Press conferences

These are best reserved for big stories where you are expecting a high amount of media interest, and want to make to either make the most of limited resources or exercise a degree of control.

They are used a lot by police forces to discuss high interest crimes, or by large businesses to announce big news (i.e. a massive expansion, or redundancies).

Publicity Heaven doesn’t recommend press conferences for most clients – they are hard to get right, and there’s nothing more embarrassing than an empty press conference. But if you want to do your own, here are a few thoughts on them.

Your typical press conference takes place in a large room, often at a hotel. There’s a table at the front where your spokesperson or people sit. And chairs sat out in front where the media sit, staring at the top table!

Send a brief press release explaining what the press conference is about. Don’t give too much away, but don’t give too little either. Use an embargo if you want to try to get the story hitting all the media at the same time.

Give a clear time that the press conference will start, and an estimated time of how long it will take. This helps the really busy media like the TV stations plan their day properly.

Plan out what you will be saying. Write it up into a press release to hand out afterwards. Prepare responses to likely questions. Consider whether or not you will be doing individual interviews afterwards (most journalists will want you to).

And then rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again. It’s one thing screwing up a one on one interview with a journalist, it’s another thing to screw it up in front of 10 journalists with cameras rolling!

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