On Effective Communications: Anheuser-Busch CEO Shows How Not To Do Them

So, this isn’t politics per se, but it is politics adjacent, and since I have some expertise in the area of communications I wanted to offer some insights on the video below of Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth appearing on CBS’s Morning show for an interview with Gayle King.

Take a look:

Watch Anheuser Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth insincerely recite obviously canned talking points on a national TV show as if anyone will take them or him seriously. He is an ill-prepared executive who would have been better off not doing this appearance.

People are sick to death of talking points and the people who recite them. They are as sick of corporate CEOs who do insincere media appearances like this one as they are of the politicians who do the same thing.

That's why the most effective guests who appear on my podcast, The Energy Question, are the guests who say what they really think, not the ones who show up and recite talking points.

It's why I refuse to prepare talking points for my own podcast/radio/tv appearances.

Bill Clinton came along and incited the talking points reciting model 30 years ago. The model consists of showing up to every media or speaking engagement prepared and coached by advisors with 3-5 key talking points, the key messages the politician/CEO wants to get across during the engagement. The big trick is to never directly answer a question, especially those that are even a little tough or inconvenient.

Instead, you begin your answer by saying something like, “That’s a great question,” or “I understand that concern, but the real question is…” or something similar, then bridge your answer over to reciting one of your 3-5 key messages.

When Clinton showed up on the scene, he was the only guy using the model, and a naive American public wasn’t wise to it, so he stood out like a bolt of lightning because he always seemed to have a clear and concise answer to everything. People - even most of the reporters - didn’t initially realize he wasn’t answering the question that were asked, but only the 3-5 questions he wanted to answer.

It was truly brilliant, and it’s a model that was soon being coached by political and communications consultants to every CEO and politician in the U.S. and across the world.

By 2015, though, the public had long since caught onto the rubric, and had ceased responding positively to it. In fact, most political junkies and even casual political observers had grown sick of anyone who used it.

That was why, when he arrived on the scene in mid-2015, Donald Trump, like Clinton in 1992, hit the public like a bolt of lightning. I was skeptical of Trump’s chances at first, but changed my mind after the first GOP debate in August 2015. I told my wife at the start of the second debate to watch the answers each candidate gave to Bret Baier’s first question, and tell me which candidates answered the question by saying what he really thought.

After all 16 had answered, my wife, who hates Trump and always has, answered “Donald Trump was the only one.”

“That’s why he’s going to win,” I told her, and she almost gagged.

That habit of directly answering the question that was asked by saying what he really thinks really was the main reason why Trump won the GOP nomination, and why he was ultimately able to defeat Hillary Clinton, who was still rotely tied to the talking points recitation model made popular by her husband during the 1992 campaign.

The public by 2015 was sick to death of talking points. Today, 8 years later, the public is even more sick of them and the CEOs/politicians who still use them.

And that, friends, is why the only thing this appearance by Mr. Whitworth will do is alienate more potential customers than his apparently incompetent staff has already succeeded in alienating.

I spent years making a living writing talking points, so I'm not just some schmuck pontificating on this subject in the local bar. This model is dying - really, it should be killed off entirely - and corporate CEOs, politicians and communications professionals had better come up with a different approach, pronto or they’re all going to be out of jobs.