Being Media Savvy

Would you ask someone to build you a house who had never laid a brick? Of course not.

Yet in 1995 a company entered the financial services market for the first time with a personal equity plan and took £75m worth of investments from customers, the largest share in the industry.

That company was Virgin and people trusted Richard Branson with their money because they believed he was a winner, despite no financial track record.

Branson’s enviable brand loyalty owed much to his clever manipulation of the media and businesses of all sizes, even the smallest, can learn from his success.

Statistics that show the public has increasingly less faith in the media obscure a powerful truth. Visibility and recognition are the keys to marketing your product and service. And the beauty is that if you are media savvy and invest a little time you can achieve incredible results without spending a penny.

The trouble is most people, including businessmen and women, fear the media. They remember how one inappropriate joke cost Gerald Ratner £500m. They wince as Jeremy Paxman puts yet another MP through the Newsnight wringer. Yet every day, lower down the media food chain, legions of hard-pressed print and broadcast journalists struggle to fill acres of newsprint and miles of audio or video tape with material that will interest their own “customers”. They need stories, they need interviews and they need expert knowledge.

So one simple way of promoting your business is to become a perceived “thought leader” in your field of expertise. Note the word “perceived”. You don’t have to be the best or the biggest. You just need a story and you have to tell it simply and with passion. If you do, you will be invited back.

This was the way American Suze Orman catapulted herself from waitress to multi-millionairess. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, in 1951 to poor Russian-Jewish immigrants, bad stock market investments later caused her to lose the 50,000 dollars a customer loaned her to start a restaurant. Angry and unable to repay the debt, she trained as a stockbroker and became a financial planner. What differentiated her from tens of thousands of similar advisors is she began to write books and articles. She was soon noticed by TV and radio producers and the exposure they gave her helped to quickly build a 32m dollar fortune.

The technological revolution means that there are now many more ways to reach your target customers than traditional routes of newspapers, radio and TV. But you can alert so called “mainstream” media to websites and blogs that contain good content, video or podcasts.

Exactly how you identify your story and then make it sing, maybe I’ll explain another day. For the moment remember that editorial is 10 times more powerful than advertorial. “You’ve got to be in it to win it” was the slogan used by The Sun years ago to launch a major competition. And so have you. Journalists feed off what they see and read in other media.

Look at what happened to Guy Goma (pictured), the out of work computer technician who went for a BBC job interview, blundered into the studio and was wrongly interviewed about an IT lawsuit. Watch here. He went on a media merry-go-round which included appearances on GMTV and CNN and talks about a Hollywood movie. And he didn’t even know what he was talking about!

Snow

Like everyone else we have been adapting to the snow. It's beautiful but hugely impractical. Here's the morning view from our patio.

How NOT to do Power Point

Good opera-tors

The Mail on Sunday's Northern staffer Andy Chapman offers this wonderful piece of nostalgia. Back in the good old days when Ken Tucker was news editor at The Sun in Manchester he punctually rang news agencies around 9am and then again at 4pm looking for stories with the immortal words "anything for the schedule" (in the morning) and "any overnights" (in the afternoon). In honour of these regular calls hacks around Manchester produced a song to the tune of Giussepe Verde's La Donna e Mobile from Rigoletto. It was regularly sung in the 'Withy Grove' (Thomson House) then home to the Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, the Crown and Kettle and 'Yacht Club' (Yates's Wine Lodge) populated by journalists from the Express and The Abercrombie, Deansgate, home of the Mail titles. This is how it went.

Give me an overnight,
Anything will be alright,
We don't care if it's shite,
Our schedule's very light,
Bum tit or whore,
Ring 1-2-3-4"

(which was the old phone number for The Sun, Manchester)

A tall story

Journalism is often like potholing. You think you know where you are going but end up fumbling around in the dark. Sometimes your journey ends with you feeling wet, tired and depressed. Sometimes, however, you find yourself open mouthed in awe with a feeling of great elation.

The late Screaming Lord Sutch was a good contact of mine. And through David I was introduced to a dozen or more raving loony eccentrics including a man who had changed his name by deed poll to John Major. He even altered his address to 10 Downing Street despite actually living somewhere like 3 Acacia Avenue. The local postmen, however, always impeccably delivered his mail. Strange, because I regularly get post for a Chinese restaurant.

One day John telephoned and asked in a matter of fact voice: “Can you find me a dwarf for the UK’s first ever dwarf throwing contest?” Apparently the pastime was a hit in Australia and John thought he could become rich here by turning people of restricted growth into missiles. Always ready for a challenge, I began my search and within a day I had contacted Britain’s tiniest man Mike Henbury Ballan. Sometimes it pays to start small.

Even at just 2ft 11in Mike, 32, was a larger than life character. He worked as a customs and excise officer in Hampshire and even managed the office football team. But he also had showbiz experience, appearing in movies like Labyrinth and Return of the Jedi. He warmed immediately to the idea and thought he could go far as a human projectile, although in reality it was unlikely to be more than about five feet. I sensed a big page lead in a Sunday tabloid and a decent pay day.

Then tragedy. John had been told by the venue he would need a licence for dwarf throwing and when he applied for the document a local authority pen pusher not only told him it was impossible he also alerted every other local authority in the land. Suddenly dwarf throwing was on a par with dog fighting. Another world exclusive bites the dust. Another wrong turn in the pothole of life. I broke the sad news to Mike, who, like a true gentleman, was not short with me.

A few months later the telephone rang and a voice said: “It’s Mike Ballan, do you remember me?” He explained that he was getting married to his 4ft tall girlfriend Debbie Spencer and wanted me to write the exclusive story. The ceremony made a heart warming page lead in the Sun on May 31st 1991 (see picture).

A day later, because Mike had a brother of normal size, an American magazine rang and asked me to adapt the story - for very generous remuneration - to coincide with the release of the hit Hollywood movie Twins starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. Kerching. Large ones all round, or not as the case may be.

Falsie Towers

I was drawn to journalism as a schoolboy by reading about writers like James Cameron. His book Point of Departure is still one of my favourites.

I was enthralled by stories like the time the news editor stunned Cameron by ordering him to go out and buy a pith helmet and a mosquito net because he was off to interview the Dalai Lama.

I found myself similarly surprised the day I was assigned to go undercover in a transvestite hotel in Oldham. It was my own fault for having a good idea and not keeping it to myself.

I had just turned in to do a casual night shift on the Sun in Manchester to find two senior executives and several reporters in conference. Police had been tipped off that a security guard, who had disappeared with a large some of money, was in fact a cross-dresser and was holed up in a £60 a night hotel dressed as a French maid. The bobbies raided the place and carted the felon away, mascara doubtless running. But the establishment’s owner, a snake-hipped American called Rupert (pictured) who looked like any real man’s dream date, adamantly refused to let Fleet Street’s finest cross the threshold. Increasingly large sums had been offered – up to £10,000 I believe – but Rupert was determined that privacy and client confidentiality should not be breached.

“Look,” I said, almost absent mindedly, “it’s a hotel for goodness’ sake. Why don’t you just get someone to book in?” The look on the faces of my colleagues must have been very similar to the expression of Archimedes when his spilling bath water told him the volume of irregular objects could be calculated with precision.

Minutes later I was on my way to the Victorian terrace house, which was soon to be dubbed Falsie Towers. Rupert, a Tina Turner look-alike, greeted me at the front door and showed me to my room. He advised me on what dress to wear for dinner, applied my make up, then disappeared to prepare the meal.

If there were other guests booked in they did not stray from their rooms. Rupert sat and chatted throughout dinner. But every time he departed to collect the next course I removed an auto-focus camera from my cleavage and captured the ambience of the mysterious dwelling. In the lounge I found dozens of photographs of satisfied customers, one carrying the message “who’s a naughty girl, then?”

My report duly appeared two days later. But I was mortified to be ordered to telephone Rupert and seek his reaction. Over dessert he had told me how he hired a private eye to track down one customer who didn’t pay up. My hand trembling, I dialled the number and soon heard Rupert’s honeyed drawl on the line. “You were very naughty,” he chided. “But since the piece appeared in the paper the telephone hasn’t stopped ringing with bookings!” It’s nice to do something for local businesses I always think. Luckily he never offered me a loyalty card.

A worrying trend

News here that one of the biggest and most important court reporting agencies in the land cannot cover its overheads is not only shocking it has serious implications for society.

When I started in journalism a staff or freelance reporter attended almost every case in every court in the UK. The shame of being convicted was part of the sentence, in my view. Nowadays, with the sad demise of local and national newspapers, only a tiny fraction of cases are properly covered. In 2002 when I attended Glossop magistrates to see former Manchester United star Lee Martin convicted of benefit fraud the clerk to the court told me I was the first national reporter who had set foot in the chamber for five years. The man who scored the winning goal in an F A Cup Final had swindled £3,000 while earning thousands as a television pundit. The court heard that Martin felt ''nothing but shame and embarrassment''. Quite. There may always be mitigating circumstances and these can be put before the court. But surely a genuine show of contrition is part of the rehabilitation process. I doubt whether Martin transgressed again.

Clever people talk of micro-blogging replacing local journalism. But what blogger will sit in Glossop magistrates court all day? And court reporting is an art, for which an impeccable shorthand note is needed. Even if he was willing, does that micro-blogger have the relevant skills? Of course, newspapers should not be immune from general economic pressures. But the plight of companies like Strand News is an example of the very serious consequences that will follow the breakdown of traditional news coverage.