X Factor’s Frankie and RIM's Blackberry teach us the importance of media training

The way you present yourself to the general public is so important if you are relying on them to vote for you in a national televised ‘talent’ competition. Frankie Cocozza from this year’s X Factor is a shining example of why media training should be mandatory for anyone who gets to the live finals in this show, or any similar TV programme for that matter. After weeks of almost daily press coverage of his jack-the-lad antics, he has finally been given the boot from the show for boasting about taking illegal substances.

A mini-tutorial in how to conduct oneself on a pre-watershed programme might have been called for after he swore on the one of the live results shows (resulting in an Ofcom investigation), and some informal tips may have come in handy after he shared a little bit too much information on one of the Xtra Factor shows that same weekend, but it would seem that media training is not at the top of the priority list for X Factor producers, especially after the latest Frankie revelation. In fact 2009 winner Joe McElderry said last year that he never received any media training during his time on the show, although described the whole experience as “a bit like an apprenticeship in the media industry”.

But it’s not just wannabe celebrities who are in need media training, there are times when business leaders could benefit from some formal training too, and unfortunately never more so than when something goes wrong.

Media training is often associated with people who work in their company’s PR and marketing departments, but is something that may get overlooked by businesses for their more senior staff members, as the skills learnt in these courses are not necessary applicable to a senior executive’s everyday responsibilities. However, and particularly for consumer-facing businesses, there are times when company heads need to represent their organisations in the media, and for this it is vital to have formal training in place so that they can be made aware of the common pitfalls.

The recent Blackberry network outage is a prime example of this, because aside from the service failure, one of the major issues brand owner Research In Motion faced criticism over, was the lack of clear communication to their customers about why the network had gone down, what was being done to fix it and when it would be up and running again. To the majority of users, RIM did not appear to have an effective contingency, or crisis management, plan in place, something which would have included a media communication strategy.

For a company like RIM, day-to-day media communication will be handled by the PR and marketing teams, but in a situation like this – where more than 70 million Blackberry users across the world were affected – it was necessary for more senior members of staff to get involved. It is vitally important that a senior figurehead is seen to be taking control early on, as it shows that the company is taking the situation seriously.

Unfortunately for RIM, it took three days before the first public statement by a senior executive was made, and by this time the network problem had spread across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. Later the same day the network issues spread to North America, but it wasn’t until the fourth day of the on-going problem that RIM founder and co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, released a short video message by way of an apology and explanation. However, while he may eventually have said the right things, for many it was too little too late, and the reputation of the company had already suffered.

So the lesson here is simple, if reputation is a vital part of your sales strategy, make sure you have the training which will enable you to present yourself in the best possible light, whatever the situation.