Navigating comms and PR | Lulu Cheng Meservey (Substack, Activision Blizzard)

Mar 23, 2023 1h 3m 16 insights Episode Page ↗
Lenny interviews Lulu Mazervi, former Head of Comms at Substack and current EVP at Activation Blizzard, on how to make ideas spread. They discuss finding cultural erogenous zones, taking risks, building direct distribution channels, and crafting memorable messages for maximum impact.
Actionable Insights

1. Find Cultural Erogenous Zones

Shape your message to fit your audience’s existing passions and worldview, rather than attempting the difficult task of changing their core beliefs. This ’light lift’ approach makes your message more likely to resonate and spread.

2. Decrease Surface Area for Pressure

For startups or underdogs, focus your communication efforts intensely on a smaller, highly targeted audience. By decreasing the ‘surface area’ of your target, you can apply more ‘pressure’ (impact) with the same amount of ‘force’ (resources), leading to greater influence.

3. Build Your Own Distribution

For startups and underdogs, assume traditional media and institutions won’t support your disruptive message, and build your own direct distribution channels from day one. This involves winning hearts and minds by shaping your story to fit your audience’s cultural erogenous zones and identifying influencers to spread it.

4. Take Calculated Risks

As a startup, embrace ‘mistakes of commission’ over ‘mistakes of omission’ by taking risks in your communications. Doing nothing allows the status quo to win, whereas taking action allows for learning, adaptation, and growth.

5. Make Ideas Memorable

To ensure your ideas spread, make them memorable and repeatable. This can be achieved by turning them into jokes, using analogies, crafting short sticky phrases, creating colorful mental images, or telling engaging stories instead of using subjective adjectives.

6. Propagate Messages in Circles

Spread your message outwards in concentric circles, starting with your closest internal audience (employees, co-founders) and moving to power users, investors, and then broader audiences. This sequence ensures message control and leverages the credibility of inner circles to influence outer ones.

7. Simplify Message for Clarity

Boil down the essence of your company or mission into one sentence that a second grader could understand. Cleanse it of cliches and common parlance, then turn it into an analogy or something with vivid imagery to make it sticky and easily repeatable.

8. Align Comms with Business Goals

Establish a clear business goal (not a communications goal) and identify the specific people who need to take action to achieve it. Then, determine what beliefs they need to hold to take that action and where they intellectually reside to deliver targeted messages effectively.

9. Communicate as a Human

Avoid speaking like a faceless corporation; instead, have a founder or senior person speak in the first person with an authentic, human voice. People trust and connect with individuals, making them more effective ambassadors for your company and its mission.

10. Select Optimal Direct Channel

When building direct communication channels, choose the platform (e.g., long-form writing, video, audio, short-form) that best suits your spokesperson’s natural communication style and invest fully in that one channel. Avoid spreading yourself thin across too many platforms initially.

11. Prepare Content for Launch

Before launching a new direct channel (e.g., Substack, TikTok), prepare a pipeline of content (e.g., a week or two of posts) to launch strong. This builds momentum, helps the algorithm favor your new account, and ensures consistency from the outset.

12. Prioritize Content Consistency

Maintain a regular and consistent content cadence on your chosen direct channels rather than sporadically trying to go viral. Consistency is a significant factor in audience growth and engagement over time.

13. Gift Product to Key Influencers

Identify individuals who are both obsessed with your product and have a large, relevant following among your target audience. Shower these key people with free product to turn them into passionate evangelists who will spread your message organically.

14. Utilize Underused LinkedIn

Leverage LinkedIn for career-related content, as it is an underutilized platform with high user attention and a low ratio of genuinely interesting or useful content. This provides a significant opportunity for your content to stand out.

15. Maintain Message Integrity

Avoid watering down your message or identity to appeal to everyone, especially those who will never like your product or mission. Diluting your unique qualities can cause your true fans to lose their passion and prevent you from standing out.

16. Establish Communication Cadence

Prime your audience by establishing a regular communication cadence through your direct channels. This ensures that when you need to convey important information, it doesn’t seem unusual or crisis-driven, allowing your message to be received as intended.