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

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (0:00)
I often say to find your audience's cultural erogenous zones.
So what it means is people have things that they either care about or don't, and you're not gonna change that. So it's a huge lift to try to change someone's worldview or their passions.
It's a light lift to take the thing you wanna talk about and just shape it to fit into their worldview or their passions. There's not always a fit. There's gonna be people who are just not your natural audience and you should know that and not waste your time. But if your natural audience cares about X and you're offering Y, then it's your job to create sort of the API, right? Or to create the bridge from X to Y. It's not, with messaging, it's not build it and they will come. It is so hard and you'd have to be super humanly gifted to the extent that I can't recall seeing in my entire life. Where you create a message and a story so powerful that someone who didn't care at all before suddenly makes that their passion. It's so much easier to take what they're passionate about and understand it and then convince them that if they care about that, then they should care about your thing.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:30)
I met Lulu while she was head of comms at Substack, where she was infamous for taking big risks and bold stands and as a result, creating a lot of attention for Substack and other companies she's represented. Lulu is definitely the most innovative and interesting comms person I've worked with. She's currently Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard. And she writes what I'd say is the best newsletter on PR and comms strategy newsletter called Flack. In our conversation, we get tactical about how to make your ideas spread, cultural erogenous zones, the growing importance of going direct versus relying on traditional media, the importance of taking risks in your comms and much more. Lulu is so insightful, I could have continued to explore the subject for hours. Enjoy this episode with Lulu Meservey after a short word from our sponsors.
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Lulu, welcome to the podcast.

**Lulu Cheng Meservey** (4:38)
Thank you, Lenny. Great to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:40)
I am really excited to chat all things comms and PR.
I've never met a founder or product leader who doesn't want to get better at spreading ideas and getting their product out there.