Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

You’ve just delivered the perfect media response. Your answer is on message and perfectly quotable. It will accomplish everything you had hoped.

Then…you say more.

It pains me to see an answer that was brilliant in its first 15 seconds become diluted when it lasts for another minute. An extended answer also risks introducing secondary and tertiary points that offer reporters the ability to quote something relatively unimportant. And sometimes, those unnecessarily long answers lead to a “seven-second stray,” an off-message line that becomes your only quote from the interview.

When I see our trainees deliver a great answer—and then keep going—I tell them this: “When you score a touchdown, get off the field!”...