You may have had a taste of media attention with Covid-19 and got away reasonably unscathed. But is your Franchise ready for those situations where you are the entire focus of a negative story where blame can be attached to someone? For example, customer complaints making the news, unfoundered allegations against a franchisee, or something more focused on your niche. I could go on and a negative event can damage the reputation and bottom lines of everyone in your network. It's not uncommon and there has been an increase in New Zealand Franchises in the news for the wrong reasons.

This Seminar will show you how to be prepared for such situations and how to handle them. For example, it will look at communication traps to avoid with media and messages you send to your stakeholders. It will also look at how to deal with media approaches (including reporters arriving  unannounced). Lots of Franchisors and Franchisees are unprepared for this and don't realise it until they have a group of reporters on site demanding to speak to them. 

The Seminar also look at what guidelines you must have in place for your franchisees to follow. There have been a number of examples in NZ recently where franchisees have either caused negative media attention, or inflamed it. That will now be online forever.

This is for anyone in a franchise leadership role. This includes everyone in head office from the CEO down. That's because everyone will have a role to play when something does go wrong and everyone needs to know how it will play out. 

A large part of the Seminar will simulate an actual event and we'll focus on how to prepare for it and deal with it.

Pete has been training franchise leaders how to deal with the news media in New Zealand for the last 6 years. This has included small group media interview training and crisis communication planning, while he has also presented at numerous FANZ events both in person and online. 

Pete is a former Daily Newspaper Reporter and Government Press Secretary. He holds two Masters Degrees. One is in Communication Management from UTS in Sydney and the other in Journalism from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

He is also the international author of "Media Training for Modern Leaders," published by Global Publishing in Melbourne in 2016.