The Brief

The city law firm had recently completed an acquisition and wanted to be able to define who they are and what their expertise is to the market. They felt that their profile needed to be raised and that the media coverage they were getting wasn’t what they deserved, and was significantly less than their competition.

We met with their corporate affairs team to discuss the objectives they had; one primary concern was their reliance on a very small number of senior partners for dealing face-to-face with journalists. Also, the firm had worked hard to build their work/expertise in a specific sectors and wanted to ensure their team were much better known for these areas.

The programme proposal that Bluewood Training presented to the firm aimed to ensure that their team were able to harness the narrative and interesting stories that partners and associates across the organisation had to share. We would help to formalise this content into useable, authentic messages, then build skills and confidence in how these were communicated to the media (whether legal or other trades, national press or broadcasters).

"Working with Bluewood Training has been a game-changer for our organisation. The team's expertise and customised approach truly delivered results."

Name

Company

How We Helped – The Programme Structure

Stage 1 – Honing the narrative and messages. Working closely with the corporate affairs team to ensure the programme was flexing and adapting to what they needed, the Bluewood trainers captured and distilled the themes, topics and ideas that the firm wanted to get across (e.g. their values, vision and strategy). We stressed tested these with them to show how to create strong messages that would stand up to scrutiny from an external audience, we then presented this content as separate narrative/message houses for the corporate affairs team to begin sharing and using internally.

Stage 2 – Tailored training and coaching. We advised the firm on selecting individuals to be spokespeople, and recommended the type of training or coaching that each should undergo. The senior partners had one-to-one coaching with Bluewood’s expert trainer, covering print and broadcast media to ensure they were comfortable in delivering the new messaging and in handling difficult questions from a journalist.

Benefits of crisis media training
Presentation Training

Other partners and associates were then trained, in small groups of 2 or 3. We explained the drivers and pressures that journalists or reporters work under so that they could prepare and communicate their industry comment, or news about their work, in a clear and quotable way.

All the sessions were tailored to the individuals and their work, which made them testing and relevant. Also, the training was highly interactive, so the spokespeople had the opportunity for practice and rehearsal, with interview playback and critique, throughout the course.

Stage 3 – Feedback and follow-up. We provided the corporate affairs team with detailed written appraisals on each person we trained, covering their strengths and areas to improve. We also discussed next steps for these spokespeople, so any that needed further help were given it and also had a clear plan for their learning and development.

The corporate affairs team were then able to approve these individuals officially as spokespeople for the organisation and to put in place their plans for media engagement for them.

The Outcome

 Bluewood provided the law firm with a set of concrete messages and an overall narrative which reflected their values and direction, as well as what they wanted to be known for. This was then filtered through the firm to ensure buy-in at each level. The training and coaching Bluewood ran made sure that spokespeople had the understanding, skills and confidence to engage with journalists or reporters in proactive as well as reactive interviews.

The firm were able to use the content created, and their new team of spokespeople, to achieve their objectives of raising the profile of their work and winning a much higher level of positive coverage in the print and broadcast media.

Tailored
Solution

Interactive
Approach

Global
Reach

Contact Form

Name(Required)
Email(Required)
Please let us know what's on your mind. Have a question for us? Ask away.