Here's what I learned doing a bunch of media interviews yesterday -- Times Radio, Channel 4, and Andrew Marr -- off the back of signing a letter of 120 CEOs supporting Labour in the upcoming election.
I've done TV a few times so it's not a completely new experience but I'm not a professional either. Listening to the recordings afterwards is so hard, I cringe from start to finish. Why did I make that grimace, that ungainly pause, that weird turn of phrase...
Let's squeeze lemonade out of the cringe. Here are 8 Lessons Learned, so I can be better next time, and you can learn from my mistakes.
1. Don't get distracted by shiny interesting questions. I have loads of opinions, so staying on message is REALLY hard for me. I knew enough to have my key messages prepped, but I managed to stick to them only about half of the time.
2. Related - Keep it pithy. At one point, I got lost in a sentence about the Titanic. Why was I talking about the Titanic? Because I am an idiot. Stick to the main point Rachel.
3. Recorded is different to live: I did 2 'lives' and one recorded. In the lives, I got my whole message across. In the recorded, I said it all but they edited half of it out, and the broadcasted version looked a bit random. Lesson: because of editing, message discipline is even more important in a recorded than it is in a live.
4. Don't warm up to your point: The longest interview was about three times as long as the shortest. In the shortest one, I thought I'd have more 'goes' to get my message in. Then it ended. Lesson: Say your main message first, to make sure it gets in.
5. Visually rep the brand: My shelves look OK, but it would have been better to have a massive Koru Kids banner. That 'Koru Kids' caption you see below was only on screen for a couple of seconds.
6. Zoom has advantages: Sky News offered to send a car to take me to the studio, but I had 3 interviews back to back so I had to do them all via Zoom. I initially thought this was a shame, but in reality it meant I was able to have notes with key messages. Couldn't have done that in a studio. (Kept me on message, a bit.)
7. Practice makes perfect: I sent the audio to a critical friend after each one, and got feedback. By the third one I was much tighter. Which begs the question, Rachel, why did you not just practice more before the first one?
8. Expect the unexpected: I got a few curve-ball questions on details of Labour industrial policy. I don't think I could have prepared for these, realistically. My answers were OK but a bit rambly as I figured out halfway through the answer what I wanted to say. I am not sure there is a lesson here except, you can't win them all?
Interactive Embedded Marketing
7moI feel like we're experiencing the same thing with AI... 'it's a fad!' I'm sure we'll have the same conversation about it 15 years down the line. It is hard to be an early adopter 😮💨 Perhaps there will be a discovery related to one to one marketing or personalised marketing with the help of AI, but I'm not sure the need for influencing, both by viewers and creators will be that easy to replace. The other alternative I envision is, like fashion does, we'll go back to the good old days of playing outside, knowing our neighbours and drinking from the garden hose.