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Media training
How we work
Our Media Training team is led by Stuart Hyslop and Helen Glanville. They complement each other very well with Helen having extensive broadcasting experience – including being a Producer on the BBC’s Watchdog programme – and Stuart having held Executive roles on a number of Fleet Street newspapers, including The Times and The Daily Mail. Stuart is the Managing Director of Surrey House Corporate Communication. Helen heads our training operations.
The team’s experience covers all possible aspects – from coaching and advising clients about to go ‘on air’ during a period of intense media scrutiny to travelling the world holding workshops and training sessions for multi-national organisations.
We are used and comfortable with working in sensitive and controversial environments and have been vetted and signed confidentiality agreements with both government agencies and private sector groups.
Where appropriate, we can provide a full explanation of how the media works – differentiated by function eg print or broadcast; regional or national.
We bring our training sessions to life by providing topical and relevant examples eg video and broadcast clips and by pitching our approach to suit the environment attendees are working in and their level of experience.
For some clients we have produced a media training video which covers all aspects of our training. They are unique to the company because they incorporate scenarios and aspects and needs particular to the organisation. These have been circulated all around the world with positive effect.
We can also produce videos incorporating crisis scenarios on issues/themes particular to an organisation. These include simulated news reports. The aim is to make the training as ‘real’ as possible.
We work with each trainee on formulating the most appropriate messages they should be seeking to convey and which best meet the particular needs of the organisation. This is where our wide experience beyond just Media Training proves to be highly beneficial. Many years of also working in public relations and corporate publishing for a wide range of public and private organisations provides us with knowledge and insights we can bring to bear to help formulate the right messages.
Clarity and simplicity are the foundations for creating the right messages. But, because we also understand that such factors as politics (internal and external), wider policy issues and public perception can all have a bearing on what can and cannot be said, we use our experience and empathy to ‘tease-out’ the key points to help craft the most appropriate messages. These are the core requirements for a successful media presentation.
