Media training is the practice of preparing spokespeople (executives, celebrities, experts) for interviews. Media interviews are easy to handle when all is good with the company or brand. It’s predicting and answering the more difficult questions that cause the most trouble.
In most cases there’s no reason not to be prepared for difficult questions. Anyone who sits down with Maria Bartiromo on CNBC or Piers Morgan on CNN should know that anything remotely controversial in the news that day is fair game. I’m still astounded at the number of executives who sit down for major interviews and who fumble for answers to the most obvious questions.
In a recent interview with Matt Lauer on Today, actress Anne Hathaway didn’t fumble or stumble. She adroitly shifted the conversation away from an unpleasant topic and put on a master class in media skills. On Monday, December 10th, while attending the premier of Les Miserable, Hathaway stepped out of a limo and accidently exposed more than her legs. Lauer was forced to address the incident because the photographs had gone viral. “We’ve seen a lot of you lately. Let’s just get it out of the way. You had a little wardrobe malfunction. What is the lesson learned from something like that?” he asked.
What happened next is instructive. Hathaway gave the perfect response. She acknowledged the incident (saying “no comment” is simply the worst way to answer a tough question), offered a short observation about it, and used the question to segue to the topic she came to discuss—her movie.
Anne Hathaway: “It was obviously an unfortunate incident. It kind of made me sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of another person in a vulnerable moment and, rather than delete it, sells it. I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality upon unwilling participants. Which brings us back to Les Mis because that’s who my character is. She is someone who is forced to sell sex to benefit her child because she has nothing. So let’s get back to Les Mis.”
At this point in the interview I thought, That’s the greatest segue I’ve ever heard. Lauer was thinking the same thing. “That’s the most creative turn of a question that I’ve ever heard and I’m going to take that, so that’s fine,” he said.
Brilliant. If Hathaway had tried to avoid the question, Lauer would have had no choice but to follow-up. Some media-training specialists call the technique that Hathway used “bridging.” I look at it as taking control of the interview. “Control” is not a bad thing, unless a spokesperson is controlling the interview to lie or mislead the audience. Hathaway made it clear she would answer one question about the incident, but that she would not allow the interview to get out of control and to divert attention from the movie she is so obviously proud of. As a seasoned spokesperson she was smooth, poised, and professional.