During my 25 years as a military leader and more than fifteen as a public affairs professional, I have remained focused and energized to achieve results, solve problems, and hold myself and my staff accountable. In May, 2006 the National Guard was scheduled to engage in its largest homeland defense exercise ever planned. More than 2,000 National Guard men and women from several states were to deploy to a training range in Indiana to respond to a simulated nuclear detonation. The exercise also required effective interaction with a multitude of local, state, and federal governmental and non-governmental first responders. The Chief of the National Guard Bureau challenged me personally to ensure that our organization’s story be told through the media, not only at the local and state level, but also at the national level. Specifically, he assigned me the tasks of establishing a national press conference at a small and obscure military training range in rural Indiana and getting the message out to America that the National Guard is “the first military responder” in any natural disaster or terrorist incident.
This posed several challenges and problems. The premier training day with the most compelling visuals and interaction with civilian responders was scheduled for a Saturday. Other federal responders preferred to stage a press conference the following Monday. Initially, local and state officials were opposed to any national media attention. Within our office I had an extremely limited budget, resources, and personnel to prepare for and execute a high visibility event. Finally, planning time was relatively short for a major event.
I began by establishing an exercise team and clear objectives for each member. In order to save money and expedite response, I encouraged maximum participation of our field representatives. I met with all of the local, state, and national exercise participants and convinced them of the value in sponsoring a joint interagency media event on the Saturday that best told our story. This helped in some measure to garner national media interest, but at the same time increased our competition for coverage. I capitalized on the former while repairing the latter through a vigorous branding campaign. Working with National Guard exercise planners and the host state of Indiana we procured a tent and developed a National Guard brand logo. Since both products were available for future use this proved to be a cost-effective solution while at the same time ensuring that our organization, with verbal and non-verbal brand imagery, would be the center of attention for the national press briefing. It still proved to be another challenge to entice the national media to travel and cover this event. I researched the travel rules and regulations and learned that if we already had senior military leadership traveling from Washington D.C. to Indiana and back that day that we could bring media with us as long as they also covered the travel along with the exercise. We were also authorized to invite and include congressional staffers so they could assess the value of taxpayers’ dollars and ensure accountability in the training. I decided to offer that option as an alternative to both the media and congressional staffers to encourage their attendance. While I worked that high-priority issue personally, I delegated the task of advance deployment to my experienced subordinate staff to set up a state of the art Joint Information Press Center, with satellite communications, live television feed, and a mobile briefing studio. Finally, I gathered my staff for a brainstorming session to anticipate the difficult questions and draft a strategic plan with talking points that addresses all the key issues and stakeholders.
On May 12, 2006, the press briefing was a highly lauded success. I was able to fill the plane with national media from all venues, print, radio, and television along with congressional staffers who represented key homeland security committees. The press briefing area was covered with National Guard logos that were captured repeatedly on nation wide network news and in photographs in many major newspapers. We tracked more than 300 external media products that were published and created more than 200 internal products ourselves for distribution – a much larger distribution than any one day military exercise press briefing had ever earned previously. That evening, the CNN correspondent opened his segment that aired internationally with our logo and troops in the background stating to his host “As you know, the National Guard is the first military responder in any natural disaster or terrorist incident.” I was awarded the Army Commendation Medal and a coin from the Chief of the National Guard Bureau for achieving outstanding results.
Stoneking Strategic Communications (SSC) 