Andrew Gilman, president of CommCore Consulting Group, has been a communications strategist and crisis counselor for more than twenty years. Co-author of the best-selling book Get To the Point (Bantam 1990), Andrew is also a lawyer and award-winning journalist. He frequently is called upon to help senior executives prepare for media interviews, new business presentations, board meetings, testimony before Congressional committees and regulatory agencies, expert witnessing in lawsuits, appearances on TV and radio, road shows, analyst presentations, and investor meetings. Andrew also develops and directs the CommCore training and consulting services. As a journalist, Andrew has experience as a reporter for trade and consumer publications, as well as a radio reporter and host. On radio, Andrew was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's award-winning programs "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition." His articles have appeared in The New York Times, National Law Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Risk Management Newsletter and the Washington Business Journal. He has received awards from the Fund for Investigative Journalism and has been nominated for Sigma Delta Chi and National Magazine Awards.
How did you get into media training?
I guess you could say that I've made a hop, step and jump from high school teacher to public relations. If you can motivate 17-year olds at 8.00 AM when they would rather be sleeping, adults who are coming to learn are a little easier to work with.
When I started as a teacher - just out of college - I didn't think I knew enough yet to be a really good teacher, so I decided to get a little more life experience. This prompted the move into journalism. I was working as a trade journalist - Travel Management Daily, a two-page newsletter with 25 stories a day. I left the newsletter to become a freelance reporter - I wrote for airline magazines, New York Times, among others. While freelancing, I was going to law school at night, and then started doing a lot of You have offices in New York City, Washington, DC and Los Angeles. Are there any differences in how you practice media training in those cities?
It's not about where we are located, as the world of media training is about taking a plane to the client location. On the other hand, having offices and trainers in a number of cities can help clients who need to schedule at the last minute and always want to cut down on travel costs. Clients prefer to spend their money on services, not on expenses. Our model has been to have a team of trainers - one as good as the next - to assist clients.
In DC, though, we have a bigger footprint with not-for-profits, government agencies, and associations - many of these are located in DC. While DC is where my office is, we do well in NYC and LA.
NY specializes in health care, consumer goods, technology and financial services. Last time I checked, NY was still the largest US city and it's no surprise that it's also our largest office by revenue. Our Executive Vice President, Jerry Doyle, has done a great job building the NY practice.
With the LA office and the diverse California economy, we can be doing a little bit of entertainment media training one day, and the next day it could be a defense contractor, the video game industry, or biotech.
Which client or client moment are you most proud of?
The PR answer is that we love all our clients equally. The answer from my heart is a not-for-profit, pro-bono client. I am the Chairman of the Board of the Dale Carnegie and Isn't this the job of a PR firm?
Many PR firms have media training departments, and many of them are quite good. There are business reasons for not having a media training department, such as the media training person isn't 100 percent billable.
Media training used to be a "what is that?" part of the equation. Now it's built into the PR plans. The smaller firms recognize that they need to have partner firms that provide the highly specialized skill.
We want to come across as a partner with the client or with the PR firm. We all have important work to do - the skilled general practitioner offers a full variety of services, and that may include calling in a media training specialist. When we work for a PR firm, our job is to reinforce the firm's and the client's relationship.
What makes a good media trainer?
The question I always get asked is "what makes us different?" Sometimes other media training services have better brochures. Or, someone's client list is equal to mine. But the real difference comes in the media trainer's ability to work with individuals and groups. I tell clients that when we start a session, we have about four to five minutes with the executives in which they calculate whether their investment of time and money is going to be worthwhile. It's the ability to work with the people, to pull out a sound bite or message to connect with them that's essential. I have met many outstanding reporters who can't quite figure out how to teach a client how to best conduct an interview. The credential is a starting point, but it's the teaching side that's the differentiator.
Don't get me wrong, credentials count. I still get calls based upon my experience with James Burke (former chairman of J&J) for his "60 Minutes" interview with Mike Wallace. The credit, however, all goes to Johnson & Johnson for its credo and culture.
The best positive media training results will be having someone who cannot only handle the interview with confidence and pose, but also deliver the message and the pull quote. We have trained someone well if they can answer with that substance during the interview. There are the occasional difficult interview situations where "Do No Harm" is the goal--to survive, not to score. To this day, a bad quote or bad product announcement will do more harm than a good quote or good product announcement can do.
We prepare for a training session by reading all the stuff that is out there on the client: we read what's out there on the blogs, what's out there on LexisNexis. We do the competitive research, and come in with questions. One of the greatest compliments we can get from a client is that we knew our stuff, but that we also knew their stuff.
When Silver Anvil for media trainer - we do the coaching so that the clients do well. We are just like speech writers - they don't take credit for what they have written, and we shouldn't take credit for whom we have trained or the crisis that we prepare executives for.
Another reason we get hired is that we really make sure that we know what people are getting trained for - a Business Week roundtable? A webchat? A satellite media tour? It's all about the performance and the results; and we need to stay on top of what the media and blogs are doing. We don't cross over into the traditional PR realm - strategy, the pitch, campaigns, press conferences. We just specialize in media training.
There are a lot of media trainers out there - but we always have someone available. All of our media trainers have 20+ years of experience, and we always find new trainers that are already seasoned. You need that substance to media train a CEO.
Have you begun media training for Blogs or Blog commenting?
It is coming up more and more, and there needs to be a space to sound off besides the "letter to the editor." Media training works beyond the comment or quote in the media outlet. Did you get in what you wanted? Did you get treated well? A blog is a good way to get that message. A blog is a good PR forum.
For crisis response preparedness, Anything else to add?
There are the three Ps to make anyone effective in media: Prepare, Practice (Q&A), and Passionate Performance - that energy with which you communicate is so important.
Media training is fun. You have a very intense half-day, one-day, two-day project with the client. At the end of it, their skills have improved, they have seen the change, and if you do the job right, they say thank you. The tool of videotape - even for print interviews - is critical because they can see how the spokesperson reacts, and then self-correct. It is nice once in a while to see the sound bite you developed on TV or in print.
Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy's opinions and views - on public relations, publicity and other things. 
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