Some weeks ago I wrote a Mediaplan (capital letter intentional) to connect the CSW69 in March with its subjects and results to the General Assembly of the UN in September. As it is, the focal point of a given year is the same at the CSW as at the GA. However, the meeting of the GA doesn’t look back at the Agreed Conclusions of the CSW at all. This seems to underscore the fact that our women’s rights, which we fight very hard for supported by our negotiating diplomats and the CSW women’s representative in that negotiating Dutch delegation to the CSW, stay under the radar in the overall UN year.
That is unacceptable.
So, a mediaplan was born where we (yes, you all included!) must keep on grabbing the attention of the news broadcasters and newspapers. Whether that is in your very local radio program (Radio Capelle) or the regional radio and TV (Radio Rijnmond) or the national NPO radio and tv, or the commercial broadcasters (RTL Nieuws). Writing for your free local newspaper through submitting your news online to be published, alsmost automatically; phoning your local/regional radio, and tv, to talk to the newsroom to entice them to give attention and time to your concerns; doing the same with national radio, and tv, to get our message of women’s rights on their agenda, hopefully getting live interviews to become mainstream news.
Why ‘live’? I am glad you asked. Getting the newsroom to be willing to grant time to your issue is just the first hurdle. A hurdle that often, and this is normal in the process, takes several phonecalls and long preparatory talks with the newsroom. After that the games are truly afoot and the name of the game is to be in charge of your message.
In a taped interview the newsdesk can cut out what you are trying to emphasize, thereby truncated, or in worse case scenario even twisting, your message. In a live interview, even of only 3 minutes you are in charge. Prepare yourself, write down your message. Ensure that your sentences are going to be short, clear, succinct. Now YOU are in charge.
It goes without saying that if you are succinct, funny (*yes, that helps to be asked again for an interview), spontaneous, you will be building a relationship with the interviewer and the newsroom, and will build a relationship with the station. These is what I know to be absolute truths: the broadcaster wants to entertain its audience / viewers. If you are entertaining, perhaps even making the listeners and the interviewer laugh, you are a winner for the broadcaster. A funny moment will give the audience a pleasant feeling, so aim for it. Therefore: PREPARE, prepare and prepare some more.
Do I follow those rules? I sure do. It might take me days, or weeks, and several calls to entice a broadcaster. I will keep at it, bringing arguments to my calls as to how this would interest, entertain, the listeners. Once I am in the live interview I will be on my A-game, being completely atuned to what is happening in the interview. It takes concentration, and quick thinking, and a lot of preparation of possible sentences to use, but that is what brings you repeat interviews on other subjects. Also, other broadcasters will be inclined to call you for an interview, or listen to your request for an interview if they were entertained by your performance.
Note, it might be easier to call to set up an interview with someone else in your organisation as interviewee. Simply because it is easier to ‘sell’ someone else than to sell yourself.
And thus, I was interviewed on NPO1’s Met Het Oog Op Morgen. The interviewer, Mieke van der Weij, was not helpful in the interview. She was argumentative, bringing my message on Menopause back to her own experiences with menopause, which according to Mieke were minimal and transitory. Which, we all know, they are not. Menopause is what you are in after you stop menstruating. It is not a phase, it is the rest of your life. But that as it may, I stayed the course and kept my cool. I kept bringing my arguments home without fighting her on her feelings about the subject at hand. Apparently, I was succesful in being ‘pleasant’ and ‘on point’ as a snippet of that late-night interview in Met Het Oog was aired the next Monday morning on NPO1 ‘NOS Radio 1 Journaal’. A ‘free’ repeat of my message.
The interview with Radio Rijnmond’s Olivier de Neve later that Monday the 10th of March in Radio Rijnmond’s ‘Lunchbreak’ went smoother. Plus, in the minutes before I was actually live on radio, while a musical interlude was playing, the interviewer told me ‘you have only 3 minutes’, a fact I playfully protested against ‘but I need at least 30 minutes’, which landed me a 30 minutes podcast on Menopause with the interviewer after I return from New York.
The lesson here: ASK and GRAB whatever you can get of their attention.
Back to the Mediaplan. YOU, as I wrote above, are part of that plan.
Together we can make it rain, all over the Netherlands. Women’s rights, not just menopause, can be on the agenda of the newsmakers in the Netherlands. You are not on your own in making this happen, I will be available for advice and training if needed.
WE will grab the news, because we can and because we matter.
