Denise Haskew ran her own public relations company once upon a time, so she has seen press conferences from both sides. Here she distils her acquired wisdom into 10 easy lessons.

Article first published: July/August 2007

NABs and IBCs come and go, and no sooner have they faded than they reappear. Now bear in mind that both shows starts for us lucky members of the press two days before the exhibition even begins. The weekend is packed full of the delights of attending back-to-back press conferences, which each year become more and more exciting. On picking up so many tips on how to arrange one of these press spectaculars, I thought I should share them with the aspiring event organizers among you.

So here are my 10 easy steps to engaging the press:

Hold a breakfast press conference

Real journos go to bed early so that they will be fresh as a daisy for the morning briefings. As it is well known that the media tend to be a temperate bunch, not given much to carousing, as long as you don’t interrupt our morning jogs, we’ll be more than happy to attend a 7.30am event. Just to add to the ambience, give us a dark, warm room and a monotonous speaker and we’ll be able to catch up on much-needed sl… work.

Limit the supply of food and drink

Go with the notion that a hungry/thirsty journo is an attentive journo. Particularly for evening events, keep those glasses empty throughout the two-hour PowerPoint presentation. According to a straw pole taken among my media buddies, we averaged a weight loss of 5lbs during the NAB week. This is obviously great news for us normally desk-bound folk. So walking and standing for 18-20 hours a day, combined with lack of nutrition, is a bonus. Thank you to all those companies who helped us attain our Weightwatchers targets.

Give a 20-min introduction as to how well you look after your customers

This can be easily achieved by PowerPoint, combined with video footage of the customers themselves justifying/congratulating themselves on their purchasing decision. Don’t worry about the length or the amount of these per product. And make sure they use as many superlatives as possible, so we’re not confused into thinking they’re independent.

Select the right person to present

Preferably this should be someone with limited exposure to the English language. This is always a hit at international press conferences, as it democratizes things for English and non-English speakers, as none of us will be able to fully understand what is being said.

You can’t have too much PowerPoint

We love graphs and presentations we can read along to (and don’t forget to include the presentation word-for-word in the press pack). If you are splashing out on a teleprompter, why not show it off? It’s great fun for us to read along with the presenter – especially during the ‘improvised banter’ between two presenters.

Hold an out-of-town press conference

And remember to hire a bus company that doesn’t know the quickest route. After all, we have been on our feet for a long time, are generally jetlagged, so the 45mins+ of being bumped around in a bus is a relief. Don’t bother to arrange transport back to the city center. The search for taxis outside the Strip is always fun and challenging.

Don’t have anything to announce?

No worries. You can still do it. Just carry on as above with a presentation that introduces all of your senior managers, not forgetting to tell us how great you are, some customer verification on existing products and how great they are, a conclusion that includes how great you are with some futuregazing on sales targets and how great they are going to be.

Overlap conferences with competitors

It’s good to have the choice and even more fun to travel across town in a mad dash trying to avoid the three-mile long taxi queues.

Don’t forget to cheer, whoop and clap

Traditional press are notorious for forgetting to show their appreciation. We tend to forget we should applaud the fact that you are announcing the most groundbreaking technology since Logie-Baird for our benefit. So to make up for this forgetfulness why not sign up other members of your company to provide the applause?

Enlist the help of God

Technology for worship is an ever-growing area of business, so what could be better than a testimonial from someone with a direct hotline to the Baby Jesus? Preferably someone who has attacked the Grecian 2000 bottle and has an all-over orange glow.

• Denise's 4873-slide PowerPoint presentation, 'How to give the perfect presentation', will shortly be available for download.

Denise Haskew After 10 years as a television commissioning editor, Denise decided she needed a more intellectual challenge, so she gave it up to become a model. She has done all sorts of useless jobs, such as magazine publishing and PR. She plans to be on the first big spaceship to leave the Earth, alongside all the telephone sanitizers.