Sarah Brown on How Media Training Isn’t What It Used to Be

Mixing Board Studio Session

Sarah is the Founder of Brighton Media, a media and presentation training consulting firm. Throughout her career, she has coached a diverse range of spokespersons, including executives from Fortune 100 companies, startup founders, technical experts, members of the media, and other professionals.

Before founding Brighton Media, Sarah most recently worked in corporate media relations for Marriott International. She was responsible for the company’s reactive media response on issues which impact corporate reputation, and led media relations for corporate and financial news. She also prepared the CEO, president, and chairman for speaking engagements and media interviews. Sarah joined Marriott from the Consumer Technology Association where she oversaw media strategy for CES, the world’s most influential technology event, and served as spokesperson for the association. 

Prior to that role, Sarah worked for Hilton Worldwide, where she held several roles, including global media strategy for leisure, innovation, and food & beverage. During the company’s initial public offering and transition from private to public company, she supported the communications for the company’s president and CEO. Prior to her time at Hilton Worldwide, Sarah spent several years at global public relations firm Ketchum. 

In this Studio Session, Sarah and Mixing Board Founder, Sean Garrett, talk about why it’s important to set intentions before any interview; finding new platforms to get your message across and why media training extends far beyond traditional media; and, building your own narrative (and inserting your personality). 

SG: Tell us about what you're up to now and how you found yourself doing what you're doing.

SB: A year and a half ago I started Brighton Media, which is a full service media and presentation training firm. I'm service specific, but industry agnostic. I work with all types of companies, big, small, startup, Fortune 100 – but pretty much exclusively focused on media training and presentation training. For all the clients I work with, it's all completely customized, depending on their need. It's something that I've wanted to launch for a very long time. I came to this idea when I served as a spokesperson for CES, the big tech show out in Vegas that I'm sure you've been to many times.

I really felt like I needed a little bit more in the way of media training before I spent time in front of the camera. I had so many ideas of different ways that media training could be offered and how it could work. Fast-forward five plus years later, a pandemic later, I launched Brighton Media. It's been incredible to be independent, that's for sure.

SG: Let's start at the basics. How do you define media training?

SB: As the media landscape has shifted and changed from being just a paper that arrived in the morning and the 7:00 PM news to a 24/7 cycle. Anyone can be a creator and develop content that's reaching tons and tons of people. And that's really shifted the way that we consume media as everyday people. There’s a gap of this big shift being accounted for in the traditional ways that spokespersons were being media trained. Media training helps the spokesperson maximize every single public facing opportunity and minimize any associated risk. It gives you tools to understand what you want to get out of each opportunity and hone in on how you want to be perceived, and how you want your brand to be perceived.

SG: I've been part of many of them where someone comes in, they've got a camera, you do interviews, you do kind of a before and after thing. The theater of media training is always, "I'm going to do this interview with you at the beginning, but we're going to start off fresh. You're going to sound like an idiot, and then I'm going to work with you, and then we're going to answer the same question at the end of the four hours. And then you're going to sound super smooth and I'm going to show both those to you, and you're going to see what this work that you put into it did." Is that a fair description of a process? 

SB: It can certainly work that way. I believe in meeting the spokesperson where they are. For a lot of folks, that wouldn't be productive. They would just be thinking of how terrible they looked on camera in the beginning. Sometimes it's more about confidence building and giving them those tools in a way that doesn't start with a “gotcha” moment. It's about starting from the beginning, helping them understand what those best practices are, and giving them the building blocks to understand how to approach all of these different various scenarios. 

The mock interviews can just be at the end and serve as a tool to show that, "This ended up being a lot better than I thought it might be." And then there are some spokespersons that may benefit from feeling a little bit like, "Oh, wow, I'm not quite as good at this as I thought I was." But that's not for everyone. Every media training has a mix of best practices, hands-on skills building, and of course that video recorded mock interview.

SG: In terms of the actual skills, one of the misnomers is that it's all about that interview and what you're saying. But you’re saying that there are some skills that surround it. I’ve often found some of the things you do before and after an interview have 10 times more value than what you say during the interview itself.

SB: The single most important thing is teaching people how to approach the interview. I call it “setting your intention.” That's asking yourself two questions, one, what am I trying to accomplish and two, how do I want to be perceived? If you don’t ask yourself those questions in advance, it can be hard to judge the success of the ultimate end result. Did I accomplish what I set out to accomplish? Am I coming off the way that I'd like to come off to the public? If you don't actually verbalize them beforehand, it's really hard to say, this went well, or this didn't go well. I always start with that before we get into the content, the messaging – all the things that we want to get across, or the delivery aspects. A lot of people think media training is just focused on the delivery, but it's really so much broader than that.

SG:  What is the frame of mind that you're trying to get across that's not just, “how do I get out of this conversation without saying anything?”

SB: If you are unwilling to say anything, then you probably shouldn't go out there and put yourself in a public situation, whether that's going on a panel or doing a media interview, where you're going to be asked those tough questions. Generally, the public is unwilling to hear a nothing statement from a leader these days. Asking yourself, “Is my company, or am I as an individual, willing to take a stance on this or actually address whatever issue you may be asked?” 

That's not to say that media training doesn't give you tactics and strategies to bring the conversation back to what you want to discuss, that's certainly what it does. But it's not meant to make you sound like you're a participant in a presidential political debate where you get a question and then you answer with something that's completely and totally unrelated. That's definitely not what I'm teaching.

SG: How do you teach people actually to stay on message but still remain human?

SB: It’s being laser focused on that intention. Be very clear about what you're there to talk about – whether that's addressing the initial question and then bridging off to another topic in a way that feels authentic. Or that's simply being very close with your communications person and saying something like, "Well, what I'm really focused on is X, Y, or Z." Make it pretty clear that this specific area isn't a direction that you're willing to let the conversation go. There's lots of different strategies for that, of course. But more generally what I'm focused on is helping the speaker really understand what makes them compelling, what interesting things that they have to say, and then helping them get there in a way that is authentic.

SG: What are examples of techniques you use to straddle the line between authentic and on-message? What are things that people can pull from or ways they can communicate that don't make them sound like a robot?

SB: I don't show any videos at all during my trainings because I don't want my spokespersons trying to emulate a different speaker. I want them to understand what their style is and embrace that. Some speakers are super dynamic and very energetic – we all can visualize a speaker like that. Some have more of a calm, serene presence. We have to understand, how are you naturally? How can we make sure that you come across clear, compelling, and concise, but not try to change your overall general style and demeanor? Because people can see right through that.

SG: How much of media training is actually message development? The training that you’re doing extends far beyond conversations with “media.” Should it even be called media training at all?

SB: A lot of it. Many people think that media training is all about what you're wearing, how you sound, or some of the more shallow aspects. And you can certainly get in the way of a really positive end result if your delivery isn't great. But you won’t be a success at all if you're not really strategic about what it is that you're communicating. It's all about that message. The majority of this is about determining, what's your point? What are you trying to say? Why are you going out there publicly at all? And then it becomes about how you can make sure, when you're getting asked questions, that you manage to get that messaging across.

That’s the hardest part, ensuring that people are clear about what they want to say. Frankly, the more highly educated you are, the easier it is to fall into a trap. You're so used to getting a question and then trying to provide a full and complete answer, that all of that preparation can go right out the window.

The term “media training” still works. There just needs to be more education around what it is today versus what it was 15 years ago. My philosophy and approach is a little bit different than the classic media trainer that's out there. I used to be a spokesperson myself. I come at the problem or the opportunity from the perspective of the company, of the organization. A lot of media trainers historically have been either former producers or former anchors, and their perspective is a little bit different. They're thinking about what might make a good segment.

But it does extend beyond traditional media. Today, anything that you put out there internally, as we've seen recently with social media posts that have gone viral from internal employees, lots of different creators can really impact the reputation of your company now. All of those interactions are important.

SG: As you're training people, what's changed? How do you get people to think about this more holistically? In the past, companies might media train the top seven executives so when opportunities arise, they're all ready to go. But the framing of that is about having this high stakes conversation with a reporter or a broadcast journalist, which for post people, if you're lucky, happens once a year at the most. Obviously that's an important moment, but they have so many other different points of communications with other human beings and they're thinking that this training only goes to that one time I'm on TV. It could be applied to all these different scenarios, but it's not sold or packaged or transacted that way. How do we evolve that?

SB: I address many other platforms beyond that traditional big broadcast interview. When I'm working with a client, I want to know what is realistic. If you're never going to be on CNBC or even on the local TV news, then that's not the mock opportunity that we do. Maybe they're just going to be doing podcast interviews, and a podcast interview is completely different. First of all it’s not visual, and it’s usually way longer, it's much more informal, you get much deeper into the topic, and they want you to bring your personality

When I was first media trained, however long ago, I was told I needed to smile more, I needed to wear more makeup, and I needed to wear a matching women's suit if I was going to be on television. But that advice didn't get deep into how I could feel prepared for what actually matters. So I teach people how to assess the situation in advance – how do I teach myself how to best prepare, once I understand how to answer a couple of questions about what I'm walking into?

SG: Podcasts are fascinating. How do you properly train someone for a podcast, which is meant to be this long, deep conversational thing that should feel very flowing, very natural, and almost surprising in its emotional depth. This in opposition to – you have three minutes to answer a bunch of questions that are going to get chopped into 30 seconds. What's your approach on podcasts and what do you coach people on?

SB: At first it’s just helping them understand that they're going to go a lot deeper into the topic than they normally do. Where they might have three main focus areas for a normal print interview and be very focused on those key things they want to get across, for a podcast interview, it is more of a conversation. If you have those three focus areas, prepare 15 sub points underneath those focus areas and expect a lot of follow-up questions to their responses. It's not just question, answer, question, answer. It's more fluid and flowing. I also tell people to anticipate a lot more personal questions.

I work with a lot of founders for smaller stage companies. Oftentimes they’re getting asked about their story, how they got there. A big misconception about media training is you just focus on those tough questions that you don't want to answer, instead of practicing those easy softballs that you want to nail and make sure that you make the most of. For example, who are you and how did you get here? Develop that narrative, build your own story, and don't be afraid to insert some of your own personality that makes you interesting and compelling, because podcasts are also entertainment, not just a news source.

SG: What are other misnomers about media training that you would like to correct?

SB: The most common misnomer is that you bring in a media trainer to put someone in a box or rein someone in or make sure that they say nothing. That's absolutely not the case. In fact, it just gives people the tools to make sure they're showing up the way that they want to show up. If I have a spokesperson with a great big personality, I love that. You can always rein someone in to make sure that their energy and emotion is appropriate for the opportunity, but it's much harder to get someone with low energy to boost that up. It's less about containing someone and more about giving them the tools to take them from being a good company representative to a truly fantastic one.

SG: Does media training scale? If an organization has 4,000 employees, and 100 of them are super active on social media – does this extend to them and how they interact with people? Or even as they talk to other customers, times when they're representing the brand?

SB: I have conflicting views on that because media training doesn't tell you who you should be. It just helps you express that. Part of what you're alluding to, is how can companies communicate with their employees to not say things that are inappropriate. At a certain point, people have to know who they are and what they stand for. Media trainers are not the values police. 

SG: We see layoff after layoff in the media world every day. What is the future of media training? How does it meet the future in the best possible way?

SB: I hope it doesn't get to this, but it's possible that media, true media opportunities like we think of them now, might get fewer and farther between. Maximizing that opportunity will become more important than ever. Instead we’ll see more content ownership, where organizations, personalities, and individuals are going to figure out other channels, other platforms to get those messages across.

Since launching about a year and a half ago, I thought it would be 80% media training, 20% presentation training, but I'm doing a much more of a hybrid of media and presentation training and a much larger portion of companies that are calling me in for more strict presentation training. To help leaders present better at board meetings, or I've worked with folks that just want to get that straight to camera social media presence improved. That surprised me, but that just speaks to the fact that the media landscape is shrinking.

SG: What does it take to commit full time to be a media trainer?

SB: I was really lucky, even early in my career, that I got to work directly with CEOs preparing for and leading right into their big moments – whether that was an internal or external big public presentation or big media moments. Early in your career, take that opportunity to build the briefing book for the CEO so you can understand all of the pieces of the media opportunity. So that you get to be there on the ground when the CEO is doing Fox News, or you get to be backstage when they're doing a keynote at a big event. 

Those things matter, so you understand how best to prepare someone in that big moment. Getting that face time with executives and leaders so you understand, yes, there's always ego involved, but it's more about how you can motivate them. How do you assess how they're feeling and what might make them improve in that moment? How do you give that direct but still accessible feedback? 

It’s so much fun and so rewarding to work with someone and see their improvement from, “Oh, I never want to do this,” to the point where they realize – not only is it this critical piece of what they do, but it's something that they come to truly enjoy and feel confident about. It really makes a big difference in what their organization is trying to accomplish.

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