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Most founders and product leaders treat public relations as a box to check—a press release here, a tech blog feature there. But for Lulu Cheng Meservey, former head of comms at Substack and currently the EVP of Corporate Affairs at Activision Blizzard, communications is a strategic lever for survival and growth. It is about crafting ideas that travel under their own power.
In a landscape saturated with noise, the "build it and they will come" mentality is a fatal error. To win, companies must act less like faceless institutions and more like engaging humans. From leveraging "cultural erogenous zones" to understanding the physics of pressure and force, Meservey offers a masterclass in how to stop shouting into the void and start building a narrative that sticks.
Key Takeaways
- Map "Cultural Erogenous Zones": Do not try to change your audience's worldview. Instead, build a bridge between what they already passionately care about and the product you are offering.
- Apply the Concentric Circles Framework: Communications must travel from the inside out. Start with yourself, then employees, investors, and power users before ever reaching out to the general public or press.
- Maximize Pressure by Reducing Surface Area: Use the physics of communication (Pressure = Force / Area). Early-stage startups achieve greater impact by narrowing their target audience rather than diluting their message for the masses.
- Go Direct or Go Home: Founders must build their own distribution channels. Relying solely on traditional media leaves you vulnerable to attack and unable to tell your own story authentically.
- Take Risks of Commission: The enemy of the startup is the status quo. It is better to make a mistake while taking a bold stand than to fade into obscurity through safe silence.
Crafting Memorable Messages: Put the Pill in the Cheese
The first hurdle in communications is purely cognitive: making an idea memorable enough that people want to repeat it of their own volition. If you are relying on people to spread your message as a favor to a corporation, you have already lost. They must spread it because it makes them look interesting, funny, or smart.
To achieve this, Meservey suggests a tactic she calls "putting the pill in the cheese." Just as you wrap a dog's medicine in a treat to get them to swallow it, you must wrap your core message in a format that is easily digestible and shareable. This often takes the form of:
- Jokes: Humor travels faster than facts.
- Analogies: Connect the unknown to the known.
- Visual Imagery: Create a picture in the listener's mind (e.g., Mitt Romney’s "binders of women," while a political gaffe, was undeniably sticky because of the visuals).
- Stories: Replace subjective adjectives with concrete anecdotes.
Founders should stress-test their messaging against a simple standard: Could a second grader understand it immediately? If the cognitive burden is too high, the message will die before it spreads.
Identify Cultural Erogenous Zones
A common mistake startups make is trying to fabricate passion where none exists. It is nearly impossible to take a person who cares nothing about your industry and create a message so powerful that they suddenly develop a deep interest. The heavy lift of changing a worldview is rarely worth the effort.
The lighter, more effective lift is to identify your audience’s "cultural erogenous zones"—the topics they already have a visceral reaction to. Your job is not to change their mind, but to build an API between their existing passion (X) and your offering (Y).
"It's a light lift to take the thing you want to talk about and just shape it into their worldview or their passions... If your natural audience cares about X and you're offering Y, then it's your job to create the bridge from X to Y."
The Kamala Harris Example
Meservey cites a strategy used by Kamala Harris during her Senate run. Harris recognized that while K-12 education standards generally only polled well with mothers, National Defense was a high-priority topic for a broader demographic. To bridge this gap, she argued that to enlist in the Army, one needs a 10th-grade reading level to comprehend the field manual. Therefore, if you care about National Security, you must care about literacy standards. She didn't ask them to care about education for education's sake; she connected it to their existing "erogenous zone" of national safety.
The Concentric Circles Strategy
When rolling out a new narrative, the sequence of communication is just as critical as the message itself. Meservey advocates for a "Concentric Circles" approach. You must secure buy-in from the inner circles before expanding outward.
The sequence typically flows as follows:
- The Self: You must be crystal clear on the message.
- Insiders: Co-founders, executives, and employees.
- Stakeholders: Investors and board members.
- Power Users: Your most loyal customers.
- The Public/Media: The outer ring.
Skipping a circle invites disaster. If a CEO goes to the press with a new vision that the employees haven't bought into, the employees become credible detractors. The public assumes insiders know the truth; if the insiders aren't evangelizing the message, the message loses all credibility.
The Physics of Comm: Pressure = Force / Area
Startups often suffer from a lack of resources—limited time, money, and manpower. To compete with incumbents, they must apply physics to their communications strategy. In physics, pressure is defined as force divided by area. To increase pressure without increasing force (resources), you must decrease the surface area.
Do not try to appeal to everyone.
When you attempt to reach a broad audience, you inevitably water down your message until it becomes unremarkable. Instead, target a specific "tiny monopoly." Focus your energy on a small group of die-hards who will become obsessed with your product. If you can win them over completely, they will do the work of spreading your message for you.
This is how Substack grew. Rather than trying to be a platform for everyone, they initially focused intensely on writers and Twitter power users. By dominating that small surface area, they created enough pressure to break through to the mainstream later.
The Necessity of Going Direct
The era of the faceless corporation is over. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low, but trust in individuals remains high. To navigate this, founders and executives must "go direct"—communicating through their own channels rather than relying on intermediaries or corporate handles.
Offense and Defense
Building a direct audience serves two critical functions:
- Defense: If you are disrupting an industry, the status quo will eventually attack you. If you rely on traditional media to tell your side of the story, you will lose. You need an owned channel where you have already "primed the market" and built a reservoir of trust.
- Offense: No reporter will ever understand your mission as well as you do. The most effective evangelist for a unique innovation is the person who built it.
Execution: Pick Your Medium
Going direct does not mean being on every platform. It means choosing the one that aligns with the founder's natural talents. If the CEO is a strong writer, they should utilize Substack or Twitter (X). If they are charismatic speakers, video or podcasts may be better. The key is consistency and authenticity. A founder who tries to "cosplay" as a professional executive often comes across as robotic and untrustworthy.
"You can't not have a direct channel... If the other side of it is a corporation, there's no direct connection."
Risk-Taking: The Enemy is the Status Quo
Perhaps the most distinct aspect of Meservey’s philosophy is her appetite for risk. Corporate communications are traditionally conservative, designed to minimize mistakes. However, for a startup, the greatest risk is not making a mistake—it is being ignored.
Startups are fighting a war against the status quo. If you choose safety and silence to avoid "errors of commission" (doing something wrong), you succumb to "errors of omission" (doing nothing and letting the incumbent win). Bold stances, even those that alienate some people, are necessary to galvanize a core audience.
When Substack took heat for their content moderation policies, they didn't retreat into vague corporate-speak. They doubled down on their principles regarding free speech. While this was risky, it aligned perfectly with the "cultural erogenous zones" of the writers they wanted to attract—people who valued creative freedom above all else.
Conclusion
Effective communications is not about broadcasting to the masses; it is about precise targeting and human connection. By understanding what lights your audience up, ensuring your internal teams are aligned before going public, and having the courage to speak directly and boldly, companies can turn their narrative into their strongest asset. As Meservey demonstrates, in a world of safe, corporate noise, the human voice is the only thing that cuts through.
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