“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.

Interdisciplinary work between cognitive scientists and rhetorical theorists (people who study language) has recently shed light on the old maxim that the way you say or write something is just as important as what you’re saying.

What cognitive science has discovered:
Our brains operate along basic principles of rhythm, repetition, similarity, and difference (among others).

What rhetorical studies has discovered:
Rhetorical scholars point out that the very objects of their study – literary figures of speech – function along these same principles. For instance, figures of speech based on similarity and difference include rhyme, assonance, consonance, alliteration, and many more.

How these discoveries are related:
Since figures of speech align language to the way our brains operate, we can intuitively recognize the formal (or structural) patterns in the language of a message. This recognition subtly invites our participation, because our brains naturally detect and anticipate patterns and structures.

Just think of the last time you caught yourself singing along to Britney’s latest pop-atrocity. You despise the song, but your brain is simply delighted by its repetitive structure, strong rhymes, and consistent rhythm, and just can’t help but join in.

Philosopher and theorist Kenneth Burke explains that once you grasp the trend of the form in a message, it invites participation regardless of the subject matter. The result is a sort of “collaborative expectancy” between audience and message, inherently making the message more persuasive.

When applied to business communications, formal patterning can be used to:

• create parallel structure across sentences in a sales piece
• ensure message consistency across a company’s entire business communications
• weave a powerful metaphor throughout your business proposal

Ultimately, science has reinforced a powerful principle to guide business communications:

Literary figures of speech improve the persuasiveness of a message because they align language with the ways that our brains operate.