Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth

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

March 23, 2023

AI Summary

5 min read

Lulu Cheng Meservey, former head of comms at Substack and now at Activision Blizzard, shares practical strategies for spreading ideas through communications and PR. Drawing from her experience with startups and underdogs, she emphasizes connecting messages to audience passions, taking calculated risks, and building direct channels over traditional media reliance.

Crafting sticky, shareable messages

Ideas spread when they are memorable and give people a reason to repeat them voluntarily, such as projecting identity, bringing joy, or making others laugh. Use simple techniques like jokes, analogies, repetition of punchy phrases ("move fast and break things"), vivid mental images ("put the pill in cheese" for hiding tough messages in appealing stories), or concrete anecdotes over vague adjectives. Avoid inside jokes or complex references, as they fail to land—exemplified by Meservey's "neither for that matter is the sea" tweet, which confused readers despite its poetic intent. Boil your core idea to a second-grader level, strip cliches, and add imagery for stickiness, but note these can backfire, like Romney's "binders of women."

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What you'll learn

1 `* (00:00:33) **Intro: What makes ideas spread**`
2 `* (00:05:47) **Crafting sticky phrases and cautions**`
3 `* (00:11:08) **Philosophy: Take risks over status quo**`
4 `* (00:14:00) **Cultural erogenous zones framework**`
5 `* (00:17:28) **Underdog strategy: Concentric circles for distribution**`
6 `* (00:29:06) **Comms math formula & pressure/force/area**`
7 `* (00:42:58) **Go direct: Build personal audience channels**`

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

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Lulu Cheng Meservey was formerly head of comms at Substack (where I host my newsletter and podcast) and is currently the Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard. She also writes one of my favorite newsletters, “Flack,” where she shares tactical advice for company comms, PR, and messaging. In today’s episode, we dive deep into the world of PR and comms. We discuss why taking risks is crucial, how to gain attention as an underdog, and why it’s important to have a super-specific audience. Lulu outlines several frameworks I’d never heard of before, including a concentric circles framework for identifying your audience, the cultural erogenous zones, and even a physics-based framework for comms.

Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/navigating-comms-and-pr-lulu-cheng

Where to find Lulu Cheng Meservey:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lulumeservey

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lulu-cheng-meservey/

• Newsletter: https://www.getflack.com/

Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

Referenced:

• “Binders full of women”: Mitt Romney’s four words that alienated women voters: https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2012/oct/17/binders-full-of-women-romneys-four-words

• Bill Bishop’s newsletter on Substack: https://www.sinocism.com/

• Hamish McKenzie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hamishmckenzie

• The Network State: How to Start a New Country: https://www.amazon.com/Network-State-How-Start-Country-ebook/dp/B09VPKZR3G

• How to increase virality: