“Think outside the box!” That’s been the motto of modern business and the plea of post-modern pop-culture. But as we learned at this month’s TEN gathering, the key to giving a solid media interview is keeping it inside the box.

Social media has fast-forwarded the traditional 24-hour news cycle into real-time. News is near instantaneous and stories get updated throughout the day. This means that theoretically, you have multiple opportunities to influence what’s being said.

So how can you do this? Develop relationships with media professionals—writers, editors, reporters. Use social media tools to engage them on a regular basis. Once they come to know you as an expert, you’ll be on the top of their mind as a potential source. When a story breaks, they’ll have someone to go to immediately.

The better your relationships with media professionals in your community, the more opportunity you’ll have to control what is being said.

So, you’ve established a good rapport with a reporter, and they’ve asked you to do an interview. How do you prepare? By keeping in mind the power of three and using a little box.

When preparing for the interview, organize your thoughts around three points:

1) Context: provide the background so that people know where you’re coming from

2) Action: three simple and straightforward key messages

3) Vision: the idea or thought or emotion that you want to leave people with

For example, here’s what that might look like for a representative from a downtown clean-up program:

1) Context: We feel that our downtown is a mess, and we’re concerned about it.

2) Action:

• We’re going to pick up three pieces of garbage a day, and we want everyone else to do the same.
• If this happens, we could remove three garbage bins worth of garbage from our streets each day!
• Clean downtowns are safer; they increase quality of life, and are better for tourism.

3) Vision: “We have the cleanest downtown in Canada.”

Now, draw a square around your three points; they are your box, what you will present to the media. Your goal during the interview is to keep the conversation about the topics in your box. Soon, you’ll find that reporters will come to you more often because you present such a strong story—one that practically writes itself.

Take advantage of today’s instantaneous news cycle by developing relationships with the people writing the stories; become known as an expert that they can source when a story breaks. If you present your story in a neatly packaged box, you’ll increase the chances of watching it take-off successfully.

Learn more about TEN.

Companies spend a lot of time and money developing their brand and defining their brand values. After branding, there will be moments when you feel the need to sacrifice those brand values for short-term gain. The costs of doing so may be greater than you think.

Take my friend for example. He just got a new job as a driver. As a new employee, he spent a lot of time in safety training and was exposed to internal messaging indicating that safety is number one. Expectation set. His safety will never be compromised, right?

Last week, he had problems with his truck and asked that the truck be repaired so that he can do his job properly and safely. His manager decided that the downtime would cost too much and opted to have him continue his route without the repair for another two weeks!

Consider the call that manager made. He’s just wasted a lot MORE money than what he thought he saved. First, the company spends thousands of dollars on safety seminars, internal communication on safety, and marketing that promotes “safety” to new prospective employees. Instances like this one communicate that safety is not important after all. For the company, it’s money down the toilet.

Second, now that expectations have not been met, a new counter-culture of safety develops, one of “only when we feel like it.” This could lead to more careless behaviour from employees and more on-the-job accidents.

Third, the negative word-of-mouth spreads. My friend told three people, who then told three other people. You know how it is. Now, the organization needs to work harder to communicate that it is a safe company; it’s fighting an uphill battle against the negative perception which has developed.

Before you make a concession to sacrifice one of your brand values for a short-term, tactical gain, consider what it will do to your company and brand. In the end, you could be losing much more than what you’ll gain.

During a recent trip to New York, I learned a major lesson in marketing. And no, not from any of the overwhelming number of ads crowding Times Square, but from a small deli. While eating “Ah, There’s the Reuben” at the Carnegie Deli, I realized how the principle of this small deli can be applied to businesses, large and small, across all industries.

The Carnegie Deli stands out from hundreds of other New York delis. It is one of New York’s most popular attractions, yet shockingly, it doesn’t spend any money advertising. The Carnegie Deli has succeeded not because of a great gimmick or creative advertising campaigns, but because of a phenomenal business principle:

Do one thing and do it better than everyone else.

The Carnegie Deli has been recognized for its corned beef and pastrami sandwiches by numerous columnists, avid eaters, and travellers from all over the world.

• While many delis bring meat in from other suppliers, the Carnegie Deli cures its own meat.
• While other delis take shortcuts smoking the meat, Carnegie Deli does it the old-fashioned way to give it the best flavour.
• While other delis manipulate the size of their sandwiches by their methods of stacking the meat, the Carnegie Deli continues to make its sandwiches larger and larger (its sandwiches range from five- to eight-and-a-half inches tall).

The word of mouth created by the Carnegie Deli has generated more publicity than any print ad or billboard ever could.

Put your effort into making sure your one thing is better than your competitors’. The spontaneous conversations you create could become your sole form of advertising.

“Good is the enemy of great.” This is the first line in Jim Collins must read book “Good to Great.” He suggests that when we become satisfied with good, we don’t push for great and in so doing set the stage for our own demise.

Good is easy. Good is comfortable. Good typically means doing it the same as we did last time. This is especially true when it comes to service. The problem is that we as customers have become more demanding. Good service is simply expected. We are no longer satisfied with good.

So, what makes service great? A recent family dinner to a local restaurant to celebrate my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary highlighted three key elements to truly great service.

1. Authentic. It needs to be genuine and delivered with a personal touch that can’t be taught. In fact, if you try and train everyone to do the same thing you become less authentic. We brought our 15-month old son to the restaurant with us. Good service would have offered us a high chair, a kid’s menu and maybe some crayons. Great service saw the server on her hands and knees playing peek-a-boo and the hostess making a tin foil hat for my son to wear.
2. Unexpected. To stand out, you have to catch people by surprise. If we see it coming, the impact is less profound. Good service would have had brought out a cake for dessert to help us celebrate the special occasion. Great service had the chef come out from the kitchen to ask my parents for their favorite ingredients. He then proceeded to make a custom dessert just for them!
3. Remarkable. When you break the word down it means something to remark about. Halfway through dinner my sister went to the washroom. When she returned, she proceeded to tell us about the glass tile, the fountain, the twelve types of hand lotion, and the candles. Everyone else suddenly had to go too. When they returned they also raved about the unbelievable bathroom experience. In fact, we are still telling everyone we know.

Don’t settle for good. Seek out ways to make your company’s service more authentic, unexpected and remarkable. Great service is what brings customers back…and really great makes them bring their friends!

In recent years, Edmonton was having an identity crisis. We are one of the fastest growing cities in Canada and the pulse of the country’s economy. The City of Edmonton realized that in order to keep up with this growth, we needed to attract and retain the best and brightest. They decided we needed a better way to tell our city’s story... we needed a new brand.

So what to do? .... How about a new slogan? Perhaps an ad campaign?

No... the communicators at City Hall realized that no slogan or tagline could accurately portray the essence of what Edmonton means to its citizens.

For example, while “Gateway to the North” or “City of Champions”, both of which are old slogans used by the City, may be appealing to the oil and gas sector or 80’s sports fans, they say little of how we are today. They ignore our multiculturalism, our arts community, our river valley and environmental stewardship, and our educational institutions. These are all things that make Edmonton such a great place to live—according to Edmontonians. It’s impossible to capture the true Edmonton in a few words.

The City also realized that while there was a lot of internal love for our city, others hadn’t heard the news. Edmontonians weren’t shouting our praises from the rooftops – we are too modest for that.

This posed a real opportunity. Our own citizens are our best ambassadors, but they weren’t telling their stories. We needed to collect these stories and share them with the world.

So the City of Edmonton turned to social media and launched www.edmontonstories.ca.

Not only is this fast becoming a tool for people from elsewhere to learn about Edmonton, it’s becoming a tool for Edmontonians to learn more about ourselves and our City – the more we know about the City that we love, the more we will share.

This is a great lesson to businesses about the importance of looking to your existing clients to be ambassadors before attempting to reach for new ones. Find out what your base likes about your service offerings and what could be improved – let them be heard and act on their recommendations.

Leverage their experiences to attract new clientele and not only will you attract new clients, you will solidify the relationships you have with your client base. Then use the tools that work best for both to get the word out.

Kudos to the City of Edmonton for this innovative marketing tool!