The Media Interview

Ran across a tip that might help some people reduce anxiety heading into an interview:

make it a point to shake hands with every single person you meet along the way. If you are doing a face to face interview ask if it is possible to shake hands with your host of interviewer before you go live on the air. You will be amazed at the difference this small ritual will make

Speech coach Patti Wood likens going into an interview with entering a new and possibly unsafe environment, so our primal instincts kick in and we look for ways to feel reassured, like shaking hands.

Of course, aside from possibly relieving your stress, shaking hands can increase the connection you make with the people you’re greeting and that’s important to the impression you want to leave.

At the same time, you don’t want to look like a politician on the campaign trail, so I don’t know about shaking the hand of every person at a media outlet - and kissing babies is certainly out.

Great story from Mary Jo Foley, who blogs All About Microsoft for ZDnet and is a long-time Microsoft watcher, as told in an interview with Long Zheng on I Started Something:

One of my funniest interview moments happened during the very first time I interviewed Bill Gates. I was brand new to covering technology. I was interviewing Gates on the show floor at Comdex in Las Vegas. We were out in the open in the Microsoft booth. Up came Steve Jobs while I was interviewing Gates. Gates and Jobs started chatting. I waited and waited. Finally I said to Jobs: “Do you think you could come back another time? I’m trying to do an interview here.” Gates said to me after Jobs walked off, “Do you know who that was?” I didn’t. Gates said: “He’s the head of Apple.” Yeah, not an auspicious beginning…but my very first story on Microsoft came out really well in spite of it all.

I was reading an Associated Press report that the NBA fined the San Antonio Spurs $50,000 for not making the entire team available for media interviews.

How many PR people have wished they could do something like that when their clients miss an interview or won’t make themselves available for the media…

In an article entitled The King of All Media vs. the Shameless Marketing Guru, Debbie Allen talks about her unique way of preparing to be interviewed by shock jock Howard Stern:

Knowing the interview would be a challenge, Debbie asked a previous guest of the show to coach her before the interview. She soon discovered that by connecting with Howard’s interest and listening to other guests that she could not only survive the interview, but also thrive from the massive media exposure. [my emphasis]

I thought this was an excellent strategy for potentially difficult interviews: to track down a previous guest or two and pick their brains about what did and did not work with that host. As Allen noted elsewhere in the article, part of what can be difficult on Stern’s show is that there are at least two if not three people “hosting” at one time, which just adds to the difficulties.

How did Allen do on the show? According to her, she managed to “thrive”:

The interview started with a negative tone but soon Debbie turned it around in her favor. Howard Stern, a shameless self-promoter himself, wanted to share with his listeners more information on how they too can become famously successful. As Howard learned more about Debbie’s marketing strategies and strong belief system he began to promote the book and the Website.

When I travel for a media interview, I’m always paranoid that I’m not going to wake up in time and miss the show. So, I go a little overboard on alarms: I request a wake-up call, I set the alarm clock by the bedside and set the alarm clock on my cell phone. After not sleeping at all that night, I was pummeled with a cacophony of heart-stopping sounds … not good for a girl who recently stopped taking blood pressure medications.

from the blog of writer Amy Hagberg

Next time you’re thinking of taking your lawyer with you to a media interview, think of this item from TMZ on the legal bill facing Larry Birkhead, the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter:

TMZ has learned Larry Birkhead got a Fed Ex on Saturday, and it was not good news. It was a bill for legal services from Debri Opri, the lawyer he fired two weeks ago. The total: $620,492.84. Opri billed her services out at $475 an hour.

Among the items was a charge for travelling with Birkhead to the taping of TV interview for 20/20 in New York:

Opri and Birkhead went from L.A. to New York City on December 9, 2006, did the interview and returned the next day. Opri billed 10 hours travel time each way.

Had a client on the radio the other day and he arranged with the station to have a link from their website to his home page. Several times during the interview the hosts mentioned about going to the website for more information. So far so good.

When the program ended, my client began monitoring his website hits. Nothing. A few more minutes go by and still nothing. Finally he decided to check the station’s website and, sure enough, they had misspelled the address for his site.

Luckily the station was able to correct the error right away and the moment they did he got six visitors, but imagine what might have happened in the 35 minutes between the interview and the correction of the address…