From the horse’s mouth.

Whilst the storm still rages surrounding the horsemeat scandal your senior team may be breathing a sigh of relief that they haven’t had to deal with the kind of chaos facing Food Retailers this week. However, one of the messages to spokespeople taking part in our media training courses is that although your comms team are brilliant - they don’t have a crystal ball!

Last week the media agenda was focused towards the British Retail Consortium who flooded the airwaves to reassure everyone that their members, alongside the Food Standard Agency, were doing everything they could to test to see if their products were safe. However a week is a long time in politics and although there were reassuring noises coming from the food retailers none of the Chief Executives had come out individually to explain what had happened and why.

No surprise then that the government decided to take the initiative and announce “it is unacceptable for retailers to remain silent” Nothing works quite so well as a direct shot across the bow from a politician. Websites, newspapers and the airwaves were suddenly full of earnest looking men from the major supermarkets demonstrating care and compassion about the situation and explaining what they were going to do in the future. No doubt regular updates will follow but it illustrates a point beautifully.

Even if logic suggests you have a raft of statistics to prove a point, your audience won’t believe you unless they hear it from the top person.  They want to see that the Chief Executive empathises with them, really understands the problem, before they decide to trust you again.

There was a brilliant example of this by the Tesco’s Chief Executive, Philip Clarke, last Friday. He was being interviewed on ITV in a ‘down the line’ interview from inside one of their stores.  He oozed care and concern and clearly and calmly outlined his 3 key messages as to what they were going to do in future to reassure their customers.  This was a brilliant example of points we discuss in our Advanced Media training sessions.  When the pressure is on, it is too easy to slip into ‘management speak’. However, our Journalist trainers are always well matched to the relevant key sector, meaning that through a variety of scenarios we can put the delegates through their paces and ensure they perfect their communications skills and make the language more human. By the end of these sessions they can then demonstrate the right balance of calm authority and an ability to engage and connect with the audience. This is key so that the public can believe in the person as well as the organisation.

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