Case Study: NFL Manages Its Message

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell

Eric M. Seidel, CEO

The Media Trainers, LLC

No matter whether you believe or support the National Football League or its players’ union (NFLPA) in their latest contract tug-of-war, the NFL’s message management is interesting.

The league is rolling in dough. It’s a $9 billion enterprise. Yet, the owners want money back from their last agreement with the players’ union!

Commissioner Roger Goodell’s reasoning: prevent a financial crisis.

Just how well Goodell’s argument will work with fans—it appears to be DOA in the unions’ judgment already—remains to be seen. The owners renounced the current contract back in 2008, yet serious talks are just getting started with a March 3^rd deadline before the existing deal expires.

This has all the potential of being a protracted situation that might even threaten all or part of the 2011 NFL season. If so, the real crisis will be for the players, fans and all the people in feeder jobs that support the league, players and the games.

The “Secret” of Effective Messaging

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

Clarity and consistency. Really no secret at all. But it does take preparation. And discipline.

While using marketing statements (slogans) in news interviews is counter-productive and ill-advised, approaching interviews from a marketing posture does make sense.

Marketers and ad agencies understand that messages take time to get through. It requires repetition and a consistent, clear message. Getting through in news interviews is much like advertising: it’s a cumulative process. Of course, the messaging needs to persuasive for target audiences.

Office Depot CEO Steve Odland has been quite clear, and consistent, regarding the economy through the prism of his business. He doesn’t see daylight yet in the current recession. His metric is his average customer, typically the small business person, and availability of credit enabling expansion (hiring). In a recent Fox News Sunday interview, Odland was asked if he sees a turnaround. He said his customer has suffered disproportionately because credit dried up and still is not sufficient. (Click on the video below.)



The stimulus was supposed to open up credit streams. Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace asked Odland if that was working yet. Nope, he replied. Small businesses still are not finding credit easier to obtain, typically through second mortgages on their homes. (Click on the video below.)



The consistent elements in Odland’s message: the need for credit, which has not yet reappeared, and its importance to sustaining small businesses which, in turn, can begin hiring more workers. That, Odland says, is where all recoveries begin.

Body Language at its Worst

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

Under fire and possibly targeted for criminal investigation, ACORN, the umbrella organization for a plethora of community and labor groups is attempting to repair, or at least control, the damage.

Both chambers of the US Congress already have voted overwhelmingly to turn off the federal faucet. This swift action was in reaction to a series of investigative videos at ACORN offices in three different cities that caught workers instructing a couple posing as a pimp and prostitute on how to cheat the IRS.

Long suspected of questionable practices by republicans in Congress, the videos fueled their cause. So, ACORN’s CEO Bertha Lewis has been on a media tour trying to minimize damage.

Presumably she agreed to be on the same Fox News Sunday set with GOP Congressman Darrell Issa of California, an ACORN critic. But by reading her body language, he might as well have been 3,000 miles away in his home district.

Several times, Issa spoke directly to Lewis, yet she never looked at him. Indeed, her refusal to even recognize he was sitting next to her, and talking directly to her, was so blatantly rude it served to diminish her as a person and an executive.

Her obvious intention to ignore the congressman may have made her and her minions feel good, but it served only to damage both her organization and her message.

In the video below, Issa asks Lewis a question and she responds as if a third person has asked it on his behalf. This is body language at its very worst!