Appearing In Media Comes With A Cost Few People Notice

I recently made my print debut in “Nikkei Business” and “Nikkei Computer.” Yay.

It’s a report on a conference I spoke at last year, and I’m deeply grateful to everyone involved for the chance to appear in the context of “AI,” which will surely stay a hot topic this year too.

Now let me set the preamble aside and get into what’s actually behind the scenes.

The invitation to speak at the conference was originally addressed to Switch Science, a subsidiary of the company where I serve as a director. I have no idea what happened at the PR level, but the mission that landed on my desk was “you go speak.” So I needed to make sure I properly represented “Switch Science” when I did.

So I am who I am. I’m not jumping for joy about it, but it’s also not the same as paying money to run an ad, so I’ll fairly and lightly say “yay” about the value of appearing in influential print media like Nikkei Business and Nikkei Computer, and take that value as what it is.

Speaking of media, I’ve given talks at universities a number of times, and when I do, one request comes up fairly often (usually right at the end of the Q&A):

“Kuzuryu-san, could you leave us with a word for the young people?”

Naturally, being an adult, I say something in line with the theme of the occasion and the intent of whoever invited me. (Really, I’m not lying, lol.)

But sometimes I’m given free rein, and when that happens, what I throw in is:

“Stay off the media as much as you possibly can.”

I think this line carries even more weight coming from someone who’s appearing in the media, so let me put it here too.

I’ll say what everyone already knows: the time allotted to any individual is finite. So whether it’s appearing in the media or anything else, whether it’s writing a single email or attending a single meeting, you need a clear purpose.

But the genuinely legitimate purposes for appearing in (or being featured in) media are actually very limited. In my view there are only two:

• Promoting the launch of a new product or service
• Branding yourself or your company

A common mistake is:

• Stating your own opinions

Unfortunately, that’s not a great way to deal with media.

It overlooks the utterly obvious fact that “they want to say what they want to say.”

I once appeared on an NHK program. I talked for about 30 minutes during the interview, but the segment that ended up airing was only about 30 seconds. And, as anyone with experience probably recognizes, what got used was the part where I thought,

“Wait, did I actually say that?”

But watching the program all the way through, there was a tightly constructed single story running through it, made more persuasive by combining it with other people’s comments and on-site footage. (As if there had been a script and I’d spoken according to it.)

This isn’t about looking down on the media, or accusing the production staff of “ideological manipulation” or anything like that.

It’s simply:

Let’s each do our best while respecting each other’s benefit.

Take business, for example.

There’s someone who wants to sell something and someone who wants to buy something.

Suppose a certain condition is non-negotiable for the buyer, and while it would be convenient for the seller to sell as-is, meeting the buyer’s request would require a bit of modification.

In a case like this, what do you do in a business setting?

The seller reads the buyer’s intent and negotiates to be paid a somewhat higher amount in exchange for making the modification. If that’s agreed, great. If not, the buyer can look for a different seller, and the seller can look for a different buyer.

Now, back to the story at hand: this time there was “a pre-check.” I’m very grateful for that. I won’t go into the details here, but during the check I fixed some misstatements and misunderstandings, and I also added a line for the purpose of “branding a certain company.” I’m truly grateful for that. As for the overall content — the story itself — I didn’t interject at all. That’s not something one should intervene in.

Each side makes good use of the other. That’s how an adult relationship comes together. Yay.

Why do I tell young people “don’t go on media”? Simply put, it’s because

you lose sight of yourself.

This is especially something to watch out for if you’ve just started a startup.

The world is good at labeling. You could also call it slapping on a tag.

Labeling makes conversation vastly easier.

Understanding an individual properly as an individual, or grasping the fine-grained details of running a business or a company, is extremely difficult. It’s much easier to understand if you just say “AI is transforming agriculture!” or “A Japanese startup takes down Google!” or “A rising genius student entrepreneur!” (even though none of that actually captures the substance). So labeling gets overused, and the media often plays a part in that. For better or worse.

Labeling is fine as long as you can brush it off with “that has nothing to do with me, I am who I am” and move on. But if it follows you around every single day, gradually what’s written on the label starts to feel like it’s practically your own self-introduction.

Something similar might apply to the know-how behind lightning talks. If you don’t phrase things in an easy-to-understand way, nobody bites, so you try to make it graspable in a single sentence as much as possible. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but if you keep saying it every single day, your business loses any real depth.

There’s something I learned from an old-timer teacher back in junior high (a Japanese-language teacher nobody really listened to properly during class — I actually liked him quite a bit), something I still remember: “inner speech” and “rumination.”

Human beings are fundamentally introspective creatures (or so I think). Only by turning your thoughts over and over within yourself, kneading them again and again, does a shape finally take form. Until then, any extra stimulus from outside is nothing but noise.

To strip away the noise and become purer, you should say no as much as possible to

“anything that adds some kind of description of you.”

Eventually, you’ll surely suffer from the gap that creates.

Well, that excludes the old hands who’ve already tasted every kind of bitter and sweet, lol.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/01/296/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.