PR Archives - WA Communications

‘Where’ve yer bin?’ – how Truss lost the battle for local media

When your first appearance on the media since a major economic intervention causes you to tank in the polls and face mutiny from your own MPs, then it is probably safe to assume it hasn’t gone well.

Despite many Truss detractors claiming that this was a move of arrogance – underestimating the journalistic prowess of local hacks – there was more strategic thinking at play by the Truss camp. The premise made sense when faced with a ‘Westminster Bubble’ rebellion and days before Tory conference – bypass the bubble and get straight to the people that matter – the voters.

However, if ever there was an example of a well thought through comms strategy with poor delivery, this was it. With a little more preparation, maybe some of the disasters could have been averted.

So what went wrong?

Local journalists are connected to the concerns of their local readers or listeners in a way that national journalists never can be. While the national news outlets are the scene setters of the national mood, the regional reporters are the ones with the ability to get under the skin of the real-life impact on voters. Truss simply wasn’t prepared for the local-level questions fired at her by, for example, BBC Radio Lancashire. A by-election due there soon will be dominated by fracking – banned at present but which Truss wants to allow, but only with ‘local consent.’ Presenter Graham Liver leapt on this, asking ‘what does local consent look like?’ before pointing out that the local MP, Mark Menzies was anti-fracking. Similarly, on BBC Leeds she was asked for her thoughts about the Leeds bus services. Being able to answer these kinds of a local-level questions is a must for anyone going up against regional press – Truss simply wasn’t over the detail.

With the Prime Minister only having a few seconds between each interview – and within such a short time-frame – she was on the back foot from the start. Had she appeared on one of the flagship BBC Programs, the scope for longer, more in-depth questioning would have been greater, but the fight would have been fairer. The presenter and their producers would have worked up questions in advance; Truss’ media SpAds would be working from the opposite side, anticipating the obvious questions and nailing down their defensive messages.

The reality of the situation was far from ideal for Truss – whilst she was bounced from one interview to another, the producers at each of the radio stations were able to revise questions in real time, pointing out flaws on answers given only minutes or even seconds before. With her final interview kicking off on BBC Radio Stoke at 8:52am, this gave the Stoke presenters nearly an hour of prep time where Truss wouldn’t have been able to consult her media advisors. Far from getting into any kind of ‘flow,’ the PM was left running around in circles and tying herself in knots.

The format of the regional programs didn’t just give journalists the upper hand on the questioning – it also created the perfect short sound-bites for digitally savvy national media, with the opening ‘where’ve yer bin’ question from BBC Leeds shared embedded into national articles far and wide. In what rapidly became a national media blood bath, even the pro-Truss Telegraph struggled to defend the performance, while the Independent led with a simple ‘Seven best local radio takedowns of Liz Truss as she fails to defend ‘disastrous’ mini-budget.’ In a world of clicks and shares, the articles practically wrote themselves.

While Truss isn’t renowned for having the media flair of Johnson or even Sunak’s smooth delivery, it was something she was widely reported to be working on, with her performance throughout the leadership contest getting markedly better. However, this interview round showed a Prime Minister still clearly uncomfortable in front of a microphone, and lacking Johnson’s flexibility and ability to pivot away from difficult questions.

The result was a stilted performance that, by the fourth round of questioning started to sound more like an actor rehearsing their lines than the bold, trailblazing leader of the Tory revolution that party members voted for.

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Natasha Egan-Sjodin wins Mark of Excellence at the CIPR Awards 2022

We are extremely proud of WA’s Natasha Egan-Sjodin for winning the Mark of Excellence award in the Outstanding Young Communicator of the Year category, at last night’s CIPR 2022 awards ceremony.

The highly regarded award commends the outstanding work of young professionals in the industry who are making a valuable contribution to the organisations they work for and show considerable promise in their future career.

Natasha’s triumph is recognition of her many work-related achievements, hard-fought campaign wins, and her contributions to the wider industry – a well-deserved win!

We thoroughly enjoyed the evening celebrating excellence in the UK’s PR industry and offer our congratulations to all the winners.

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The year of opinions: corporate communications strategies post-pandemic

Despite prophesies of demise for many years, the sales of traditional newspapers continue to make a tentative recovery, helped almost certainly by a news agenda that shows no sign of slowing down, with crisis after crisis plaguing the worlds of both politics and business. Set against this turbulent backdrop, what does it mean to communicate well in 2021 and how can strategic communications support your wider objectives?

‘If it’s not Covid, it won’t make the cut’ was the oft-quoted refrain of 2020 when it came to the media landscape. For businesses who weren’t prepared to shoehorn their agenda to fit this brief, corporate communications teams were dealing with a real challenge – how to engage with the media amidst the toughest news cycle for a generation? This wasn’t just a question of news volume; news outlets the world over were forced to furlough staff, merge teams and make widespread redundancies as advertising revenues collapsed.

However, amongst widespread print media decline, national broadsheets weathered the storm remarkably well as businesses and consumers alike turned to traditional media for expert opinion and advice. 2020 saw the launch of Times Radio and a host of new broadsheet-led podcasts, as editors sought to make the most of the public’s desire for expert commentary. With the launch of GBNews on the horizon and broadsheet subscriptions continuing to soar, this need for hard-hitting opinion and insight that informs the national conversation isn’t set to disappear any time soon.

This means that for businesses looking to communicate effectively during this period of national recovery, there are a few points to consider:

Clarity – and brevity – of message is essential

Many leaders are clear in their own mind about what they want to say, but often struggle when forced to articulate key messages to external audiences. Even those that feel confident in their messages to clients and internal stakeholders are often left flummoxed when faced with communicating the same thing to a journalist. Too often, spokespeople become embroiled in sector language and forget the need for simplicity when communicating key asks or messages externally. The reading age of most national papers is around 12 – this means distilling complex issues into a few easy-to-read sentences should be a crucial part of any communications plan.

Add to the conversation

To be respected as an industry expert in the media, your industry knowledge should be front and center of any communications plan. It is not enough to repeat the same lines as your competitor or industry journalist; thought leadership should be about leading the conversation, not following it. If you are not saying anything new, it’s probably not worth saying at all.

Back up your message

Once you know that what you’re saying is new, you should be thinking about the strength of your position. This means backing up strong opinions with evidence and data, and using language that resonates – in today’s media landscape, opinion sells, but it still needs to be evidenced to be authoritative.

Actions speak louder than words

If the past few months have taught communication professionals anything, it’s how plans can go spectacularly wrong if not backed up with action. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if this is proven to be nothing more than words, the reputational damage can be immense.

Communicate with purpose

A clear, robust and insightful message is a great starting point when it comes to simple brand awareness, but if you want to be moving the dial on influencer opinion, you need to be clear in the objective for communicating in the first place. Is it brand awareness, is it sales, or do you have a policy or regulatory objective you are trying to achieve? Being able to articulate at the start will inform the rest of your communications strategy.

As strategic communications professionals, our approach to campaigns is always rooted in this key ask, and then we build bespoke programmes from there, using a blend of political, media and influencer engagement to achieve your goals.

If you want to find out more, feel free to get in touch.

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What ever happened to trust?

One of the oldest anecdotes that PR professionals roll out when media training senior executives is the impact of the Kennedy-Nixon Presidential debate in 1960. It was the first televised Presidential debate and while the radio audience called it a draw, the television audience decisively called it for the younger, healthier-looking and simply more televisual senator from Boston, shifting the tide of the election and ultimately the result.

Kennedy had looked and sounded presidential – in appearance, tone and content he had demonstrated he was made of the ‘right stuff’ and the public could put their trust in him.

Fast-forward nearly sixty years from Kennedy-Nixon, and we rolled onto last night and the latest edition in the long running series of candidate television debates, the Johnson-Corbyn match-up; and how things have changed.

While the pundits are divided on which candidate edged a close debate, they almost unanimously refer to the wider issue of whether either of the candidates met that most basic of expectation of voters by telling the truth.

The reason why media trainers reference the Kennedy-Nixon debate is to emphasise the need to come across as authentic, truthful and trustworthy. Messages are to be delivered clearly, backed up with evidence and proof points. Businesses and business-leaders rely on consumer trust and when this trust is proven to be unfounded, the company can face the sort of crisis that can destroy the brand.

Imagine for one moment if the CEO of a confectioners told a series of demonstrable falsehoods about their products and their rival’s products. Further still, imagine this CEO kept on saying them despite protests, so much so that a cottage industry of consumer groups was created in repudiating and pointing out this ‘fake news’. Then imagine that business deciding to set up a fake consumer group to attack their rivals or the evidence in front of them.

We have been here with the tobacco industry, who have been labelled as the pioneers of fake news, and other industries seeking to dissemble or cover up. Modern business practices, however, embrace engagement, transparency, clear values, fiscal prudence, demonstrable action and truthfulness, as they search for the goal of strong brand trust from consumers, policy makers and opinion formers.

The striking thing about this election campaign is the extraordinary decision of both major parties to ignore these fundamental building blocks of trust. When you have a situation of record levels of public doubt in the democratic system and our leaders, you don’t double down on the very things undermining that trust, you change your approach.

It is probably about time that our political parties looked to the playbook of modern business practices and corporate communications if they are to rebuild the trust between the public and our democracy.

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Archive for the ‘PR’ Category

‘Where’ve yer bin?’ – how Truss lost the battle for local media

Natasha Egan-Sjodin wins Mark of Excellence at the CIPR Awards 2022

We are extremely proud of WA’s Natasha Egan-Sjodin for winning the Mark of Excellence award in the Outstanding Young Communicator of the Year category, at last night’s CIPR 2022 awards ceremony.

The year of opinions: corporate communications strategies post-pandemic

Clarity – and brevity – of message is essential

Add to the conversation

Back up your message

Actions speak louder than words

Communicate with purpose

What ever happened to trust?

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