How Net Execs Learn to Talk the Talk

Mar 08 1999

Ask Fran Zone to name the Internet CEO with the most "star power," and she'll pull out a videotape of Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale in front of the U.S. Senate a year ago. He was fielding questions about how Microsoft might have tried to orchestrate a monopoly on the Web-browser business.

At one point, Barksdale asked the room for a show of hands from those who used Intel -based PCs. "Keep those hands up," he said to the 50-odd people who'd raised their hands. "Now who out of you doesn't use the Windows operating system?" Every hand in the room went down.

"Whenever you're in charge of the visual, you're in charge. Period," explains Zone, a San Francisco-based "media trainer" who shows the videotape of the dramatic moment to all her clients.

Making a good impression with the media is serious business, as both Bill Clinton and Bill Gates can attest. And as the Net goes mainstream, the stakes get increasingly higher - for example, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos gets approximately 1,800 interview requests each year, according to a company spokesperson.

Spitting out something other than traffic metrics and tech-speak becomes critical in capturing the imagination of future customers. And it's up to public-relations professionals who specialize in the interview, known as media trainers, to help them get there. By educating executives about the media market and coaching them on key sound bites, media trainers help shape Net honchos and their companies into industry leaders.

"A lot of these people are geeks. They're young guys, emotionally cut off. They can't talk to real people," says Zone, whose company, San Francisco-based Zone Communications, specializes in "perception management" for clients like ATT , Intel, Kodak and Playboy.

An Internet company with just such an antisocial CEO or founder may try to pawn journalists off on the charismatic VP of marketing, but, media trainers note, journalists seek a variety of viewpoints, especially the CEO's. Teaching that uncomfortable CEO to leave the journalist with a favorable impression is the media trainer's job.

This lesson can be challenging for executives in the Internet Economy, who split their time between a technical world of trade journals, analysts and venture capitalists that uses one vocabulary and the outside world, which uses another. Mainstream media reaches the masses, and mainstream journalists don't care about binaries.

"All journalists are preparing to write the great novel," jokes Dr. Arynne Simon, a seasoned publicist and marriage counselor who has helped Apple CEO Steve Jobs, former Apple CEO John Sculley, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and many other industry heavyweights obtain personal polish. "These guys throw around words like Java and HTML. I always tell them - 'Make love to them like you'd say your girlfriend's name. Writers want language with texture.'"

Talking in images, avoiding what's called "striver" language such as "trying" or "hoping," smiling, maintaining positive and comfortable body language and generally establishing a rapport with a reporter, are all tougher than they might seem. But these days, especially after Bill Gates' pugnacious posturing during his fight with the U.S. Department of Justice, everyone, especially venture capitalists funding inexperienced Internet startups, are proponents of media training.

Most PR agencies have programs on hand to offer their clients. The cost is $5,000 to $10,000 per day for print interview training that feels like a cross between an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and a scene from The Manchurian Candidate. TV training is extra.

It isn't a fun break from the office - typically those who've paid for their day of media training are subjected to purposefully nightmarish interviews in front of their coworkers, which are videotaped and then critiqued by the group.

"It's very traumatic for them," says Amy Bonnetti, who uses the technique with clients who work with her independent PR firm, Big Mouth Communications, in San Francisco. "Sometimes they cry."

"We want them to experience the worst interview they're ever going to experience," says Ed Niehaus, president of PR agency Niehaus, Ryan, Wong in South San Francisco, Calif. "If there's anything there, I want to dig it up."

In NRW's sessions, the trainer, often Niehaus himself, will role-play as the journalist - not your garden-variety journalist, but rather, the poisonous kind that will be most resistant to focusing on the "top five things" the executive has been coached to emphasize. There's "The Insider," the writer who knows the industry cold and will ask complex questions that throw the exec off on tangents, hence messing up his message points. "The Knife Thrower," who tries to use negative statements to dislodge a negative quote that can make the CEO look awkward or, worse, pessimistic. And last, but not least, "The Strong, Silent Type," who sits and nods while the blushing executive rambles and self-destructs.

Media trainers deploy tactics to help Internet executives out of these sticky situations. One technique called "bridging" teaches clients to use cheerful transition statements including, "What's important to remember is ..." to dodge a tough question and answer an imaginary one instead. However, trainers acknowledge, too much of this can work against you, especially if the journalist notices the ploy and gets annoyed.

"Every time a spokesperson uses a 'bridge,' it's a withdrawal from the emotional bank account with the journalist," Niehaus explains. "You want to make some deposits, too, because you want to build a relationship and bring them into your humanness."

But what if that human is simply unappealing? Media training can even fix that, by swathing the offensive in layers of verbal bandages. Unfortunately, this practice can lead to a personality-free automaton - and that often ends up decreasing coverage.

"I wouldn't say we've never overtrained," admits Niehaus. "But it was usually to paper over some severe problem."