking place on the date on which you plan to hold your news conference.  If you have a relationship with local reporters, one or more may be able to tell you if another event is already scheduled for that day. Of course, there’s no guarantee some more dramatic unexpected story will supercede yours (war breaking out, planes full of world leaders crashing etc), but best to plan where you can.  Generally, it’s best to hold the event at 10:00 am on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday for daily print media,, whose daily story meetings are typically around 9:00 am each morning.  TV and radio outlets will have several news segments throughout the day, but the 6:00 evening news typically reaches the widest audience. If you hope your news conference will create follow-up stories, never hold it late in the day or late in the week.  Sometimes weekend press conferences can generate stories in the thin news of Sundays or Mondays – but it is a gamble.

Setting the bait: the media advisory
People (even a few journalists I’ve met) are often confused about the distinction between a media advisory and news release.  So here’s the deal: the media advisory is a short “ teaser”, sent usually 2-3 business days in advance of the actual news conference.  It’s aimed at convincing editors and reporters that there IS a story and they need to be there to cover it – without giving too much away. If they knew the whole story beforehand, why would they come?

Some more notes on the media advisory:

  • Timing: Send the media a media advisory 2-3 business days before the event.
  • Content: Keep it short – one page or less. Include the 5 Ws (who will be there, when and where, what the topic is, why it matters). Include the name, titles and credentials of the speakers.
  • Images: Highlight any photo or image opportunities; this can make the difference between an outlet sending a camera or photographer or not. And you definitely want the cameras. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words – the more images that accompany the story, the more likely it is to both run, and be remembered by your target audiences.

Distributing the advisory
For stories aimed at a large number of media outlets, it may make sense to invest in a newswire service, like Canadian Newswire or PR Newswire in the U.S.  But even if you do, it is essential that you maintain your own media list with phone numbers and email addresses. That’s because “pitching” the advisory afterward – that is, calling and/or emailing your target reporters and assignment editors to sell the story to them – is an essential part of the process. Ensure that your media list includes key non-English media as well, such as French, Mandarin, Tagalog or Spanish, depending on your key audiences. If you’ve got speakers who are bilingual, note this in your advisory and/or follow-up calls.

Pitching the media advisory
 I’ve found that typically one-third of the editors and reporters I’ve contacted afterward say they haven’t seen the media advisory, especially if I didn’t send it directly to their personal email boxes. Following up directly ensures they receive it if they are interested. It also helps gauge the level of media interest in your story; and of course, may help build a relationship with that reporter just a little bit more. If they aren’t interested, you can always ask – politely – why (versus challenging them or getting offended) and use the opportunity to learn.

Structured Decision-Making: Roadmap to Wise Choices?

As a facilitator, I’m always searching for new approaches to help groups plan strategically and make smart decisions.  One approach I’m currently exploring is “structured decision-making”, or SDM (though somehow that sounds faintly obscene when I say it out loud).

Structured decision-making is a systematic process developed for making wise, transparent decisions in the face of complex issues with diverse stakeholders, high stakes and divergent perspectives.

Example: The Holiday Dilemma
Here’s a super-simple example of how SDM might work, from my friend and colleague Trent Berry. He’s an economist, planner, and the co-founder of Re-Shape Strategies. Berry helps leaders around the world design and facilitate structured decision-making processes for energy efficient infrastructure and other complex, large-scale projects.

He explains:  “Imagine you and your spouse want to plan a holiday.  You want to go to Mexico.  They want to go to Hawaii.  How do you resolve the difference?  Well, you start by trying to understand why each other prefers one location or the other.  What are you really trying to achieve.  So, you might point out cost, things to do, safety, etc.  Those are your objectives or interests.  Now rather than just arguing about a location, you can discuss the relative merits of each from the perspective of what you each want to achieve.  doing that you may discover that some of your facts are wrong – e.g., cost.  But you’ll also understand how much importance each of you is placing on different things – e.g., cost vs. safety.  And through the process you may understand each other better and you may actually come up with a third option that meets both of your objectives.  Not always –  but sometimes.  Really, structured decision making is similar to what used to be called ‘interest-based negotiation’.  The only way it may differ is there is the discussion goes beyond two private parties and the focus is on not only understanding interests but also doing a better job of really understanding how different options perform across interests. Its a marriage of science and values.”

The Steps to SDM
In practice, SDM processes can often be described in decision trees or other concept maps.  The basic steps follow, in many ways, a really great government policy briefing note. Here are the steps for a “PrOACT (Problem, Objectives and Measures, Alternatives, Consequences, and Trade-offs” SDM framework (originally outlined in the book “Smart Choices”):

  1. Define the problem
  2. Specify the objectives and measures – including getting agreement on “what matters”, and prioritizing information and assessing uncertainty or risk with different kinds of information
  3. Create imaginative alternatives
  4. Identify the consequences for each
  5. Clarify the trade-offs.

Growing interest in SDM
From Alberta to Australia, the wave of interest in this approach is growing. One major application is for complex resource management issues. Imagine a group of environmental activists, First Nations, oil industry proponents and government staff trying to come to some sort of sound, values-based decision-making around large-scale oil exploration over a relatively intact natural ecosystem. How do you design a dialogue process that isn’t about greenwashing or tokenism and doesn’t suck the life force – not to mention the coffers — of all involved for the next decade?  Past experience has shown that lengthy land-use planning approaches and environmental assessments don’t always yield wise results, and especially not in a timely or cost-effective way.

As Berry explains, “environmental assessments all too often look like a long, expensive shopping list of environmental impacts, with no way to prioritize or sort through them. Structured decision-making starts from a place of shared values – because science can tell us about all the options, but it can’t do a thing about setting priorities or assessing the relative risks among them. Only a clear set of values can do that.”

Beyond Resource issues…
SDM is also being used with child welfare workers in California, adult protective services in Michigan  and a host of other agencies.  Check out the steps involved, and find more case studies, here.

POP everything! Strategic planning in 30 seconds or less

P.O.P. – Purpose, Outcome and Process – is one of the snappiest, most useful planning tools I know. And it’s completely scalable – from planning a 10 minute phone call to organizing a campaign.

One of the simplest, snappiest and most useful planning tools I know is one we teach at Rockwood Leadership Institute.  It’s a sweet little acronym called “P.O.P.” – standing for Purpose, Outcome and Process. Given the state of my memory, I  lunge at anything this easy to remember.  And this fast. Sure, it may take a bit more 30 seconds sometimes, but it’s still pretty snappy and massively effective.

Here’s a snapshot of P.O.P. And really, it’s so straightforward, this is all you need:

  • “Purpose” answers the question “why”
  • “Outcome speaks to “what” – the vision of what success will look and feel like when you ‘arrive’
  • “Process” speaks to “how” – the specific steps involved in getting there.

Straight from the Source
The “P.O.P.” model was devised by brilliant leadership consultant (and fellow Rockwood trainer) Leslie Sholl Jaffe and her partner Randall Alford.  As they describe it, “POP is a useful tool for a multitude of the daily activities leaders find themselves faced with: meeting agendas, campaigns, difficult conversations, unplanned calls and conversations… As you can gather from the list, POP is scalable, it can be used for large, long term projects, regular weekly staff meetings, a meeting you attend or a call that comes in that has no agenda, coaching/mentoring sessions…”

Case in point: Workshop Design
 Last week I met with a small team of folks designing a workshop within a larger conference for immigrants and refugees.  We started by stepping back and asking: what is the overall purpose of this workshop? Why now? Why here? How can it advance our particular focus on supporting skilled immigrants and refugees in the job market? Then we asked: if this workshop were wildly successful, what would the outcome be? In other words, what does success look like, in concrete terms? Only then did we address the process – the specific format, agenda design, room set-up, breakout size etc.

Cart before the horse…
All too often, action-oriented social justice and not-for-profit leaders jump straight into planning the process of calls, meetings and entire projects – without first nailing down a clear sense of the purpose and outcomes. In practice, it’s vastly more effective to “go slow to go fast”.  Even doing a quick “POP” for simple tasks, I’ve found, can save hours of time, and help ensure that your  creative energies are aligned and vastly more effective from the start.

The Engineer-Cabbie: messaging workshop for skilled immigrants

I can’t wait to co-facilitate a workshop on communications and social media with Marco Campana at the Allies Learning Exchange conference supporting skilled immigrant workers in Halifax May 6-7th.

Met any brilliant engineers masquerading as cab drivers these days? I’ve met far too many, and that’s why I’m so excited about the 2010 Allies Learning Exchange conference in gorgeous Halifax. May 6 and 7th. I and my co-trainer Marco Campana will lead a 2 hour workshop on message development and social media for New Canadians, particularly focused on issues affecting internationally trained professionals. Allies draws hundreds of people from across Canada to learn about issues and strategies to promote the employment of skilled immigrants. If you live in BC, Canada, and want to get involved locally, contact one of my past clients, the BC-Internationally Trained Professionals Network.

The future for print media?

Check out the webcast panel discussion on “News Innovation” on April 15th, hosted by Canadian News Wire.  The panelists  are leading print & on-line journalists Saleem Khan (chair, Canadian Association of Journalists), Mathew Ingram (senior writer with the technology blog network GigOm), and Scott Anderson (Editor-in-Chief, CanWest News).