How To Make Yourself “Media Friendly”

Six quick steps to make you and your company more “media friendly.”

Have b-roll video available for the press. This is video that you hand out to the press that is covering your event. Produced by you- you control what is shown.

Having b-roll to hand out to the press is a great way to be media friendly, get press coverage and control the message.

Definition: But first, what is b-roll and why is it important. B-roll is the video that TV news uses to illustrate an on air story. For an example let’s imagine a news story about the President going to China for trade talks. When you hear the reporter’s voice saying “the president left the White House this morning full of hope for his trade mission”, you might see video of the president walking to the helicopter on the White House lawn. The video of the president walking would be the b-roll.

Importance: Why is b-roll important? The Television press can’t do a story without video to show what they are talking about. No video, no story or a shorter story done with the on camera news anchor reading it. Make it easy for the television media to do a story on you. Give them the video to do it.

Control: Where b-roll becomes even more important to you is, if you have the video created for you by a professional video production camera crew you control what is shown and how it is shown. For example let’s say your company has five locations and four of them are old and need upgrades. But, you have one brand new modern up to date facility. You would have the video created of the new location. That way when you give out the video to the press you are controlling which of your locations they show and what they show.

Advantages: The two advantages of you having b-roll to hand out again are:

- It makes it easy for the press to cover your business. Thus more coverage

- You are able to control what the press can show to the public.

Hand out b-roll another tool you can use to be more media friendly and advance your media relations. Questions or comments please let us know.

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