Media Training. Distilling your message

Me being interviewed by Reuters in NYC — April 2012
Early 2012 iROKOtv’s PR agency recommended if Bastian and / or I were going to get out in front of the press and cameras we should perhaps get a little ‘media training’ to help us. To be honest I was totally resistant to the idea. Sounded like some hocus pocus softy skill shit. In the end Jessica our global communications head convinced me to go. And boy did it open my eyes to how great speakers are not born. They are created. From your tone, when and how long you pause through to distilling your core message, business executives and media personalities put a lot of effort into coming across relaxed and on message during interviews. Even Obama has a small team of brilliant speech writers who debate and dictate every word he utters since running for Senate all those years ago.
The most important part for me was distilling one’s message. If a business cannot squeeze its reason for being into a single sentence, it probably doesn’t k...