Brand Central Station

If you’re going to speak on behalf of a client or your company, you have to make sure nothing gets in the way of your message.  And that includes your fashion sense (or lack thereof).

Tami Kou, the lead media trainer at LaBreche in Minneapolis recently contributed a piece on what to wear (and what not to wear) to PRNews.  Here are a summary of her tips:

• Avoid small-checkered patterned prints. The camera has a difficult time focusing on the print, making it hard for viewers to look at.
• Don’t wear large, flashy or clunky jewelry. Oversized jewelry not only overshadow your message, the noise of it can be picked up on your microphone.
• If you’re wearing a jacket, pull it tight and sit on the back of it. This gives you a much sleeker look and more polished presence.
• Not sure what color to wear? Stay away from white, unless you’re wearing a colored jacket on top. White tends to wash you out. Instead opt for French blue. There’s a reason why it is the backdrop for nearly all presidential debates. That’s because it looks great on all. 

Tami also reminds us:

Television is a visual medium and people are listening with their eyes just as much, if not more so, than they are with their ears. [So,] remember that you’re representing your company’s brand and first impressions count. Make sure that your attire reflects that. If you have a hip and trendy message, then a traditional navy blue suit isn’t the outfit that is going to convey that message. What does your outfit say about you before you utter a word? Are you traditional and conservative or innovative and edgy?

Think this is all a bunch of nonsense?  Just remember how the press obsessed over the wardrobe of candidates Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin during the primaries and election. 

And for men – think back on the number of times some rube in a ball cap and wife beater t-shirt was interviewed on the devastating impact of a flood or hurricane.  Was his message as effective as the golf shirt-wearing state officials or uniform-clad emergency responders?  Which guy gets lampooned on Leno or Conan?

Tami is right when she says people “listen with their eyes” when it comes to television. 

And for those of you who want to be company spokesmen but can’t pull off the clean dress shirt look?  Stick to radio.

According to this article from Editor & Publisher, traditional medias (i.e. newspaper and television) are still trusted more than web sites and blogs – based on research recently conducted by the British interactive marketing company, Telecom Express.

These findings seem to support earlier findings reported by HarrisInteractive and the PRSA Foundation. That survey, conducted last fall, found that American’s attitudes toward news sources skewed mostly toward television first and then print media.

What’s behind this general mistrust of online news sources? Judith T. Phair, president and CEO of PRSA explained:

“It’s easy to read the headlines in trade and business press about all of the hot ‘new’ media channels and start to believe that the traditional press is passé, but this survey confirms that despite some new entrants, Americans still use news, seek news and place their trust in the traditional sources.”

One can assume that a good bit of the mistrust stems from television’s ability to tie a moving, visual (and often live) image to their story while print’s long-standing history of serving in the public interest generally helps bolster its credibility. Web sites and blogs, on the other hand, are generally incapable of tying a live or moving image into a story and lack the history of “journalistic integrity” employed by more traditional forms of media.

This situation is not unique to media-rich markets like the US or UK, either.

A report on the American Press Institute’s Media Center provides an interesting look into how conventional media fares against other channels with regard to their respective credibility. The survey results were taken from a variety of other markets including Brazil, South Korea and Egypt (among others).

In all fairness, ratings had nothing to do with this. But when Sweden’s state-run broadcaster had a porn channel running on a monitor behind its newscaster Peter Dahlgren, it raised more than just a few eyebrows.

Of course, Sweden is known for its more liberal approach to sex – so it comes as no surprise when SVT officials say they haven’t received any complaints from the public. The media, on the other hand, is having a heyday with this.

Ironically, the station was running the latest political poll results while the monitor showing the pornographic movie, Sex Tails, was in view. No word yet on whether or not the results of the poll were up or down.

Gallup Poll Analyses – Are the News Media Too Liberal?

Here’s an interesting study just released by the Gallup Organization showing how American’s view the bias of their media (and, we assume more specifically, news coverage). Almost half of those surveyed felt the media’s bias leaned too much to the left, while nearly 40% of those surveyed thought it was about right. A significantly smaller slice of the public thought the media was too conservative.

Looking inside these numbers reveals some interesting facts, as well. Of those people surveyed who consider themselves to be “liberal”, nearly one in five thought the media’s bias was still “too liberal” while half felt the media gets it about right. Of those Americans who identified themselves as “conservatives,” on the other hand, 29% felt the US media got it right and only 9% felt the media went too far to the political right.

What’s this mean? Two things:

1) Fox News’ intuition/market research identified a significant market when they spotted a need for what they call “fair and balanced reporting” and what many others call “conservative news bias” among a significant population of Americans. By playing to relatively common perceptions, Fox News has been able to carve out a lucrative niche.

2) Americans are becoming more savvy news consumers whether they like it or not.

All news reporting, for that matter all media, has some kind of editorial bias. It has to. People need a plot to follow in order to stay engaged and in the news business it means you have to have a point or focus to the story. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.

What erodes the trust in the media (which has eroded over the past 25 years, by the way) is the inability or unwillingness of the media to identify their point-of-view and consistently stand behind it. Instead, many media outlets have insisted on fighting a losing battle – claiming impartiality and then waffling from one position to the next.

When we talk about brand value, we explain that value is built by consistency in execution and point of view. A brand depreciates when a company’s actions (or, in this case, positions) are inconsistent with what’s been said and done in the past.

If the media wants to build credibility, it needs to come out of its closet and admit to editorial bias.