Tony Schwartz, creator of the “Daisy” commercial, died this past week. Schwartz will long be remembered for his insights into communication, namely the power of emotion and the role of ads to surface feelings from the audience rather than to educate the audience with facts. I made the pilgrimage to Schwartz’ compound upper West Side Manhattan compound in 1985, where he was nice enough to further elaborate for me the theories from his book “The Responsive Chord.” Anyone who is serious about being a master communicator should watch all of Tony’s old TV commercials as well as read his books.

“Dark Genius” is a new book out about the life and times of Roger Ailes, the longtime GOP political operative and Fox News Channel founder. The book isn’t great, but Ailes life is so fascinating, it almost doesn’t matter. If you are interested in media, politics, and communication, you really can’t go wrong learning more about Roger Ailes. The book earned its place at the pool this summer.

Paulette Dean Daly, former wife of golfer John Daly, was asked yesterday if she had had an affair with the married baseball great Roger Clemens. Here was here response:

“You know what, I’m really uncomfortable talking about this. I’m just going to have to say ‘no comment’. I know Roger. I consider him a good friend. That’s all I’m comfortable saying.”

All of her “no comfortables” and “no comments” make her look guilty as sin, when it comes to this particular sin. Daly might as well have produced naked sex videos of her and Clemens. What she should have said was simply “Roger and I are good friends and I wish him and his family the best” and then shut her mouth. Don’t say “I’m not comfortable” and for goodness sakes, don’t say “no comment.” Ever!

Does anyone know of an expert in starting ad networks? I am looking to start an ad network focusing on web sites that deal with the following topics: speaking, public speaking, presentations, powerpoint and media training. If you know of anyone, please have them contact me at tj@tjwalker.com.

While I was at a cocktail party last night on 14th street in Manhattan, a publicist told me the following: “I don’t want to be on TV ever! I want to be behind the scenes. I’d hate to be a celebrity. They have awful lives. Nothing in their life can be kept secret. Please don’t ask me to ever be interviewed or to give speeches.”

Now, this attitude is an affront to my very being; and it’s a very rare attitude to hear from someone working in Manhattan in media circles. But, this publicist’s perspective is a completely normal attitude held by the vast major of Americans and other psychologically healthy people around the globe.

Two quick thoughts came to mind when I heard the publicist make this comment:

1. There is nothing wrong with valuing privacy rights above fame and fortune , and

2. It’s insanely hard to actually become famous. You don’t become famous with one interview or speech or even with 1000.

Personally, I’ve been interviewed thousands of times and/or interviewed people thousands of times. Yet I am hardly a celebrity. The only way I could get in People Magazine now is if I were to kidnap Britney Spears children.

In a fragmented media world of thousands of reality shows, and a gazillions of web sites, it’s actually harder to become a celebrity these days—not easier. And part of the process is sitting through numerous profile interviews.

One of the central elements of the celebrity manufacturing machine is the full profile interview. In a full profile interview, you often sit with a reporter for several hours; sometimes over several days or even weeks. This type of an interview is much more revealing and personal than, say, a quick interview regarding a new product launch. Unlike an interview where you are a spokesperson for a product or a company, in a profile interview, you are acting as a spokesperson for your own life. The pressure is greater in interviews like this. There is also more time for self-doubts to set in like, “Oh my god, the reporter is asking me what music is on my iPod—I’ll look like a fool if I confess I have nothing more recent on my iPod than Led Zeppelin.”

The rules of how to handle yourself in a media interview still apply during a profile interview, but it requires greater discipline due to their often lengthy nature. There are more opportunities to get too cozy with the reporter and start saying foolish, quotable things. You must still have a focused message and deliver compelling sound bites. But you’ve also got to be really interesting as a person, or the whole interview could get spiked.

So how would I let myself be profiled? See for yourself. I recently sat for several hours over a couple of days with a feature writer in Charlotte, NC.

http://www.mediatrainingworldwide.com/press-charlotte2.pdf

Sometimes a reporter will call under deadline and your goal is to get as many quotes in the article, while at the same time, eating up the clock to make it unnecessary and undesirable for the reporter to call your competitors for a quote. Below is a link to a story where I was interviewed for a story by Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/leadership/2008/04/21/ceo-corporate-image-lead-manage-cx_mk_0421tv.html

In this particular case, the reporter told me that he was posting the story in just a few hours. I therefore deduced that he didn’t have lots of time to call every media trainer around. I didn’t have a message I cared about getting into the story, but I wanted to get lots of real estate in the story–and make sure my competitors didn’t. So in this case, I broke the normal procedure by taking the call and doing the interview immediately. I went into full sound bite mode in an attempt to overwhelm the reporter with great choices for column filler.

Below are my actual quotes that made it into the story along with an analysis of the sound bite elements that made them quotable for the reporter:

“It’s not like when Lee Iacocca (#1 pop culture reference) could buy (#2 action oriented) an ad on three networks (#3 specific example) and hit (#4 action-oriented) the whole world (#5 absolute) in 1979 when everyone (#6 absolute) would see it,” Walker said, adding that this is the one task a CEO can’t simply assign.

“A CEO can delegate (#7 action-oriented) sales, accounting (#7 action-oriented), marketing (#8 action-oriented), but the one thing (#9 absolute) that the CEO cannot delegate is speaking (#10 action-oriented) on behalf of a whole organization (#11 absolute) to the entire world (#12 absolute).”
 

One dozen sound bite elements–in under 5 minutes. That’s how you don’t end up on the cutting room floor.

We are currently revamping our sales letter websites for our workshops at Media Training Worldwide. The public speaking one is at www.presentationtrainingworkshop.com and the media training is at http://www.mediatrainingworkshop.com/. We are currently looking for ideas on how to improve the site and, specifically, what video people would like to see on the site that would be a) interesting and b) motivate people to want to sign up for the workshop. I will send anyone an autographed copy of either of my books Media Training A-Z or Presentation Training A-Z if they give me any suggestions on how to improve either site, and what videos they’d like to see. Please send to me at tj@tjwalker.com.

I have housed my blog entries over the years on various web sites. If you would like to see any of my nearly 1000 old columns, videos, or audios that relate to speaking or media training, you can find them here. www.speakingchannel.tv/tjsinsights

I confess, I underestimated the power of blogs. For years I treated them as just another distribution method, like a fax or an email service. Now I have come to learn (belatedly) that blogs are their own end, in and of themselves.

For years I told people that I blogged. I did, indeed, write a daily column, occasionally about stuff in the news. And this column was posted at either www.tjsights.com  www.speakingchannel.tv. But I wasn’t writing a true blog. I wasn’t connecting to the greater blog community and I wasn’t linking to the rest of the world. I was simply taking an old-media world column and shoe-horning it into a different format. It wasn’t working.

I stand chastened. Today is the first day of my first real blog. Here are a several guiding principles I plan to follow over the coming years:

1. I will take you into my world of working with high level leaders around the world on their speaking skills.
2. I’ll take you through the many processes of refining the speaking craft.
3. I’ll frequently point out my own flaws and mistakes as a speaker and ask that you learn from my blunders.
4. Political leaders will be a frequent focus of this blog, but I will examine only the speaking skills of leaders. Of course I have views on political ideas themselves, but I have found that there is no way to start a discussion about political values without politics consuming the discussion and driving away the 99% of people who don’t care to enter a political debate. Please don’t presume to know anything about my politics because of how I rate a politic ian’s speaking skills (you will be wrong).
5. I will explore all areas of spoken communication in life, not just so-called “formal business presentations” that constitute the bulk of my business running Media Training Worldwide.
6. I will give honest assessments and ratings of speakers around the world, and I will let you do the same (even if that means giving me a low rating to one of my own speeches).
7. Everything I share with you will be based on a combination of personal experiences speaking, experiences training people around the globe, plus my attempts to analyze and synthesize everything else I can find that is written about or discussed as it relates to speaking.
8. This blog is primarily about you. And by you, I mean someone with an interest in speaking, spoken communication, public speaking, and everything else that goes into talking to people. However, I am going to draw upon many personal things that happen to me, as they relate to speaking. No, I won’t tell you about what breakfast cereal I ate or what movies I like (unless a movie has a speaking focus), but I will tell you about personal mistakes and blunders I make while speaking to large audiences or even one-on-one situations.
9. While I will try to write every day for you, I will try to use the medium that is the most effective way to deal with speaking, i.e. video, even though it is not as convenient as typing.
10. I want to hear from you. Please send me your questions or suggestions for topics for this blog to tj@tjwalker.com.