Archive for September, 2008

Media Training SarahPalin

September 29, 2008

How would I media train Sarah Palin?  First, I&;d have to get over my objections to her politics; I don&;t media train Philip Morris, for example, because I&;m convinced their products killed my father. But if I accepted the Palin assignment, I would radically change the approach the Republicans are using. First, I&;d lose the &;My Fair Lady&;/Henry Higgins approach of trying to school the eager backwoods lass in the ways of Washington.  It&;s patronizing, it oozes sexism, and most importantly it doesn&;t work.  Very few of us can successful cram and regurgitate hours worth of talking points; for Palin, the problem is clear in the Couric interview.  Less is more. Second, I&;d treat Palin as a real person (and a bright one) with a compelling story to tell, and get her using that story as a metaphor to promote her views in every interview, as Barack Obama did and still often does.  She did, after all, come from nothing to being elected Governor of the largest state; she is not a daughter of admirals, married to a former President, a descendant of a wealthy and powerful family, etc. Third, I&;d spend some time with her asking her what her most personal political views are and which of McCain&;s talking points she finds most compelling.  Then I&;d help her craft them (or the ones that the campaign finds most acceptable, at least) into key messages that she could actively promote going forward, and return to when the questioning got tough.  If her message was &;lower taxes help working families&;, for example, she could use her own family as an example. Fourth, I&;d give her some ammunition; two or three key facts and statistics, not a week&;s worth of briefings.  And I&;d make it clear that she should stick to the truth and not make up things, no matter how great the temptation or the media pressure. Fifth, I&;d spend our time doing videotaped one-on-one interviews, not cramming random facts into her head.  Give her a half-page of bullet points, have her glance at it, then throw the security blanket away.  My experience is that everyone is uncomfortable and unsuccessful in the first one or two ambush style interviews, but they gain mastery over time.  From there, move on to mock press conferences, shouted questions, etc. So I guess I&;m in reluctant agreement with the &;let Palin be Palin&; Republican camp.  It hasn&;t happened so far, but she can be a powerful spokesperson for the Republican ticket.  But even trained, confident spokespeople can&;t help you if you don&;t have a compelling message.

Tags:Media Training, Sarah-Palin, www.msgmediatraining.com Posted in Media Training, Politics, public-relations-disaster | 1 Comment &;

Manny Ramirez Today&;s BabeRuth?

September 26, 2008

Larger than life, carrying a team on his back and a fan (and kid) favorite?  That&;s Babe Ruth&;s legend.  Indeed, a Google search for Babe Ruth+larger than life pulled up 51,000 references.  Manny Ramirez may just be today&;s Babe Ruth.  Until he came to the Dodgers, I never paid attention to Ramirez, first playing in obscurity in Cleveland, then with the hated Red Sox.  (I grew up on Phil Rizzutto&;s sly reference to the background roaring on the radio &;And the Yankee fans begin their rythmic chant&;&; as they screamed &;Bos-ton sucks!&;) But LA has fallen in love with the alleged pee-er on the Green Monster, the dreadlocked free spirit who helped the Dodgers win the Western Division, as only the second player ever to drive in at least 50 runs in each league in a single season.  Ramirez&; personal numbers are there for a Babe Ruth comparison as well; at 36 he&;s hit 527 home runs and driven in more than 1700.  And like Ruth, he&;s quarreled with the manager, fought for more money and done some dumb things; they call it &;Manny being Manny.&; But one of the most affecting parts of the Ruth legacy was his affection for kids. &;Babe Ruth, a big kid himself, had a soft spot for disadvantaged children,&; writes Harvey Araton in his farewell to the house Ruth built.  There&;s a Paul Gallico story of Ruth hitting baseballs to kids all day at Jones Beach, and his promising to hit a home run for a critically ill Johnny Sylvester in the 1926 World Series is well known. Manny?  Here&;s the LA Times&; supposedly hard-boiled TJ Simers: &;Consider what Manny Ramirez has meant to the kids at Mattel Children&;s Hospital at UCLA. When he arrived, he agreed to pledge so much money for home runs, RBIs and hits, asking the Dodgers to take the money out of his paychecks &; more than $36,000 already going to the kids at the cancer ward. Ramirez met with a group of kids from Mattel&;s a few days ago and received a painting by Ashanti, one of the youngsters who has been contending with cancer. It now hangs prominently in his locker.&;  

Tags:Babe-Ruth, LA-Dodgers, Manny-Ramirez, Phil-Rizzutto, T.J. Simers Posted in Sports | Leave a Comment &;

Print or Web: Which News is MorePowerful?

September 16, 2008

One of my media training clients, an executive at a top LA PR firm, says a big part of her job is persuading her corporate clients that coverage on the Web is valuable. &;They only want print,&; she says, &;They don&;t care about the web&;but they should, because it&;s more valuable.&; &;Because of click-throughs from the story right to the product?&; I asked.  &;Yes, but that&;s only part of it.&; On the Web, news is instantaneous, but it&;s also persistent and searchable. News flying around the Web is powerful&;it can promote a product, like an unknown vice-presidential candidate, or raise a stock price. News is also persistent, in a world of archived stories, industrious search engines, translations into many languages, references on blogs and Wikis,  immortalized on YouTube. So now I tell our media training clients, &;Believe it or not, your words will stick around&;so make them count.&;

Tags:death-of-print, Media Training, MSG-Communications, www.msgmediatraining.com Posted in Media Training, Public Relations | 1 Comment &;

Sarah Palin,Hypocrite

September 13, 2008

Digging through the frozen tundra, the National Enquirer is on the case, as usual.   According to the Anchorage Daily News, &;Palin doesn&;t support legalizing marijuana, worrying about the message it would send to her four kids.&; Apparently Palin&;s kids ignored her and didn&;t mind breaking the law, as Bristol and especially older son Track have been  marijuana users, and Track, now in the U.S. Army, was a big fan of &;hillybilly heroin&;, Oxycontin.  The Enquirer (print version, $2.99) also charges that Track took part in a major vandalism incident that damaged dozens of school buses, but that his involvement was covered up. As for Bristol, the way Palin initially dealt with her daughter&;s pregnancy doesn&;t exactly speak to the tableau of loving acceptance portrayed at the Republican Convention: &;When Sarah found out the teen was pregnant by high schooler Levi Johnston, she was actually banished from the house.  As part of the cover-up, Palin quickly transferred Bristol to another high school and made her move in with Sarah’s sister Heather 25 miles away!&; Apparently this isn&;t the first time in the Palin family.  While I don&;t care that Palin and her husband had a child 8 months after they married, it bothers Kathryn Jean Lopez at the conservative National Review. &;Did we need to be told Track was born eight months after Todd and Sarah eloped? As Andrew Sullivan puts it, &;If you run as a religious candidate &; then it is absolutely fair to point out that you have violated in your own life the principles you believe should apply to others.&;

Tags:Andrew-Sullivan, National-Enquirer, Sarah-Palin Posted in Journalism, Politics | Leave a Comment &;

Hilary Clinton and the RollingStones

September 12, 2008

In &;Shine a Light&;, the new Rolling Stones concert film directed by Martin Scorsese, now on DVD, Bill and Hilary Clinton make brief on-stage appearances (it&;s billed as a benefit for the Clinton Foundation.) That got me thinking.  What&;s Hilary Clinton&;s favorite Rolling Stones song? &;Honky Tonk Women&;? &;Some Girls&;?   real  |  windows media&; We know Bill likes &;Little T&A&;   real  |  windows media Hilary? (I Can&;t Get No) Satisfaction   real  |  windows media

Tags:Bill-Clinton, Hilary-Clinton, Martin-Scorsese, Rolling-Stones, Shine-A-Light Posted in Hollywood Follies, Music, political-correctness, Politics | 3 Comments &;

Lindsay Lohan Remembers9-11

September 11, 2008

Lindsay Lohan is growing up.  Her recent comments (and those of her friend, Samantha Ronson) about remembering 9-11 show someone who is putting the chaos of her family life and personal problems behind her and caring about the lives of others&;and our country. “I am in New York and I would like to remind everybody to take a moment today for those lost in tragedy that occurred on 9/11/01,&; Lohan blogs. Ronson adds &;I don’t really know what to say,&; she says. &;To all those we lost, we will never forget, and never take for granted, the sacrifices that you made.&; It seems that Lindsay is finding some of the happiness she has brought others as an entertainer in films like Mean Girls and, yes, even Herbie.  Playing the twin girls in The Parent Trap, she gave my family (and probably many others) some comfort after we turned off the TV in the days after 9/11 and watched her over and over again.  Its good that she and Ronson remember, seven years later, and understand that the pain never goes away.

Tags:9-11, lindsay-lohan, Samantha-Ronson Posted in Hollywood Follies | Leave a Comment &;

DVD Player forRepublicans

September 4, 2008

Are you a &;pitbull with lipstick&; sick of sex, violence, and dirty words in the movies?  For just $70, you can play censor to the likes of Stephen Spielberg or James Cameron&;s flicks, to scrub them clean before exposing them to your family.

ClearPlay is a fancy DVD Player that can play regular DVD movies &; but without profanity, violence and nudity. Wow! How does that work? It&;s really quite ingenious. We create filtering information on a movie by movie basis, and then put those &;filters&; into the DVD player. This way, the DVD player knows when to skip or mute while the movie is playing. But isn&;t it choppy? Nope. Like you we love movies and take great care to maintain the movie presentation quality &; the only thing gone is &;that one scene&; you wish the kids never saw.

And without that &;one scene&; they&;ll never figure out how to explore their sexuality on their own.

Tags:censorship, ClearPlay, DVD-technology, Hollywood, Sarah-Palin Posted in 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Consumer Electronics | Leave a Comment &;

Andrew Sullivan Discovers the NationalEnquirer

September 3, 2008

On the Enquirer pushing to break the Palin teenage pregnancy story (and Mom/daughter catfight), Andrew is a day late and a dollar short&; We were here yesterday.

Tags:Andrew-Sullivan, National-Enquirer, Sarah-Palin Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Sarah Palin Meets NationalEnquirer

September 2, 2008

Extending their celebrity franchise into politics, the National Enquirer is apparently launching a bipartisan campaign to investigate America&;s best-looking national politicians.   For months a lonely beacon of truth about John Edwards, the Enquirer is now looking into Sarah Palin.  Not surprisingly, they find a mother-daughter catfight in this &;Jamie Lynn Spears&; family.  Says the Enquirer:

&;Palin planned for the wedding to take place right after the Republican National Convention and then she was going to announce the pregnancy.But Bristol, 17, refused to go along with the plan and that sparked a mother-daughter showdown over the failed coverup.&;   

Interestingly, the Enquirer claims that it was their reporting (again) that reluctantly pulled the truth out of Palin, not her truth-telling nature.

&;The ultra-conservative governor’s announcement about her daughter’s pregnancy came hours after The ENQUIRER informed her representatives and family members of Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol’s child, that we were aware of the pregnancy and were going to break the news. In a preemptive strike Palin released the news, creating political shockwaves.&;

  How do they do it?  This CBS story shows a bit&;although in a blunder now sadly typical of the mainstream media, they get the name of the Enquirer&;s founder wrong&;it was Generoso Pope, not David Pope.

With Palin, once again the mainstream media (and apparently the McCain campaign) is being scooped by the National Enquirer.  So far the Enquirer&;s circulation hasn&;t responded to its newfound public-spiritedness, but if the national media wasn&;t so stubborn in its death spiral, it too could learn from the plucky tabloid. They have the story the public wants to read &;even before the investigative reporters have settled into Anchorage.&;    

Tags:Bristol-Palin, John-Edwards-lovechild, National-Enquirer, Sarah-Palin Posted in Journalism, National-Enquirer, newspapers, Politics, public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;