Media Skills - Enraged Commuter Strikes Back

Media Skills Training

You may have caught sight of Paul Hatcher "Enraged Commuter Strikes Back" in recent press and radio interviews.

Paul has put together a neat scheme to help frustrated commuters claim their refund from London Underground.

The scheme works around SMS text messages and the recently launched web site www.tuberefund.co.uk and to raise the public awareness and sell the scheme, it will be necessary for Paul to gain as much media exposure as possible. This will include coverage on both local and national radio and TV stations.

Wisely Paul sought some help before going out there to face the media and spent a day with Impact Factory's media expert, preparing his sound bites and answers.

Paul arrived with his PR lady and his head full of all the things he could say to the media about his tube refund scheme. If you asked him a question about it, he could talk for 10 to 15 minutes without stopping. It was all good stuff, but there was just too much of it.

Our first task was to help Paul distill down all this information into three main messages – what did he essentially want to say and how best to say it. Time is always a factor when giving interviews and the construction of punchy and concise messages, or sound bites is essential. Once we had the three main points, we were able to expand these with three sub points, giving Paul the option to explain his main messages in more detail.

Next we took Paul through the basics of camera and microphone technique, followed by an explanation of what to expect when giving a media interview. Then it was time to put the theory into practice.

For three hours we put Paul through a whole variety of interview formats including a telephone interview with a print journalist, a short TV location interview and a more in-depth TV studio interview.

Each of these interviews was recorded and played back for discussion and constructive feedback, before giving Paul another chance to practice his technique, this time including the Paxman type "difficult" interview.

Paul spent a full six hours with us doing some pretty intensive work, but the end result was that Paul was able to give a confident, informative and effective interview in any format and in response to any line of questioning.

We wish him the very best of luck and look forward to seeing him "strut his stuff" on television.

If you would like to talk to us about our Media Skills Training programmes, or any of the other professional personal development work we do, call us on

+44 (0)20 7226 1877

or e-mail us at

enquiries@impactfactory.com