Five media skills lessons in five years of Media Savvy Awards

It’s hard to believe five years have passed since we convened the Media Savvy Awards, but each of those years brought fundamental changes to the media.

Hong Bao Media launched the Awards in 2018 to showcase excellent homegrown media performers, to give an alternative perspective to the myth that Singaporean and Malaysian business leaders just don’t seem to be cut out for appearing in the media. The refrain was that in Asia we’re much more demure and not as good as executives in the US, Britain and Australia – we set out to disprove this.

As the deadline for the 2022 Awards looms (nominations close October 31 at www.mediasavvyawards.com), it’s an opportune moment to take in the key themes in the evolution of the media landscape and the role of spokespeople, and the consequent evolution of the Award categories:

2018 – Trump’s shambolic presidency

Donald Trump’s incendiary style brought two main changes to the media, and Asian spokespeople appearing in it.

First, Trump’s incessant badgering of the mainstream media reminded readers and viewers that it existed. Prior to that, the emphasis was so much on free online media that you could have been forgiven for completely forgetting traditional paid publications and cable news channels.

The evidence for this is in the rush of subscriptions for publications such as The New York Times and Washington Post. The New York Times’ digital-only subscribers grew from fewer than 1 million in 2014 to more than 6 million today, with growth breaking above trend when American voters realised they needed an independent fact-checker.

Second, Asian executives watched Trump’s freaky media appearances with a mix of incredulity and admiration. Quite a number were stunned he got away with it, but in the next breath asked if they could similarly mouth off about anything and everything.

The shackles were loosened a tad on the realm of what constituted acceptable behaviour in interviews.

We had more than 100 nominations for Best Broadcast Interview and Best Online Interview.

2019 – Virtual platforms entered the mainstream

You might think Teams and Zoom only became popular during the COVID lockdown, but we actually launched our first online presentation course “How to present live webcasts like a TV anchor” in 2019.

Our launch customer was a Big 4 accounting firm that was shifting their training to Webex and needed strategies to hold audience attention further. It was becoming clear to them that an online presentation wasn’t the same as a classroom presentation. The approach was different, which is how this hugely popular course was born.

We also hosted many webcasts in our TV studio, with YouTube Live and Facebook Live the preferred platforms, in addition to our proprietary private streaming server.

We added the “Best Live Webcast” category to our Awards.

2020 – Media companies' conditions worsened during COVID

Teams and Zoom turned everybody into an on-camera presenter, and anyone who previously declared themselves too camera shy to appear in the media were asked, or started asking themselves, whether those old hang-ups were still valid.

One other effect not often discussed is audience acceptance of poor production values. Whereas past television audiences were shocked to see on-air mistakes appear in regular television broadcasts, poor lighting, poor microphones, poor backgrounds, poor camera angles and poor use of the features (“you’re on mute!”) were the norm in video calls and webcasts.

Audiences became quite forgiving of on-camera mistakes. In fact, less-than-polished on-camera appearances were deemed more authentic.

We added the “Best COVID Communications” category to our Awards.

2021 – SPH became a not-for-profit

One side effect of COVID was the further decimation of traditional media advertising revenues. These have been sliding for a long time, as traditional audiences cancelled expensive newspaper subscriptions and registered for free or for just a handful of loose change on online sites. But when advertisers stopped advertising because their customers were locked down and couldn’t buy their products and services, that slide accelerated.

Many publications went online-only or shut shop altogether. A proliferation of niche online publications without the high cost-base of legacy media has taken their place.

Now spokespeople not only faced had a smaller traditional media base, but also what I like to refer to as guerrilla media – the smaller, unstructured and less choreographed new media operations.

2022 – Hybrid events mean another steep learning curve

The Great Reopening post-COVID has brought more changes to the media, which are once again reflected in our Media Savvy Awards.

Hybrid events – where audiences are either physically present on-site or watching online – are becoming common, and spokespeople who have only just worked out where to look and how to hold an online audience’s attention are now facing another learning curve.

Keeping one audience engaged is hard enough. Keeping disparate audiences engaged even more so.

We renamed the Best Live Webcast Award category as the Best Hybrid Event Award, and added Trailblazer Elevator Pitch Award.

We also expanded the Media Savvy Awards to the GCC.

2023 – It will be all about stakeholder engagement

Sustainability is now such an important topic that every business leader who isn't talking already about it will be doing so next year, even if they traditionally were not directly connected with Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues.

Indirectly proportional has been the shift away from “shareholder value”. Such a myopic view of working for the benefit of just one stakeholder (there are at least six others) now seems quaintly outdated at best, and spokespeople are well advised to move with the times. Spokespeople will be expected to address each stakeholder group with specific messaging, through specific channels.

This is bound to impact our Awards again – watch this space ...and in the meantime nominate your business leader for Best Broadcast Interview, Best Online Interview, Best Hybrid Event and Trailblazer Elevator Pitch Award at www.mediasavvyawards.com