I wasn’t planning on writing another post on bad media interview techniques, but this one was too good to pass up.
As part of the public relations major in Creative Communications, we practice on-camera interviews – remaining calm, answering journalists’ questions without getting tripped up, and getting our key messages out to our audiences.
Last term, we focused on the good news: announcing a new program or product. This term, we focused on the bad news: mismanagement, natural disaster, CEO screw up, etc.
And I can proudly say this: 23 public relations students with no previous media experience handled an on-camera interview better than the co-CEO of RIM, developer of the BlackBerry and one of the more influencial tech companies out there.
In an amazing feat of poor PR, CEO Mike Lazaridis somehow managed to turn a simple good news announcement into a bad news story.
This week, RIM announced the launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook – the first major competitor for Apple’s iPad, the much-touted revolutionary computer tablet that’s currently the talk of the tech world. It’s a pretty big deal.
Lazaridis sat down with the BBC for what you would think (and probably Lazaridis thought – which was most likely the problem) would be a fairly straightforward interview: talk about the product, its features, and why it’s better than the iPad.
As always, however, interviewees should be prepared to respond to questions related to their company, but maybe not the particular thing they’re announcing. For example, when our class put on a mock news conference about GLEE coming to film at the college (good news), we also prepped our spokespeople for questions about the controversial GLEE GQ shoot (bad news).
While you may not think such a topic would ever come up, it did get asked. And lucky for us, we were prepared for it.
The funny thing is, the question that caused Lazaridis to terminate the interview was on a legitimate, well known, and recent issue – something they should have expected to come up.
Only last October, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries began banning BlackBerry services because their governments couldn’t monitor messages coming from the devices.
Has RIM come to an agreement and will the new PlayBook work in these countries? Definitely a fair question, if not a sticky one, but nothing a well trained PR person (or student...) couldn’t fix.
According to my trusty Melanie Lee Lockhart notes, the BBC initially asked a ‘loaded’ question, which should be responded to by saying (nicely!) “I don’t agree with your premise” (if you don’t), explaining why, and following up with your key message.
Not doing this just made things worse for Lazaridis because the BBC turned it into – note check – “the question that keeps coming back”. Don’t get annoyed. Keep repeating your first politely and well phrased answer.
And if all else fails, smile politely and say “I think we’ve already covered this.”
Moral of the story: know your company’s issues and have an answer ready to go, regardless of whether it’s connected to the announcement or not.
And never, ever, lose your cool.
No comments:
Post a Comment