The Chief Executive Officer of Merlin Entertainments has found himself in front of plenty of television cameras in the past week following the terrible incident at Alton Towers.
Nick Varney has rightly fronted his company’s crisis media management response to the high-profile accident on The Smiler roller coaster ride, which left four people with serious injuries.
The incident placed Merlin Entertainments firmly in the firing line and Mr Varney has had plenty of opportunities to put his media training skills into operation, appearing on national and regional television and radio, as well as in print publications.
Arguably his most challenging task – and best performance - was appearing live on Sky News to be interviewed by afternoon slot anchor Kay Burley. Ms Burley was at her fiery, uncompromising best right from the start and seemed determined to push Mr Varney into a position where he had to concede that the company did not have adequate safety features in place on the ride.
Mr Varney displayed care and concern for those that were hurt, spoke, albeit a little vaguely, about the action his company had already taken following the incident and emphasised Merlin’s previously good safety record. He spoke with authority and stuck to his key message and supporting messages.
He did not get drawn into speculating on what had caused the accident, which is still being investigated by the Health & Safety Executive, and he did not fall into the trap of divulging personal information about those injured.
You could feel the tension build between interviewer and interviewee, but importantly Mr Varney stayed calm in the light of some intense questioning / provocation - only once suggesting that Ms Burley was putting words in his mouth. It is likely that someone without media training would have lost patience with the regular interruptions to their answers or, indeed, Ms Burley’s interpretation and dismissal of what he was saying.
Certainly, Mr Varney, if he was properly briefed by his comms team, should have known what to expect from Burley and her take-no-prisoners approach. But it still takes a great deal of skill and expertise to perform well under such pressure.
He came out of the interview largely unscathed and reaction to it has focused on Ms Burley’s questioning, with some 15,000 people signing a petition calling for her to be sacked, while others took to Twitter to express their opinion.
Just as we were critical of the way Thomas Cook handled their time in the media spotlight recently, we feel that this was a good example of managing a hostile interview.
Certainly, Mr Varney seemed to win some public sympathy which is no mean feat given the circumstances.
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