TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

1 Jun 2015 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:30

TJ Walker explains why the Opera House Hotel's refusal to let a New York Times photographer inside cost them roughly $5 million in publicity. He argues that saying no to media isn't safer, it's often the riskiest move. Organizations need a thoughtful default strategy, not a blanket ban.

Chapters

The Opera House Hotel says no to the New York Times. Was that the safe thing to do? Every organization has a default position when it comes to dealing with the media. What do you do absent any external forces or instructions? What's your basic response? Well, the Opera House, which is a boutique hotel in the Bronx, New York, found out today they had a huge, huge story from the New York Times. A glowing profile, very, very positive profile of their hotel. But one of the sentences is that the reporter said, I asked her to be able to come into the room to take photos. They wouldn't let me. Now this is a horrible loss. If you're a boutique hotel, to have a full spread of photos of your place looking gorgeous, I mean, that's worth millions. Entire careers, entire hotels are built on that sort of publicity. Often one time and they blew it. No access, no photos. Now, there was a link to one generic photo from the hotel's website, but that's hardly a major spread the story online or certainly in print. So it begs the question, what is the default position in your organization? When reporters call, are people told, say no comment or don't give access unless otherwise specified. People do that because they believe it's safer. Well, you have to judge these in a. You can't just make a blanket decision of what's always safer. It's not always safer to say no. In this case, by my estimate, the hotel lost about $5 million in publicity. Now, if they open up the doors and the place looked like a complete dump, maybe that would have been a disaster. But presumably it's not because the Times interviewed all sorts of people who stayed there who said the hotel was great, a great bargain, looked good, felt good, comfortable and luxurious. So that's my challenge to you. Figure out what your media strategy is as a default position. And just don't kid yourself. The default position of not giving access to the media is not risk free. Often it's the most dangerous position you could take.