Moving beyond soundbites and prepared lines, the conversation focuses on the reality of the role — representing an organisation under scrutiny, responding in real time, and making judgement calls when the stakes are high.
Jack is joined by Graeme McQueen, Head of Media Relations at daa, to discuss spokesperson pressure and crisis communications; Dylan Kerrigan, Senior Research Executive at MediaHQ, to explore changing media trends; and Rob Carr, Product Lead at MediaHQ, to explain email deliverability and how PR teams get stories into journalists’ inboxes.
Drawing on real-world experience, the episode examines how spokespersons prepare, how they handle pressure, and what separates those who perform well from those who struggle when it matters.
At the centre of the discussion is a deeper question: what does good look like when you are the voice of an organisation? How do you balance clarity, control and authenticity, and how do you make the right call when there’s no time to pause?
It’s a practical look at the role behind the microphone — and what it takes to speak with confidence, credibility and impact.
Transcript:
Jack Murray 00:00
Welcome to Inside Media Relations, the podcast for PR people serious about getting their
stories covered. In this episode, being the voice, the decisions, pressure, and judgment of a
spokesperson, we're looking at what it actually takes to represent an organization in the media
today. I'm joined by Graham McQueen of DAA, one of Ireland's most experienced
spokespersons to explore what the role looks like in practice and how to perform under
pressure. In our Inside the Product segment, I talked to Rob Carr about one of the critical
moments in media relations: getting your email into journalists' inboxes. To start, I'm joined by
Dylan Carr, again, senior research executive at Media HQ to look at the latest trends that are
shaping the media landscape. Let's get inside media relations. Welcome, Dylan. We're here
today to talk about serious trends that PR people should look at and how to change their
behavior. The first one that you noticed is about the change in the coverage of sports and how
the structure of sports media is changing.
Dylan Kerrigan 01:00
Yeah, Jack, we've seen a massive kind of change in the sports media landscape over the last
couple of months and years, but in particular, just two months ago, the Washington Post got rid
of its sports department, basically to cut costs, and there's a number, there's numerous
reasons for this. For one, audiences have moved to kind of more faster content, so us as sports
fans, we use social media so much now for news. It's a never-ending news cycle, and you know,
years gone by, you would have got your sports news from the newspaper only, but now stories
are there 24/7 on social media, and whether it be transfer news during the summer, match
reports, they're all there, so like the speed of news has changed as well, so
Jack Murray 01:53
and even with YouTube, like that, like when Sky made that decision a few years ago to at
5o'clock on a Saturday to put like three minutes of every game up online that was a huge and
like Sky has always been a big disruptor, but even like you know the overlap, and there was
news on the overlap recently as well.
Dylan Kerrigan 02:09
Yeah, it's massive, like in terms of the fan content. Gary Neville's the overlap company just
purchased the two biggest football fan channels in the UK, led by Mark Ulbrich, so the Man
United fan channel, the United Stand, and then the more general fan channel, that's football for
a seven figure sum, and like these two channels have over, I think the United Stand has over 2
million subscribers, and that's football has over a million, so it just shows you how many people
are consuming the overlap,
Jack Murray 02:39
interesting, because it's, it's like it's, it's YouTube first, so it's one of those ones, like some
people say, would say, could I heard someone say recently, I could never imagine listening to it
on Spotify, always want to watch it, because you want to see Ian Wright reacting to Roy Keane,
or you want to see the facial expressions, so, but you'd never really watch it on telly, you'd
watch it on, you'd watch it on your phone, yeah,
Dylan Kerrigan 02:59
it's a bit like the overlap, kind of like a comedy, you're getting, you're getting comedy in it,
you're getting your sports news, you're getting your conversation. It's like a group of lads down
at the pub on years gone by, kind of talking about football and kind of having the joke, and it's
really effective, but like I think the old model is kind of old sports broadcast models kind of
outdated. We saw last week football focus on the BBC ending, and the BBC kind of said that the
audience wasn't there for it anymore. And you mentioned Sky there, the way you get the
Premier League, the 3o'clocks finish at 5o'clock and the highlights, the highlights are up at
5o'clock so this kind of content, there's not, there's not much drive for it anymore, so you're
nearly thinking is match of the day
Jack Murray 03:49
next on the chat, like it's funny, a couple of weeks ago the Irish women's team played in the
Dexcom stadium, and it was the largest crowd that ever came to a women's six nations match,
but I went with my two daughters and my daughter's friend Rose, but we had a wonderful
modern media experience. We arrived in the stadium, and the first person we met was the
fantastic Megan Scully. Megan asked my daughter and her friend to do a clip for Connex
Instagram. She then had me reminiscing on the Instagram about when I won my senior cup, but
what was the old sports ground? They sat down, and someone from Irish Rugby came up and
asked the two girls, could he mic them up for fan camera for the behind the scenes
documentary that was unbelievable. And then at 50 minutes in the game, I looked down and I
saw what was definitely the best subs bench we ever brought on, and I shared it in the Herr
Sport WhatsApp group under the word bomb squad within an hour, Dylan, somebody had
vectorized the picture, then somebody colored it, and 10 minutes later it was up, and it's
merchandise now called the Manaw Squad, and it's appeared even in it's been name checked
in a few different media, and there's fans going to matches on a photograph that I took, so you
can see how. So fan content is really, is really in the box seat. We
Dylan Kerrigan 05:03
see that, like, there's there's fans who bring GoPros into, into, into stadiums out to film live
reactions. They always do really well on social media, and yeah, as we said, the old model is
outdated. So, and PR
Jack Murray 05:19
people like Laconic Rugby, and I saw, like, Megan Scully was there for Conic Rugby, creating
that content, and they were capturing that share of the audience. So, if you're a comms person
now, you have the strength and the ability to capture the stuff. You don't necessarily need to
go through the traditional channels,
Dylan Kerrigan 05:38
exactly. And there's a lot of clubs as well, which kind of in-house media teams outsourced are
given, as you said, kind of rugby to do the behind the scenes documentary. If you look at
England rugby, for example, I've mentioned to you before, they kind of do the behind the
scenes what are the players eating daily, and different things like that, gym sessions. So all
that content is there, produced by the clubs now. So they kind of, I think, sports journalists are
kind of, they're in the middle now, the kind of clubs do they need to give them access anymore,
if that makes sense, because if they're producing all this stuff in house, you know, but like, I
think we need to make one thing clear, sports journalists will also, they'll always have the
credibility, and I'll give you an example here. David Ornstein, one of my favorite sports
journalists, and one of the most reliable transfer correspondents. He works for The Athletic. No
matter what fan channel or fan kind of X page you follow, that would say someone is moving
here, or there's talk of someone being interested in going to this club, everyone always goes
back to David, just once he confirms that he's the article. Yeah, everyone knows it's, it's true.
So I think we need to make that clear. There'll always be a place for the credibility of sports
journalists. The
Jack Murray 06:54
next story, Sky are diversifying, they've got a new paid for service.
Dylan Kerrigan 06:59
Yeah, so in the coming months Sky are bringing out a defense and security app, so it's going to
focus on high value, so high value users, this is who they'll be targeting with the content, so it'll
be a premium feature, so like it's part of the 2030 sky model that they announced last year, so
they want to move away from kind of being the traditional live breaking news and channel that
they're high
Jack Murray 07:33
value added, and if you look at things like like newsletters like Strategy, which is strategic
strategy and tech, if you look at stuff like Politico, who sell paid for new services, even the
Financial Times of The Economist. If you can give, if you can give quality enough information, I
suppose it's also a reflection of the turmoil in the world right now. Jane's, Jane's Defense
Weekly had this area kind of garnered for themselves, and Sky are probably going to take them
on now,
Dylan Kerrigan 08:00
exactly. Yeah, and then it's about the kind of scale versus depth thing, Jack. Like, they want to
maybe they're targeting maybe not everyone in the public now. They want, if they can target a
specific group to purchase these premium features, it's going to replace traditional revenue,
where so many kind of media companies are falling at the moment, so this is kind of their
strategy for 2030 where they want to kind of lean into a digital newsroom for the kind of
current digital media land. I suppose
Jack Murray 08:30
if you're a PR person on this, like, look at these new streams, look at where the extra value
added in. I'm assuming that the users of these services who are paying dearly for them will be
a very good audience for a PR person to reach, as well. Finally, today journalists are building
new audiences in digital media. Traditional journalists, if we say traditional inverted commas,
are building strong audiences, and one Irish journalist has done particularly good work in
Instagram.
Dylan Kerrigan 08:56
Yeah, so Richard Chambers, the Virgin Media journalist, he uses Instagram, Instagram now as
his main source of producing news and sharing news, and he's gained over 100,000 followers,
which is a crazy amount, and like it goes back to that thing now, like journalists are their own
brand now, as well as Richard working for Virgin Media, he's his own brand sharing his content
with his 100,000 followers, and I was scrolling through his news videos there, and back in
December he shared a clip of President Zelensky visiting the auras, and like amazingly it's got
29 million views, like on Instagram, which, which is crazy, like, and if you think, if he, if he's
doing a package on Virgin Media Television now, there's no way that's going to reach 29 million
people. So, he might
Jack Murray 09:49
get on a good evening, he might get a couple of 100,000 views, but if he shares it on digital
and online channels, he, as you said, he reaches multiple, multiple millions, and it is this notion
to. The fragmentation of the news. I have a friend who's a TV journalist, and he always says,
"Who's watching this stuff? So it can't but be good for them to find a new audience on the
channel where there's probably a new, younger audience as well.
Dylan Kerrigan 10:14
Exactly. And PR people should be asking, where, where, like, in terms of measuring their
success. Now I think the days are gone where if you're mentioned just in an article in the Irish
Times, that is obviously still a success, but now, like, there's so much more, like you should be
looking at how your engagement on social media, for example, how many views your story
could be getting from a journalist, so it's going into that thing about, like, thinking before you
send your press release, your audience, how can you make this story into something that could
be visually picked up by the likes of Richard Chambers? You could be reaching so many more
people by kind of doing these things.
Jack Murray 10:56
Dylan, thanks for your time today. Some great insight around structural changes in audiences
around sport, around new media products, and around new audiences. Great insight and great
feedback for PR people. Thanks for joining us.
Dylan Kerrigan 11:09
Thanks, Jack
Jack Murray 11:11
Gray McQueen is the head of media relations at DAA and one of Ireland's most experienced and
recognizable spokespersons. He spent years representing a high-profile organization under
constant public scrutiny, handing live interviews, breaking news, and complex situations. Being
a spokesperson isn't just about communication, it's about judgment, timing, and performing
under pressure. What I want to explore is simple: what does it actually take to do this job well?
Graham, you're very welcome. Thanks for coming today.
Graeme McQueen 11:39
Thanks, Jack. Thanks for having me on.
Jack Murray 11:41
Good. It's interesting, as a football fan, you're at a good point of the year. You have two teams
doing well, you have Bose and you have Celtic doing well.
Graeme McQueen 11:49
Yeah, Celtics still hanging in there somehow. It's probably the worst Celtic team I've seen in a
long time, but we've got a chance. And Bose, yeah, we started the season really well, but Bose
is just a good time, no matter what. Anyway, it's a great club to follow here in Dublin.
Jack Murray 12:03
So, you grew up in the town of Lockerbie in Scotland, and you moved here over 20 years ago.
Let's just start with Lockerbie for a minute. Like, it has a huge place in world history because of
that tragic event. What impact did that happen? The town growing up, as you, someone from
the town, what must have been massive, was it?
Graeme McQueen 12:24
Yeah, it's huge. You don't really appreciate it at the time. I was, what, six, when that happened,
1988 and I remember it happening. I remember being in the town, delivering Christmas cards,
and you know, the sky lit up, there was a noise, people didn't know what had happened. That
was before social media, and we actually didn't know what had happened until we watched the
news. When we got home, there was a bulletin came on BBC about 20 past seven. That's how
we learned what happened in our own town, which is incredible now. When you think all the
live feeds and stuff we have in our pockets, so yeah, growing up was funny. I think the town
kind of shut itself off from that. I think a lot of people resented the attention from outside, and
that's kind of lasted up until the
Jack Murray 13:01
notion that, like, a huge, like a massive airplane would, would crash in the middle of a town and
take out a whole street, like, just look at Beggar's Belief. I mean,
Graeme McQueen 13:14
yeah, look, Lockerbie is a town you would never have heard of otherwise. It's a postage stamp
town, and very south of Scotland, about, you know, 10 minutes from the English border, we're
on the right side of the border, though. Thankfully, so, yeah, you'd never heard of Lockerbie,
but that kind of lived with me right through life, I suppose. Even now, you meet someone,
certainly over the age of 30, and you mentioned where you're from, and they are taken back to
that time in 1988 Think it's one of those life events where everybody knows where they were
when it happened, so that's kind of followed me through life. Actually, love going back now. You
didn't appreciate how beautiful the place. Yeah, and even in
Jack Murray 13:46
recent years, that there's been the drama, and there's been a documentary as well. So, there's
been kind of, you know, recent kind of cultural storytelling about it. Did you, did you consume
any of that when it came out, or was it too weird for you, or did you watch any of it? The BBC
one I watched, or the Netflix one, I think I watched.
Graeme McQueen 14:03
I've consumed some of it, but it is tough. I mean, I know quite a lot of people who were involved
in the accident, in terms of the aftermath. My own father actually was caught on the other side
of locker, but he was working and he couldn't get home. So I only learned a couple of years
ago, talking to my mother, that she was sitting in the kitchen, not telling us, but she didn't
know where he was. There was no phones back then, so he couldn't tell her, you know, I'm
delayed or whatever. So she just didn't know what had happened. So, yeah, it's a funny, it's a
funny one, but yeah, I think it's hard to consume that kind of stuff. I think a lot of people in the
town shut off from it. I think a lot of people I know, friends of my dad, who still won't really talk
about what they saw and what they experienced, because it was pretty, pretty horrific stuff.
Jack Murray 14:43
Yeah, and then, like, one of the things that was, was told in a lot of the stories about it was the
spirit of the townspeople and the giving nature of the people of the town, and even the work
that the women did to feed the rescue workers, or that Trojan work that was done. On the
rescue of items, and that was was massive in convictions and stuff, but the local people really
talked out.
Graeme McQueen 15:08
Yeah, I think the story that got me from, from, from those documentaries and stuff was that
they ironed all the clothes before they sent them back, and I think that's kind of indicative of
the kind of people that are in the
Jack Murray 15:18
suitcases and making sure that people got people's goods back in good stead.
Graeme McQueen 15:22
Yeah, look, I think that I think it's good people, I think it's a family, family town, everybody
knows one another, it's that type of place. And I think that's shown through in the, in the
documentaries, which was nice, but I think as a town, look, I'd love us to have a footballer or
something to come along and change all that, you know, you know, give the town a name for a
good reason, but we'll see if that comes in the future.
Jack Murray 15:44
Yeah, so you arrived in Ireland over 20 years ago to cut your teeth in a career in journalism,
and tell us a little bit about the early days and what you got involved in. Yeah,
Graeme McQueen 15:57
well, she'd say my wife will listen to this, so I moved here for my wife, no journalism, so just to
be clear, she wasn't my wife at the time, but she's since always great to follow
Jack Murray 16:05
love, isn't it? Had to
Graeme McQueen 16:07
take a pun somewhere, so no, I fancied the change from Scotland. Dublin seemed like a logical
move. I could always remember I was a big music fan growing up, and I always remember
looking at the gig posters for the big bands, and you always had London, Manchester, Glasgow,
and Dublin, and I always thought Dublin must be a happening place, because quite often the
band wouldn't come to Glasgow, but they'd come to Dublin, so that always stuck in my mind.
And I'd been here a few times, I thought, you know what, I'll give it a go. Journalism was what I
studied in college. I had the choice between going into golf, I was a decent golfer as a young
lad. So
Jack Murray 16:38
you competed,
Graeme McQueen 16:39
yeah, I could probably become a teaching professional rather than, oh, you were
Jack Murray 16:44
described, you were scratchy. If
Graeme McQueen 16:46
not to scratch, had the chance to become assistant professional at Murray Field Golf Club, or
move to Dublin, and I chose Dublin. So, and did you
Jack Murray 16:53
competed all the way up under edge then?
Graeme McQueen 16:55
Yeah, that was my thing as a kid, you know, football and golf for my two. And how well did you
do
Jack Murray 17:00
an underage? Don't be modest. Now
Graeme McQueen 17:02
there's no Google for back then, thankfully. So you won't see how badly, or I have a very vivid
memory of
Jack Murray 17:08
one of my best friends winning the Connor to under 16 boys, and like getting a call that the
final round is in a local golf club, and following him, and like that, he like he won, he won this in
the home golf club, but like it's very highly, it's like it's interesting for the pressure that you
deal with every night, like the pressure of sinking a post and being on a red light on the
9o'clock views, they're not that dissimilar in one regard, like if you're in a competition,
Graeme McQueen 17:32
I think I'm probably a better performer on the news these days, but not still, still love the game,
I'm glad I didn't make that choice of going into something that I loved, because I think it's a
hobby that I still really enjoy today. Good, are you now? I've still scratch one there, there, about
so two carrier two kids that hold me back for there. Yeah, but now journalism was what I
fancied doing. I think growing up actually wanted to be an air traffic controller, but I was never
good enough at math, so went into the journalism. What gave me the grow to want to do that? I
don't know if it was a locker bee thing or whether it was I just like planes or just liked the idea
of travel, and it was something that looked a really cool job. So, sort of 1516, that's what I
wanted to be, but I remember the school guidance council looking at my maths results and
saying yeah, maybe maybe something in the creative space or in the where you're using words
would be would be would be better, so you went to study journalism. I'm kind of, I think I've
always enjoyed telling a story. Yeah, I think that's followed me through into the comm space.
So he enjoyed journalism, moved to Dublin, and went into business journalism. I would probably
prefer to do sport, but there was no opportunities. Went into business, and you know, Dublin,
2005 when I moved over, was, was, you know, booming. So, got in height of the
Jack Murray 18:48
Celtic Tiger. Yeah, I
Graeme McQueen 18:49
remember the first press conference I went to was Anglo-Irish Bank announcing their gazillionth
year of consecutive profits, or whatever, and I remember just the scale of the thing kind of
caught me, and I was like, "Wow, this is, this is, this is huge. And then, obviously, two years
later, we were heading into full-blown recession mode, and, but, uh, covering that as a business
journalist was fascinating. I was a journalist up until the end of 2013 so got to cover the, you
know, the end of the Celtic Tiger, and then going through that recession piece, you know, and
then to kind of fight back, and I used to cover a lot of startup companies and things like that, so
it was pretty, pretty looking back, it was a pretty cool time to be in journalism, particularly
business journalism, but I'm glad I got out when I did, because I just, I didn't have that, I think
you meet a lot of journalists and have that real love of it, and I never really had that, had the
love of telling the story, but not so much the because I
Jack Murray 19:45
was too, I always maintained I was too positive, in that there was so much negativity around all
of the time, and I'm generally a very positive person, I'll always see the good and things, I'll
always be kind of upbeat, and which is a great skill when you run the business, but I just used
to feel there was. Kind of relentless negativity, and whether it was covering crimes or deaths or
murders, like I just thought, "Oh, life's too short.
Graeme McQueen 20:06
Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, so I think I think I remember Nick Ahi, who was my editor in
Business Plus magazine, said to me one day, "He says, 'You're not bad at this, Graham. I'm
paraphrasing you, you're not bad at this, but have you ever thought of a move into comms and
PR? And Nick had a way of telling you stuff at times that was basically him saying, right, time to
move on, mate, yeah, you know, you might be better in this field, because, and I think it was
probably some of the best advice I ever got, because you know, I've gone on to really enjoy, so
you went from there to Dublin
Jack Murray 20:36
Chamber, yeah,
Graeme McQueen 20:37
to Dublin Chamber, and yeah, was kind of involved in Dublin-related initiatives, and I remember
doing my first interview with the Daily Mail, you know, a couple of months after I joined.
Incredibly raw, incredibly nervous, but then it just became a habit, and over the years, I think it
was there, seven years, I became kind of synonymous with anything that was happening in
Dublin. I think I was the voice of Dublin Chamber at that time, and you know, beyond seemed
to be on the Pat Kenny show once a week, talking about something that was happening in
Dublin, got my first taste at everything from prime time to BBC, and whatever was happening,
so actually really enjoyed that aspect, and I think the skills I learned back then have stood to
me today,
Jack Murray 21:20
so coming up on five years ago, an opportunity came up to work in DAA, and all those years on,
from thinking that you might be wanting to be an air traffic controller, you get this job to work
in a huge international airport. Tell me about when you heard about the job first, and kind of
when you thought, "Oh, God, maybe this is this is the time, or this is what I need to do.
Graeme McQueen 21:42
Yeah, I think the airport DA is just one of those companies, one of those places that I think if
you're a comms professional, it's just got something about it, like there's always something
happening. I remember I got to know Paul O'Kane quite well when I was in the Dublin Chamber.
Paul was the chief communications officer in DA at the time, and I was always kind of always
looked at his job and thought, yeah, fancy that, you know, fancy that. At some point, that would
be, that'd be a good gig. And so, when it came up, I never thought I'd get it. Often, when you
want something, it doesn't work out, but I remember getting in there and just was like, you
know, I'll take my time, and you know, get going in this, and I'd always intended to send a
press release out to say Graham McQueen has joined as media relations manager, and I think
two weeks after joining our operation completely hit the skids post Covid, and we became a
national scandal that summer, and we were that was
Jack Murray 22:36
the year of the queues and the queues and the tents outside and the queues and the queues,
Graeme McQueen 22:40
yeah, so that was a couple of weeks after I joined, so a real kind of eye opener. So I never
needed to send that press release. A journalist quickly got to learn that Graham McQueen was
in DA. So a relentless summer, myself and Kevin Cullinan, who I still work with on the team, just
felt like we're on the TV, on the radio pretty much every day explaining problems, what we
were trying to do to fix it. Talk to me a
Jack Murray 23:04
little bit about that as a spokesperson, and like for anyone watching or listening, is to like
there's an adrenaline that comes with this work where you know the light goes on and you go
on the camera and you prepare and you have to manage the message and you have to do all
that, and there's a stress that becomes inbuilt in the job as well, so you go in, it's your dream
job, you've wanted it a while, and it's a shit storm. It's like, and then there's this thing with
human emotion, where it happens with cars, and it happens in airports, which is a kind of an air
raid, road rage thing, where people's normal decorum and manners can kind of evaporate in
those sort of situations, what is it like being in those situations? And when you're like, I know
you have to do interviews one at a time, but there's a lot of pressure to prepare in those
situations.
Graeme McQueen 23:50
Yeah, I think the hardest bit back then was that we didn't have a clear story as to what had
gone wrong. The surgeon passengers hit us really quickly, and I don't want to go into that too
much, but in terms of the media relations point of view, it was asking the people in command
what's happening, why has it happened, what are we doing to fix it, and how can we reassure
passengers and stakeholders like the, you know, the minister was listening to us, the tea shop
was listening to us. I remember at the end of May we had a really, really bad weekend. You
remember the scenes of people queuing way down Departures Road. It's on the front page of
every paper, and I remember going into Ireland AM on Virgin Media on, I think it was the
Monday or the Tuesday morning, and I sat down in the green room, and all the papers were on
the desk, and that's when it kind of hit me. Every front page of the Irish papers at Dublin Airport
chaos, you know, headlines, and I was like, shit, you know, this is I'm speaking on behalf of this,
and that's kind of when it hit me. I think your point about adrenaline is interesting, because I
think we did run on adrenaline for a lot of it, and I think one of my key learnings coming out of
that. Was every now and again you have to pull yourself back and take breath, and because it
was quite, it was quite so bad. I remember
Jack Murray 25:06
I was going, and this is probably this is repeated like 10s of 1000s times over. I was going on
my first family holiday post Covid, and I can remember gaming the system by we were flying
from terminal two, I think, and I bought everybody. I went on the Ryanair website and bought
everybody a 999 Ryan Air flight, so that we could get fast track in the other terminal, whichever
was the other terminal, and so that we had two. We actually had two flight tickets to get into
the to get in past security, one which enabled us to get fast track, and it was.. I thought, God,
that's mad that I actually did that. I spent like eight or 90 quid to just, just to kind of make sure
we weren't queuing for four hours, like it was actually cheap at the price, actually.
Graeme McQueen 25:52
But the thing working in an airport is, I get a lot of questions from people like yourself, people
you know well, people you don't know so well. You just get the text message, I'm flying next
week, you know what's happening. What can I do? And you're trying to give bits of advice, and
what have you, but it was, it was an incredibly tough summer, and few months, but like the
learning that you get from when you go
Jack Murray 26:12
in a situation like that as a spokesperson, and like one is there's one, there's public anger, and
then like in the transaction itself, in a transaction like we're having here now, you can be
dealing with an angry or a testy journalist, or someone who's just going to nail you to the floor,
and like I used to, I used to laugh in politics, like I was always be very wary if the fellow would
be all hail fellow well met until the red light would go on, and then they'd go through for two
shortcuts when it'd go on, I'd much rather somebody was real with me, and say, 'Look, I'm
going to have to give you a hard time here, and, like, what? What's that when you're preparing
for that transaction, and you know it's the 6o'clock news, it's going to be two minutes long, and
the gun is going to go off, the red lights going to go on, and you will be judged by your bosses,
your superiors, your colleagues, and the public.
Graeme McQueen 27:01
Yeah, no, it's tough, but I think you have to kind of put all that to the side, and you have to
focus on what's the conversation that you're having with that one person. If you think about the
people at home listening, I think you start to trip over your words and you start to get
sidetracked. So, you've got to be really focused on who you're talking to. I think be very clear
on the messages that you're trying to land in situations like that, I remember being on drive
time, for example, or Morning Ireland. They try and pull you all over the place, and you've got
to really try to work hard to stay in the lane that you want to stay in, answering the question,
but not getting, not getting dragged away. That was tough at times. I remember one day it felt
like, I think I was on every show that day, you know, it started with Morning Ireland, it went
through to, you know, he'd be on Clare Burn, you'd be on Pack Kenny, and then it got to drive
time just after 5o'clock So the prime slot on drive time, it was Sarah McInerney, and I just
remember halfway through that interview starting to slur my words, and I felt like I was tripping
up, and I've never listened back to that interview to hear how bad it was. People tell me it
wasn't as bad as how I remember it, but up until then that day the interviews have been fine,
but that just felt like I hit a wall, and still to go on, I think it was the Ireland DM Tonight Show or
something later that night as well. So there was more to come, but I really learned then that
sometimes you have to say no to stuff, you have to take yourself. How do you individually
Jack Murray 28:20
prepare then if you like, if someone says to you, 'Look, this is happening tomorrow, like, when
you sit down, like, what's your preparation process? So, like, do you like from visually taking
notes to writing stuff out to just kind of getting stuff? Like, how do you, how do you prep in, how
do you prep admin yourself through something like that,
Graeme McQueen 28:41
sometimes I would write stuff down, kind of bullets of what I want to cover, but if I'm comfy on
the topic, it turns I tend to rehearse it in my head. My kids laugh at me in the car, because
quite often my hand will go like this, and my son will say, like, what are you doing, and I catch
myself on, and that's me rehearsing in my head. Okay, what I'm planning to say, but if I'm in
the car on my own and I'm driving to say, do an early morning show in the studio, I'll fully
rehearse the interview, just talking in the car, answering questions, and you know, so you've
almost rehearsed your lines going in. And do you do,
Jack Murray 29:16
would you do roleplay prep with colleagues, or do you ever do that?
Graeme McQueen 29:20
Some sometimes, yeah, sometimes, depending on the topic. I'm blessed to really good
colleagues. So I hate when I go back to the office and people say, I heard you on the radio,
you're really good. Like, doesn't mean anything. Like, I'd rather you told me, you know, you
could have said this, or you could have done this. And I've got people around me who will tell
you that. So I remember, if you could see your, like, I remember Dalton Phyllis never really
came near me on the media stuff, he just kind of left me to it, had his trust, which was good,
but the odd time we just pick up the phone and just give you a little nugget, something that
you might say it this way, or whatever, like that's really useful, do we roleplay a little bit, I
think, especially if. Something we're in doubt about going on, so one example would be like
we've been on liveline, yeah, liveline a few times, and I know there's this crappy line that if
you're on live line, you've lost the PR butt, whatever. I don't agree with that at all. I think it's a
certainly for a company like ours, it's something that we should embrace, and we've done that,
but um, but going on the likes of that, you would rehearse it, you would sit in a room and say,
okay, if I'm asked this, what do I say? I think that goes back to having good connections within
the wider company, though, not just not just comms people, but knowing people within the
organizations that could be on the airfield, that could be in the ops room, could be on security,
and when you
Jack Murray 30:36
agree speaking lines on a position, and whether it's about the CEO's position, or whether it's
about passenger caps, or a new runway, or noise pollution, or you know, electricity outages, or
software glitches, like what's the process? By okay, you should have hit the fan, we need to do
this. What's the like? What's the kitchen cabinet that decides? Okay, here's the message that
goes out on behalf of DAA. Like, what does that process look like?
Graeme McQueen 31:07
It depends, really. I mean, the nature that you just read out a load of stuff there that sounds
like a list of possibles, but that's all stuff that's happened in the airport, and you could, you
could go on and on and on for the last year, or whatever. There's always something -
Jack Murray 31:20
drones flying over there, yeah, you
Graeme McQueen 31:22
name it. And we've, we've a running joke on the team that it never happens nine to five, Monday to Friday. It's generally always in a Champions League game, or when you're trying to
play God, software won't
Jack Murray 31:31
actually, as is our background. Like, it is funny, like in the last 20 years of running a software
company, like every time there's an outage now, or something happens on software, like I
always think there for the grace of God go I, and like, if someone says, 'Oh, this is down, I'll say,
'I'll go for a cup of coffee, take a walk, it'll be like it's 2026 it'll be back. And this notion where
people get really stressed out about things, but like, what happens to prep in those cases, so
that you, you get your running orders to say, look, here's the key messages on this, or like,
there are who, like, who would you go to say, look, okay, are these the agreed lines? Are we all
happy with these?
Graeme McQueen 32:09
Yeah, I think we'd generally be using WhatsApp, Teams, whatever, or be a video call, and we
agree. Okay, who's going on? If it's me, okay, this is what I plan to say. What if they ask you
about this? What are you going to say, and then we kind of tease it out that way. You'd also be
speaking to the people in the roles, so like an example would be, so last week we had a very
sad fatality on the campus. Somebody was hit by a boss five past midnight, so you wake up at
7o'clock in the morning and the phones ringing from RTE and I had looked at my messages, the
phone is on silent till 7o'clock You're trying to learn what happened, so you're phone on the
right people, so you're phoning the duty manager in the airport to find out exactly what
happened, and you're creating the story that way. And then I'm taking the lines to the team,
and you're saying, okay, this is what I propose. We say quite often we would form our stock
statement first, and then you build any media activity on the back of that. So, and
Jack Murray 33:09
everyone agrees that, then, yeah, everyone agrees, like this is our template that we work from.
Graeme McQueen 33:13
Exactly, exactly. And we tend to work on the basis that if it's, if it's a storm day, for example,
and it's me fronting it up early in the morning, I keep going through the day. Actually, love
those days. I love a storm. They shouldn't say that. They're great fun because you're constantly
evolving, and it's busy, and the interviews are short and sharp, and you're giving people really
important information. And my mates hate it, because they're like, are you ever off the bloody
radio kind of thing? But so you know, you've done, you check in,
Jack Murray 33:42
then obviously in a rolling story like that, the comms team check in a number of times, because
the templated statement can will have to evolve as the day goes on.
Graeme McQueen 33:51
Yeah, so look, I tend to be bang in the middle of that whenever it's related to Dublin Airport,
certainly. So you'd be constantly, you'd be updating the statement based on the information
that comes in, so storm days, you get that number of cancelations, the number of go-arounds
and diversions is always changing. So I'd be connected in with the wider team and then
bringing it back to the comms team. You'd be sending around the links to the interviews, you'd
be constantly updating on which shows you're going on and what were the tricky questions. I
think feeding that back to the team is often important, like what was the curveball question
that you got on that one, because if somebody else on the team is going on, then you want
them to be prepared for that same one. I think you're also trying to process what other people
are saying about it, so you know it could be the minister is asked about an issue at Dublin
Airport on the 1o'clock news, so you want to be on top of that, because if you're then on Martin
Crieff at three and he says to you, you know, I heard the minister said this today, what's your
response to that? You've got to know about that. So it's pretty all consuming, but I like that. I
think it's a job that's hard to switch off from, because it's intense. You never know when things
are going to go wrong. How do you
Jack Murray 34:58
manage that? Like, how do you manage. The mental side of it, where, like, the adrenaline
around public relations can be brilliant when you're, when you're writing it up, but when it
passes, and you know, like, we've all had days where it's been deadly quiet and deadly boring,
and we think, oh, this is a bit dull,
Graeme McQueen 35:17
don't get too many of them, like, yeah, sometimes we require in a much better place than we
were. Teeth, I'm talking about, you know, 2022 when we were on the front page of every paper
going. It's a different animal these days. The pace is much better, but I think I've learned that,
and talk about this with the team, when you're busy, you're busy, and you just go with it. You
ride the wave, but eventually that you know that wave calms down, and you take your break,
you take your breather, and people will say to you, make sure you take time back, and I'm
always like, well, I'll get the time back eventually, but for the minute we just ride with that,
whether it's a bad thing, like you're like, you
Jack Murray 35:54
know, whether you're watching Bose on a Friday night, or your kids, like your kids, your kids
don't care, they just want to be with you, and they'd like one of the real challenges for people
in your role, and I remember when I was a spokesperson was that notion of, you know, I was
never great crack when I got called on a Saturday, and I had to deal with some awful thing, and
then I'd come back to the kids or the family, and I think, you know, I definitely like, you're
dealing with some angry journalist for half an hour, and you think no crack now, and like this
thing of winding yourself up to have to wind, to have to kind of unplug from that, that's hard. I'd
be honest, it's
Graeme McQueen 36:30
probably harder on the kids and Sinead, my wife, than it is on me. I'm in it, and I'm in control of
me, so I know what's happening, and you know I kind of go with it. Sinead's very
understanding, the kids have kind of like the number of interviews I've done in the car on the
journey to school in the morning. I think Joshua asked me there a couple of weeks ago, he's
like, "Why do you sometimes on the phone he can't hear the producer on the other end? He
said, "Why do you sometimes count to five? And I was like, "Oh, that's because the sound
engineer on the other side is checking my levels, and this was a thing he picked up from, and
didn't ask no follow-up question, just like, why do you count to five, like
Jack Murray 37:09
that's hilarious. Talk to me, then just a bit, a couple of nerdy things, and like, this is far harder
for women than it is for, far harder for female spokes people than it is for men, but just like, you
know, how you look, how you present yourself, your clothes, like getting your hair cut, making
sure that you're, you know, like, there is a thing of a body confidence where, if you're wearing a
jacket that you like, or you're wearing clothes that you feel comfortable in, you know, you'll be
a bit more relaxed. It's like, look, women have to spend infinitely more money than we do on
makeup and hair and stuff like that, but there it is a visual medium in lots of cases, and you do
have to think that through.
Graeme McQueen 37:44
Yeah, and I think I'm certainly.. I think we as a profession are much more casual than we used
to be. I think that feeds into my big thing when talking a lot of the time is reassurance, and I
think I've had feedback on this, and I think what I aim for is to bring a calmness to situations. I
think I think my voice and my style lends itself to that. So, I think I would see what I wear, how I
look, as an extension of that. I don't, I don't pay too much attention to it, though. Have to have
to be honest, it's more.. I'd be very much focused on, obviously, you don't want to look scruffy
or whatever, you want to be as sharp as you can be, but it's all about the message, so as long
as you're not detracting from that. So, if I was on the TV in a Bose kit, for example, wouldn't be
appropriate, totally distracting, nobody would know what I said, because it'd be like that guy
got a bow shirt on, so you know, yeah, you'd alienate
Jack Murray 38:43
half the crowds, but at the same
Graeme McQueen 38:44
time, I remember being on on prime time in the height of our crisis in 2022 and the camera
man said to me, she's not putting a tie on, and I had a shirt and a blazer on, and I was like, no,
no, I'm quite happy with this, and he was, he was almost offended that I wasn't putting a tie on,
but look, I think that gives a, we have this battle at times between the public image of DAA
versus the public image of Dublin Airport, which are kind of unique, different, different beasts,
and we want the image of Dublin Airport to be a bit different, away from that corporate, stuffy
look. I think we want people to be warm to the brand and things like that, so I think we are
more casual. That feeds into social media as well, like I do a lot of that work, so the videos that
you see there could be seen by multiples, or who sees you on the news. So that said, you'd
always have the Dublin Airport gear in the back of the car, because I've had it recently when
I'm on the golf course, or you get the side of a football pitch, and you get a call from the TV,
can you be at the airport in half an hour to do an interview? I try and do as much of that as I
can, because it's good for relationship building, or what have you, but so there are pictures of
me with a Dublin airport jacket on, and the bows gear is on underneath, because that's who I
happen to coach, I've got the golf shorts on. On, you know, but the jacket kind of makes you
look, yeah, from here up you get some funny looks off the presenters and the camera people,
but like it adds to the, it adds to the whole thing. A big thing about me is I think I try and bring a
bit of my own personality into what I do, and I think that kind of lends itself to that.
Jack Murray 40:19
So, before we go, before we finish with the, with the quick fire round, just one reflection before
we go into the quick fire round. Do you ever reflect now on that little six year old in Lockerbie,
and that kind of, that you know, that huge international airline tragedy, and kind of where
you've ended up, and even through a notion at one stage of maybe wanting to be an air traffic
controller, like, was it all serendipity, or was there an element of design in it, or how it ended up
that way?
Graeme McQueen 40:47
I don't never think about it that deeply. No, look, I'm pretty, I'm pretty proud of where I've came
from. Like, I think one of the funny things is that my folks never get to see me, they still live
back just on the outskirts of Lockerbie, so when they come here at Christmas, for example, we
do a lot of TV and media around Christmas, so they get a feel for what I do then, but you know
they could ring me on a Sunday night and they'd like, no, how's work, and I've been on the telly
every day that week, or whatever, so I quite, quite, quite like that, but no, I'm proud, I'm very
proud of what I've done, what I've achieved, I don't know, but the influence I'm having at home,
though, like I remember the Ireland Women's World Cup team working off to the World Cup a
couple of years ago, and I brought my kids in because they were on summer holidays, and I put
them in the Ireland gear for the for the pictures, and what have you. I think it was Virgin asked
my Sam, would have been about 11 at that point, he's now 14, so they put a camera in front of
them, said, How do you think Ireland's going to get on at the World Cup? And they were
expecting 10 seconds, and two minutes later he was still talking about, well, they need to
watch out for such and such from Canada, the apple doesn't fall
Jack Murray 41:55
far from the tree. Yeah, so you realize then a bit
Graeme McQueen 41:57
like the conversation with Joshua in the car, but why you count to five, they pick up a lot of this
stuff, and so, and then they
Jack Murray 42:04
mirror what they see. So, the rapid fire round. Question one: What's one media moment that's
changed how you work?
Graeme McQueen 42:11
I think that interview with Sarah McInerney was a, was a wake-up call that you can't just coast,
no matter how well you think you know the message. At some point, you've got to take stock
and go back to your fundamental points, you want to land. Make sure you're ready, refreshed,
your mind is clear, that sort of thing.
Jack Murray 42:26
Give me one example of something that failed that you learned from.
Graeme McQueen 42:31
I couldn't think of too many in that regard, but one would be we tried to talk about
sustainability, and as a company, we weren't ready, and what we thought was going to be a
really positive, confident PR campaign totally backfired on us. So, a real learning then that you
talk at the right time and when you're ready, and not because you think you should or need to,
you have to. The timing's got to be right.
Jack Murray 42:56
What's one universal belief about public relations that you think is wrong or overstated.
Graeme McQueen 43:02
If any of my colleagues internally are listening to this, I'd like them to know that PR is not easy.
It is difficult. I think I may look, make it look and sound easy, hopefully at times on the radio, on
the TV, but it is a skill, and you know the other one would be PR is not the answer to
everything, but I hate when termly, when people say you guys will spin that, it's not what we
do. That one would deny me quite a bit.
Jack Murray 43:30
What's one bit piece of advice that you wish you'd heard earlier in your career?
Graeme McQueen 43:34
I think probably, maybe flip that a bit. The best bit of advice I ever got was from a guy called
Dermodel Flynn, who was a journalist with The Examiner, former hurdler, I think, for Cork. I was
on a press trip once, and he said to me at the end of the press trip, me and him had a great bit
of fun on that trip, and he said to me, Wherever you do, he said, use your personality and you'll
be absolutely fine, and he was a funny, funny guy, so I took a took a took a compliment from
that, but that stuck with me. Use your personality, no matter what you're doing.
Jack Murray 44:07
Great advice. Finally, what name a book that you think everyone in your job should read?
Graeme McQueen 44:14
I don't read PR books, I don't read a huge amount generally. Read Irvin Welsh books and golf
books and stuff like that was named one work-ish book that I read, Stephen O'Leary from
Olivia, who you probably know, he gifted me a book a few years ago called Thinking Fast and
Slow, yes, and that's probably could be 10 years ago, Stephen gave me that, but a lot of the
principles of that book still apply, like, especially for PR. Like, how quickly you react is key to
the job. So, a lot of the learners from that book, that's still.. I think a lot of that sticks with me.
Jack Murray 44:53
Graham, thanks for your time today. It was a pleasure to catch up. I learned loads. We had a
chat not that long ago, but I. We went even deeper today, and thanks for sharing.
Graeme McQueen 45:02
Thanks for having me on, Jack.
Jack Murray 45:04
It's time to take another look inside the product. I'm joined again by Media HQ product lead Rob
Carr to talk about the technology that's changing media relations today, and today the thorny
issue of how to make sure your email gets into a journalist inbox. Now, Rob, we take two
completely different approaches to this. You're the technologist, I'm the PR person. Talk to me
a little bit about the anxiety, because I know you, you get called on calls about this, and did my
email get in? That anxiety when people press send about, does their press release get into
journals? Yeah,
Rob Carr 45:35
look, it's actually quite.. I was reading something lately, and it's just 400 billion pieces of email
sent daily worldwide, that's crazy number, crazy number, and almost 50% of that is spam, it's
things people don't want to their inbox, right? So I think that needs to be starting point of any
discussion on email deliverability and what's happening right now, and what's been happening
the last couple of years, especially, is the big email inbox providers, you know them well,
they're Outlook, they're Google, they've been putting more and more measures in place to
make sure that this spam doesn't reach your inbox, but of course the other side of that is that
emails you want to get into the inbox also find it harder to get in there, so that's the thing we
work with every day,
Jack Murray 46:18
so last year the team at Media HQ, which you had an instrumental role on, rolling achieved the
unbelievable statistic of 99.3% of all emails into primary inboxes, and without getting too
wonky and technical, yeah,
Jack Murray 46:35
like what, what is behind the result, like I've delivered 99 points, well, very
Rob Carr 46:40
first, Jack, we have to give a lot of credit to our research teams. I remember, because they do a
lot of fixing the bounces and stuff like that, which is really, really important. But the other part
of that is understanding what we've taken, the way we've looked at it in Media HQ, is we've
taken email deliverability not just as a feature or send feature, it's actually strategic
infrastructure that we have in the company. We are the experts are getting emails, getting
press releases, yeah, into journalist inboxes. That's that's the view we take. And there's a
couple of very technical sort of elements around that. Now, pure people don't have to
understand, yeah. Well, I suppose
Jack Murray 47:13
let's just decode it from from it from from a little bit point of view. So I suppose one to use the
analogy that like when I go to West Cork, and if Amazon deliver me something, yeah, it's the
local postman that hands me, so they're on post just the fulfillment for Amazon. So there is a
bit here where if you send through a technology like Media HQ, you send through the
technology, but it comes from your email address, absolutely. And there's a, there's a, there's a
little thing called DNS, correct, that you have to verify, yeah, and that's basically saying I'm
given permission for you to send this through Media HQ, and it, and that means then that the
receiving email person, whether it's the Irish Times, the RTE, the doors open wider, and
welcomes absolutely,
Rob Carr 47:53
absolutely, Jack, and you couldn't have said it any better than I than I could, and essentially
what is, and it's not just this isn't just something you should do anymore, something you
absolutely have to do, like a, like I started here. The big providers, like Outlook and Google,
demand that you do this anymore, not having your DNS verified, and it's a very simple
procedure. It's just not an option. And
Jack Murray 48:17
then the second part of it, then obviously you said, "Look, and we'll deal with this, and we'll
deal with this in every episode that we do, but quality, the research is paramount. But the
second big technical part of it, then, is that your internet protocol is of a very high standard,
what we call your IP address, and you know we're lucky in Media HQ that people trust us to
share everything from national budgets to drugs, bus, to major job announcements, but that
reputation is like it's hard won, and it's one piece of email at a time. It's
Rob Carr 48:48
very hard won. I mean, when you get a new IP, you actually have to warm it up, so it starts to
get that reputation, and you know, we have a 99% delivery rate of media HQ. It's mad, isn't it?
It is. I mean, it's brilliant, because, like, I've been that
Jack Murray 49:01
PR person back in the dark ages, where, like, you'd send something out, and the stress of the
day, that, like, you've a big announcement, it could be a jobs announcement, it could be
something that's going to hit a news desk, and your phone will light up, and the minute you
press send, like, your status before you press send, and your life status afterwards, are
completely different, and it's how people get addicted to that rush, but what happens when you
press send, and like 10 of the 100 come back with the best will in the world, you're not fixing
those 10 that day, and then 10 minutes before you send the next one, you think, oh God, I
didn't do that, and I
Rob Carr 49:32
guess the thing, people, it's not just that those 10 don't land, but those 10 bounces actually
damage your sending repetition, so we spend a lot of time fixing bounces straight away, making sure things that bounce repeatedly go on suppression. This, so that means we're not
sending out email that looks like spams, because after all, we're sending mass email, like up to
300 We only allowed 300 because any more than that, you start to create problems as well,
and but we work very hard to make sure that anything that damages our. Station and repeated
bounces being a huge one doesn't happen,
Jack Murray 50:04
and then I suppose look just in the background, then, and like, look, this has to happen, and it's
essential, but security is a big part of it. So, two-factor authentication, you know, login protocols
with company domains, not letting you know, Mickey mouse@hotmail.com on the domain, all of
that builds your strength as well.
Rob Carr 50:22
Absolutely, I mean, that's really important. I mean, the idea that you're sending from your own
domain, which have that domain verified for sending through Media HQ, and you full control
that domain, is really, really important. Anything coming from gmail.com or anything like that,
you know, it's very hard to build a reputation. It's really
Jack Murray 50:38
funny, though, like I was in my local, I was in my local hardware store recently. I was, I was
hiring a power wash because my, my wife had got me to power wash the patio, and I, the guy
said to me, you'll get an email now, it may go to your spam or your promotions. Yeah, I said to
him, can I ask you a stupid question? And he said, do you say that to everyone that comes in?
He said, I do, and I said, is that a pain in the arse? He said, it is. And I said, do you know what's
behind that? And he said, no. And I said, I've got a pen and paper. And he said, yeah. I said,
verify your DNS settings. I said, can you talk to whoever, just ring them up and say I need to
verify my so that I'm not talking to customers 50 times a day. He said, that's really helpful. And
I said, it will, it'll, it'll change your life, and I suppose there's a bit here where the amount of
work it saves people if they're not fixing bounced emails to go and do those other PR jobs that
are necessary. Absolutely,
Rob Carr 51:30
of course it does, and that's, I mean, again, I started this off by saying, you know, we see our
email sending infrastructure as strategic part of what we do, it's core to what we do, and we
want to make sure that people just don't have to worry about that at all, at all, and I mean, you
know, there's a whole lot of things, as well, of course, the PR professionals can do, we always
talk about targeting, building an audience, and targeting the right audience, but targeting the
right audience isn't just about the people who are interested in your press release, it also helps
to build your reputation if journalists are opening your press release, if they're interacting with
your press release, if they're not opting out or unsubscribing from your press release, if they're
doing all those things. It builds the reputation of sending, and the next time you send, you
actually have a better chance of getting your press release into the inbox that you want it to be
in.
Jack Murray 52:18
Thanks for joining me today, Rob. That was really interesting. We managed to take something
that's highly technical, and I think it was very palatable, but I do think that, like, look, it's the
one thing that everyone obsesses about. And on the help desk, most people will ring, and
they're like, when you analyze all the tickets, it's, did they get my email? So, thanks for
bringing some light to that today.
Rob Carr 52:39
You're welcome, Jack.
Jack Murray 52:40
Thanks for tuning in today to Inside Media Relations. Thanks for your time. If you liked the
show, please like and subscribe, and tell everybody about it, and come back for the next
episode when we'll get more Inside Media Relations.
