The Media Coach

Hi John,

There's a bit of a theme this week, which you won't find hard to spot.

It's the season when plenty of big music gigs are taking place. We were at the O2 Arena this week to see The Who - basically Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend backed by a 30-piece orchestra.

For two blokes in their late seventies (OK, not that much older than me), the energy they displayed was amazing. They were on stage for over two hours without a break, delivering hit after hit, as well as long extracts from Tommy and Quadrophenia.

Roger Daltrey did smile when he sang the line "Hope I die before I get old" from My Generation, and we loved him all the more for it.

That's the way to behave - keep doing what you do.

It has been hard to miss the story about Huw Edwards over the last week.

A man who has delivered countless stories into our homes has become the story itself.

I'm not going to comment here on the rights and wrongs of what has happened, and what the eventual outcome may be. If you want to know what I really think, drop me a line.

I simply wish everyone involved with this issue a way to move on from it and find some comfort.

My radio guest this week is music legend Suzi Quatro.

Suzi has been in the music business for over fifty years and is about to embark on a UK tour.

She's been working with KT Tunstall in a marvellous collaboration.

Suzi and KT recorded Face To Face - an album of original duets written by the duo - together in England, with Suzi’s son, LR Tuckey, serving as producer.

The record covers themes of love and loss, fear and triumph — all essential to their experiences as groundbreaking women in rock.

We had a great talk as you can hear in the Media Coach Radio Show.

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And there's a terrific song from Suzi Quatro and KT Tunstall.

The MediaMug of the week is Guns n Roses frontman Axl Rose (yes, I know it's an anagram - no need to get in touch).

He's teamed up with - wait for it - Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig in a Looney Tunes cartoon for the first new music he's recorded since 2008.

The track, called ‘Rock The Rock’ and which was co-written on Rob Janas and Joshua Funk of the Looney Tunes stable, lasts just over two minutes and was first heard on New Looney Tunes episode “Armageddon Outta Here, Part Two.”

It features a cartoon Axl in his trademark Guns N’ Roses - studded leather jacket, red bandana under wide-brim hat, cowboy boots, flannel around the waist – fronting an animated band led by Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig.

Together, the power of their performance diverts an asteroid from a collision course with Earth. Rock the rock, geddit?

Anyway, judge for yourself...

I've heard speakers begin their speeches like this (name changed to protect the guilty);

"Good Morning, my name is Tom Smith, and I'm delighted to be here in Birmingham. Let me say what a pleasure it is to see you all here. It will take just a moment to connect up the laptop, so I'll just let you know that even though I have a lot of slides, I'll skip some of them, and explain the ones that are hard to read. Can you hear me at the back, by the way?"

OK, put your hand up if you spotted anything wrong there. Fine, put it down.

You'd never start like that, would you? The first twenty seconds of your speech is "golden time". It is the only time that all of your audience will be listening to you. You must ensure that you don't waste a second of it.

So, here's what to do to ensure that you don't start like Tom.

Sometimes in a media interview, you'll find yourself being asked a question that you can't answer. There could be one of several reasons for this:

In most of these cases, you can simply tell the truth. If it's confidential, or sub judice, you can simply say so. If it's outside your area of expertise, it's OK to say that too.

There are two tricky situations though. Firstly, when you should know the answer but you don't, and secondly when you do know the answer but don't want to reveal it.

Let's take these in order. If a question comes up that you should have anticipated, and should be able to answer, the best approach is to offer a partial answer and say that you want to be absolutely accurate in your response, so you'd like time to check and provide the answer as soon as possible.

If it's a question that you simply don't want to answer, you can either say "That's not the most important issue...." and deliver your core message, or you can offer a long answer to a related issue that prompts another question, such as "A good question, but what people are really looking for is what they can do if they have a similar problem, which is..."

But of course, all of these are trumped by good preparation.

There are many ways to use social media.

For some people, it's a way to show how wonderful their life is. That's not what you do.

For others, it's a way to build a massive following so that a fraction of them will buy whatever they are selling. That's not what you do either.

For most of us, it's a way to keep in touch with friends and business colleagues, to remind people what we do, and to say nice things about other people's posts.

The common element here is that we all like to be able to stand out in some way. We're all unique, and it's good to be able to show that when we post online. The thing is, if you do what most other people are doing, you won't stand out.

I suggest you go your own way. Post about things that others don't mention. Don't follow the herd. If there's a news story that everyone is commenting on, post about something different. For example:

In other words, go your own way.

Sometimes music fails us...

Look no further. Just get in touch.

The information in this ezine may be freely re-used in any online or offline publication, provided it is accompanied by the following credit line - "This information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in "The MediaCoach", his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk."