TJ Walker explains why you should pitch messages your audience actually cares about, not what journalists find newsworthy. He points to U.S. candidates who lost after emphasizing opposition to PAC money, which reporters loved but voters ignored. Brainstorm audience-focused messages and pick the ones that will land.
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The next thing you got to think of is, do you have messages that are of interest to the audience of that media outlet? It's not the same thing as the interest of the reporters. And by the way, you can have messages that reporters hate or think that's stupid, but they're still going to find it interesting if they think their audience finds it interesting. So there's some subtle distinctions here. You've got to really ask yourself, will the audience of this publication, this radio, this TV broadcast find this message interesting? Sometimes you can have a message that's important to you, interesting to reporters, but the audiences don't care. Thirty some years ago, when I started out into this business, I worked with politicians here in the United States who ran on the platform. They were not going to take money from political action committees, money from organized lobby groups. They thought it was important for the democracy. They were running for the United States Congress. So it was an important message to them. Political reporters found it fascinating and they wrote column after column on the topic. Sounds like a great message, right? Important to the spokesperson, the candidate. Interesting to the media, generated lots of coverage. Sounds great, right? Only one problem. Voters, the readers of those newspapers, the consumers of those TV and radio broadcasts, didn't know what PAC money was. They didn't know what political action committee money was. They didn't care about that money. They did not vote on the basis of that money. How did all those candidates do? They all lost. So you've got to really look at this, and some of this you just have to guess. Some of it's going to be from your gut. You don't have time to go conduct massive polling research before every interview. But you're going to have to ask yourself and make some educated guesses as to whether you have messages that, that are genuinely interesting to the audience of that media outlet. Again, just because it's interesting to them doesn't mean it's going to be one of your final top three messages. The public might be interested in a message that says you're so dangerous that you should be shut down. Not necessarily your message, but still, let's brainstorm every possible message you could possibly have on this topic that the audience of the media outlet will find interesting.
