It’s 2026 and everything is fake.

Fake content by fake influencers with fake engagement from fake followers, launching fake products with fake testimonials. A Potemkin village on a global scale, a glossy facade propped up by heaps and heaps of beige slop. Temu for content.

In this world, the real has never been more precious, refreshing, special, and rare. We need real people, building real things that actually matter, through real discipline and effort, with real outcomes in the real world.

The definitions will soon blur; the line between real and artificial is dotted and only getting dottier. But today we still know the difference, and that difference is the source of narrative alpha.

A quick recap and then I’ll explain:

In 2024, the biggest opportunity for comms was going direct. At the beginning of that year, most CEOs still relied on outdated, or outright hostile, intermediaries like traditional media. The shift began with desperados and contrarians who were fed up with gatekeepers, but the early adopters showed that going direct had way more reward than risk, and it soon became the default.

In 2025, the din of direct-goers turned into cacophony as even the stodgiest of companies started factory-farming for “CEO content” and “storytelling.” The edge now came from winning attention, primarily through video. Cue the avalanche of corporate podcasts and cinematic launch videos. Some built quality dedicated audiences while others, in blind Icarian pursuit of engagement, went the way of Talk Tuah.

In 2026, narrative alpha will come from doing real things.

That means:

• Putting in real effort to create beautiful durable things that exhibit taste and craftsmanship, with zero tolerance for slop. As Thomas Paine wrote during the American Revolution: “What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

• Showing real evidence for real outcomes, not flashy claims or vagueposts

• Designing real world events and artifacts, leaving people with memories that far outlast the cheap “impressions” generated by brainrot content troughs

• Showing up as real humans, with real flaws and foibles, instead of ultra-polished personas following AI scripts

• Forming real relationships that will weather time and tide

Be forewarned: these are not necessarily the things that will get the most engagement or clicks. And that’s ok! I love the big viral moments as much as anyone, but virality is never worth sacrificing quality, dignity, or taste.

Second downer: doing something once isn’t enough. Real narratives take 6, 12, 18 months to build. They require sustained effort and consistency - and patience! There are no shortcuts, but it’s worth it.

To quote The Velveteen Rabbit: “Once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Why does this happen, and what can you do about it?

Feedback is a regulatory mechanism

Imagine a thermostat for your credibility. People form an opinion on what the correct setting should be, and they regulate if the reality seems off. If you’re above their setpoint, people feel you’re overrated and want to bring you down; if you’re below it, people feel you’re underrated and want to build you up. And the farther off you are, the more they’ll overcorrect.

When someone is frustrated with you (or your company, or your product), they have a view of how much you should be dinged for something. Venting in public is a way to regulate your reputation and achieve the proper homeostasis, like turning a thermostat toward the desired setting.

This means that the substance of someone’s feedback is totally separate from their frustration or desire to be heard. Complaints often seem unfair and you might want to jump to fact checking, but that won’t get anywhere unless you first resolve the frustration and make people feel that you actually listened. (It turns out facts do care about our feelings.)

Resistance is escalation

When you reject someone’s feedback, you’re implying that (1) they’re wrong, (2) they’re possibly dumb, and (3) they don’t have the authority to judge you.

To be clear, sometimes that’s all true and you need to fight or ignore. But in this case, we’re focusing on substantive feedback from people who matter, like your customers.

By rebutting, you’re forcing them to justify and defend their initial statements. Either they were wrong to raise it or you were wrong to resist! Their choice is obvious.

Now their move is to escalate further, maybe with more examples or stronger language. As this plays out, onlookers will tend to take the critic’s side, as an angry customer is more relatable than an imperious founder.

Aiden v. CodeRabbit

Going back to the thermostat analogy, a stubborn dial only makes people twist harder.

Here’s a recent example.

Last week, Aiden Bai posted about grievances with CodeRabbit. Pretty normal so far; users complain about products all the time. A CodeRabbit engineer jumped in to ask for feedback, which was good, and Aiden followed up with details (full context here):

CodeRabbit’s CEO, Harjot, then entered the chat:

In one post, he

• called his own customer clueless,

• then implied CodeRabbit had enough users that this feedback didn’t matter,

• then condescendingly speculated that, even if it were valid, it could probably be solved by “simpler controls and a lot of handholding,”

• then, to gild the lily, made sure to insult not only Aiden personally but indie developers as a category.

Now, we should remember that writing a bad response isn’t the same as being a bad person. Harjot was frustrated by what he felt was a bad faith attack on his company, and I have a lot of sympathy for founders getting hater-fatigue.

Nonetheless, the response was objectively not good, and what came next was predictable:

The net upshot was bad vibes for CodeRabbit and a layup for its competitors:

The episode finally ended with an apologish from Harjot:

My advice for this kind of post is to pick a lane: if it’s an apology, make it a proper one and resist the urge to sprinkle in more veiled jabs. You could also take the other route and just not apologize. It’s best to try avoiding any uncanny valley situations. But it happens: bad interactions are unavoidable and this one wasn’t too damaging in the grand scheme.

How to reset

As Tolstoy would’ve said, all positive mentions are alike; every negative mention is irksome in its own way. It varies based on who’s involved, what the feedback is, how much traction it’s getting, etc. etc. etc. — there isn’t a universal solution. As I’ve noted, sometimes it really is bad faith trolling, and that calls for a very different approach.

But in general, as a founder you should be your own hardest critic. You should have a higher standard for yourself than anyone else could possibly impose. You should be voracious for user feedback, even if it feels unfair.

And the magical thing is, when you sincerely feel that way and you demonstrate it, criticism tends to wilt.

Imagine a scenario where you get negative feedback, and you overrule the instinct to push back. Instead, you listen to the feedback, you embrace the responsibility to make the best product possible, you even thank them for caring enough to share their thoughts (remembering that your real enemy isn’t negativity but indifference).

With just this, you’ll have shown more curiosity, more ownership, more humility than they were even hoping to enforce. They’re surprised to find that the imbalance is now in the other direction. Instead of feeling snubbed or dismissed, they might consider whether their initial jab was excessive. They now risk overcorrecting and overshooting the setpoint they were aiming for.

And when people feel they’ve gone too far, they restore balance by pulling back. It’s common to see someone gearing up for a confrontation but, upon finding the other person gracious and receptive, pivot to, “Thanks for sharing the context,” “I shouldn’t have overreacted,” “I appreciate how you handled this, “I do like the product overall,” or some other form of deescalation — maybe even an apology or retraction.

Claude gets it!

TL;DR

When getting negative feedback:

1. Separate the information part from the emotion part. There’s the substance of the feedback, and there’s the customer’s frustration and expectation of being heard. Those are discrete, and you can’t address the former without resolving the latter.

2. Start by aligning on principles, before rushing to defend yourself. Whatever the merits of the feedback, you agree that quality is important, that feedback is valuable, and that the feedback has found the person who’s responsible. Again, there’s no hope of aligning on facts if you can’t first align on principles.

3. Make a point of overindexing on accountability. Take more responsibility than what seems necessary. Take so much ownership that it surprises people. This obviates their need to hector you over it and removes a lot of surface area for attack, creating space for a calmer exchange. More importantly, if you’re the founder, the reality is that every detail of your product does fall on you.

4. If you need to clarify facts, explain instead of defending. You can share the exact same information in a way that’s either defensive and caustic, or earnest and transparent. The only difference is tone.

5. If self-critique or apology is warranted (it isn’t always), keep it straightforward. No need to grovel or self flagellate. Recap the problem plainly, explain the fix, say what you’re doing to prevent it in the future, and wrap it up. Then move on.

Today he responded with this video:

https://x.com/kevinspacey/status/1992692262690758703?s=46&t=OhZ5HVBZIcCcysHM91qoGA

I had to watch it several times. This kind of response is extremely hard to pull off and he handled it masterfully.

The reason it’s so hard is that being accused of insolvency is typically so humiliating that it feels undignified even to have to deny.

Spacey completely flipped the framing:

Instead of embarrassingly having to defend his solvency, he reversed the frame to speak from a position of high status. People have been so kind in offering him support that it would be dishonest to let them believe he actually needs the help!

He doesn’t treat the “homeless” label as an indignity to recover from, but as an instance of sloppy clickbait that won him undeserved sympathy.

In this framing, he’s graciously refusing to exploit the generosity of the many people misled by editors at The Telegraph (whom he makes look even more absurd by doing this via video showing a beautiful home in the background).

Key moments:

> “I don’t usually make it my business to correct the media; if I did I wouldn’t have time for much else...”

Starts with wry humor, to show he doesn’t take this too seriously and neither should you. By lumping all media inaccuracies together, he also casts doubt on other, way more damaging, news reports. Makes you wonder what else the media got wrong.

> “I feel the need to respond — not to the press, but to the thousands of people who have reached out…to all of you let me say I’m touched by your generosity. Full stop.”

He makes clear who his audience is and puts himself on the same side as them (momentarily to be united against The Telegraph).

> “It’s a shame The Telegraph chose to undermine the work of their own journalist by selling him out with a knowingly misleading headline for the sake of clicks.”

Pits the editors (dishonest) against the journalist (“wonderful”). He’s not offended on his own behalf, but standing up for the journalist. Also shows he’s not antagonistic toward all media.

> “I said I was living out of hotels…going where the work is, just as when I started out in this business. I’ve been working nearly nonstop for a year and for that I have so much to be grateful for.”

He’s obviously saying that he’s getting a lot of work and his career is as strong as ever, but framing it as gratitude instead of a rebuttal shows confidence and is more convincing.

> “There are many people who are indeed actually living on the streets or in their cars…and my heart goes out to them. But it is clear I am not one of them, nor was I attempting to say I was.”

This was particularly elegant. It’s hard to say “hey don’t call me that” without seeming to denigrate people who are “that.” The way Spacey frames it is that there’s no shame in financial hardship, but he simply wouldn’t want to accept sympathy for a struggle he hasn’t endured.

Lastly, note that format matters. This wouldn’t have been nearly as effective in writing. Video was the perfect format, given the “show don’t tell” home in the background and the fact that screen presence is his superpower.

Whatever else you might think about Kevin Spacey, it’s hard to watch this and walk away thinking he’s actually homeless.

Well here’s the story.

Palmer had come up with an idea that sounded crazy and unrealistic, even for him.

He wanted to get DOD rebranded to "The Department of War."

When he first explained it, it honestly sounded kind of unhinged. At the time, no one thought this was feasible or that it even made sense. But he wasn't being whimsical or jingoistic, he had very specific objectives.

Here's what the rebrand was meant to accomplish:

(1) Deterrence

The credible threat of war with America is one of the greatest forces for peace in the world. "Si vis pacem, para bellum" is a Latin saying meaning, "if you want peace, prepare for war." There is no saying meaning, "if you want peace, prepare for defense."

(2) Transparency

A more honest name makes clear to Americans what their money is being used for, without obfuscation or apology, and without indulging the stigma unfairly attached to warfighters.

(3) Clarity of purpose

Vague language leads to mission creep. Everything from food aid to hurricane relief to making streets safer can be "defense." An unambiguous name also signals resolve to adversaries. You can't win defense, but you can win wars, and that's what we intend to do.

(4) Morale

During the DOD era, America lost or stalled out in more wars than we've won. During the original Department of War era, no American ever lost a major war, unless you count losing to another American. The name isn't causal of course, but returning to the classic "brand" of the US armed forces is like Cracker Barrel returning to its old logo. It evokes a better era.

(5) Objector repellent

One of the best parts of Anduril's brand is that it is attractive to the kind of people they want to hire, and abhorrent to the kind of people they want to avoid. The Department of War similarly helps filter out anyone squeamish about the mission before they ever join the organization.

With this clear strategic rationale, Palmer spent the next couple years making the case to people ranging from military officers to policymakers to senior government officials. He started before the 2024 election even got going, and the new administration ultimately got onboard.

As with many things (including Anduril itself), if you have a clear goal and conviction, are willing to look a bit crazy, lay the groundwork, and keep at it, maybe for years...it might just end up happening.

So that's what it looks like when Palmer sets his mind to something and wills it into existence, and how you can do it too.

— Civilization VI

Introduction

The AI talent war is justified and rational.

The race to AGI will be won by attracting and retaining the people capable of building it. Yet recruits are regularly turning down offers in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even billions.

So how do you win the talent war?

In Civ VI terms, the win condition is not a Domination Victory but a Religious Victory: you win by converting others to your vision of the future, instilling faith in your ability to lead them to the promised land, and persuading them that you are destined to prevail.

Money is necessary but not sufficient.

Over-reliance on comp reduces companies to ATMs and people to chattel. It also messes up internal dynamics and external vibes, and if your main selling point is short-term liquidity then you won’t get true believers.

Beyond dollars and GPUs, here’s how to get (and keep!) the best researchers and engineers.

How to win

1 Mandate of Heaven

Victory is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because beliefs prompt actions: if the best people believe you will win, then they will join you and their friends will join you and you will win.

In short: the hyperstitional power of foreshadowing your inevitable triumph attracts the people who will secure it for you.

For a recruit to believe that their equity will be valuable, they have to believe that the company will win. The leadership needs to have the right strategic vision for where this is going, and the team needs to have the ability to pull it off.

Even in purely financial terms, $50MM of today’s equity from a lab that ends up #1 will ultimately be worth more than $100MM of today’s equity from a lab that ends up an also-ran.

The more AGI-pilled someone is, the more it matters to be on the winning team and the more irrational it is to choose a different team just for a short-term payday. Who wants to be the guy who went off chasing a quick buck while your competitors breathed life into a machine?

Winners want to join the winning team.

2 Clear mission

For elite talent, money is abundant while time is scarce. These people can afford to trade money for fulfillment, and they frequently do. We’ve all seen many instances of researchers turning down huge offers in favor of working on something they believe in, whether that’s safety or open access or the pursuit of truth.

The importance of mission is heightened to unprecedented levels now that it’s not just “make a better CRM” but something closer to “summon the correct deity.”

Highly skilled people want their work to be meaningful, so it’s important to clearly and precisely articulate a righteous cause.

Generic mission statements sound like disingenuous corpo slop and will make people think you’re phoning it in, if they even remember it (they won’t). Define a mission that couldn’t belong to any other company, then put it in every job posting, offer letter, interview, all-hands, and strategy document until you project “Cato the Elder calling for the destruction of Carthage” levels of resolve.

Note: In addition to attracting the right people, a clear mission can help repel the wrong people. Misaligned employees create painful and expensive problems through leaking, defecting, complaining, or worse.

3 Kleos

Men will literally pursue glory instead of going to therapy. Your top talent should have direct access to leadership, autonomy to make technical decisions, and freedom to take on ambitious new quests.

Above all, offer the opportunity to try things, take risks, and fail without penalty. History is made when extraordinary people FAFO.

4 Esprit de corps

Once you’ve locked in on the mission, instill an “us against the world” mentality where departures feel like defections and resisting poaching attempts confers status. Create rituals that build morale, pride, and unit cohesion around your shared purpose, like the IDF’s beret ceremony or the Marine Corps’ annual birthday cake cutting. And if you’re an underdog, treat that as the luxury it is and use it for fuel.

Aim for the kind of spirit that made a soldier in the 101st Airborne say during WWII, “They’ve got us surrounded, the poor bastards.”

5 Star factory

Reward excellence; give the best people opportunities for leadership and influence. Many researchers want to shape the direction of AI, and they understand that their leverage in influencing outcomes will diminish quickly as AGI approaches.

Celebrate individual achievement and mint luminaries. When you’re in the spotlight, redirect credit to colleagues whose work made the success possible. Go beyond “team effort” bromides and acknowledge specific contributions. Create “bonus content” about their work behind the scenes, or establish internal awards for technical excellence and celebrate the winners throughout the company or publicly. Maybe give them a budget to present their work at events or just host dinners for their peers.

Note: This can be uncomfortable, because it feels like publicizing a shopping list for poaching. But long term, the way you keep great people is by providing an environment to do their life’s work and be recognized for it, not by hiding their light under a bushel hoping that nobody else would want them. And the loyalty you accrue by investing in their advancement ultimately outweighs the marginal increase in poaching risk.

6 Network effects

Breakthroughs are better with friends. Talent density benefits from network effects: companies, like cities, thrive when ambitious people gather in sufficient density to pull in their peers.

And that positive feedback loop goes in both directions: compromising on talent quality now means compromising your ability to recruit later.

7 Recruits as recruiters

Being recruited by a friend who’s genuinely stoked about their job is the most effective form of headhunting, and you should equip your new hires to do this.

Get them mission-pilled right away, introduce them to your top leaders, give them high-impact projects quickly. New hires get bombarded with “How’s it going?” texts in their first month, and if they’re convinced that joining this company was the smartest decision ever, they’ll become powerful evangelists to their friends and peers.

8 Freedom to cook

The best workers love work, and they hate not-work. Not-work includes navigating bureaucracy, dealing with office politics, dealing with regular politics, doing reports about the work they did, and having to talk to the HR department.

Just as Michelangelo “removed everything that is not David,” you should remove everything that is not building AI. You and the company will inevitably have to manage some process and politics, but go out of your way to avoid inflicting this pain on your top hitters.

In the hiring process, kill all friction and latency. Interview fast, make offers fast, onboard fast. Speed shows respect and competence, while sluggishness signals dysfunction.

9 Leadership

Julius Caesar's men didn't fight for Rome; they fought for Caesar.

Great talent demands a great leader — someone they like, respect, admire, and would be proud to follow. People enlist for causes, but they fight for generals.

Many in AI have made career decisions based on wanting to work with someone they perceive as a trustworthy manager or a legendary scientist or a generational entrepreneur.

A leader is also the exemplar for their company. I once heard a military historian say that throughout all of human history, there have only ever been three ways to make people do things: reward, punishment, or example.

In the context of recruiting and retention, “reward” is obvious and “punishment” is probably illegal. That leaves “example.” If you’re seen as a true believer, your people will believe. If you’re seen as loyal, they will reciprocate. Conversely, if you’re seen as opportunistic or self-interested, why wouldn’t your people similarly look out for themselves?

10 Momentum

Always signal confidence and momentum. When things don’t go as planned, demonstrate the ability to learn and move forward. Never be defensive; never cope and seethe.

Maintain the initiative by consistently making moves, sharing news, announcing hires, and marking milestones. Announce things yourself so you control the narrative, since it’ll leak anyway. Force competitors to respond to your agenda rather than setting their own. Become the center of gravity for where the most important work is happening.

Conclusion

Neither deeper pockets nor a head start can overcome better talent. The talent war is existential, and in that war, victory is earned not bought. It’s earned through things like vision, virtue, camaraderie, opportunity, and leadership.

Consider the Cold War. We didn’t prevail just because we had deeper pockets or a larger arsenal. We won because our vision for the future was better. We won because, when the Berlin Wall came down, people wanted to go from East to West. We won because we had Reagan.

The AI talent war will play out similarly. The winner will be the company that can convince the world’s most extraordinary researchers and engineers that this is the place you’ll write your legacy, this is the leader to bet your career on, and this is the team that will one day run lightning through quartz and give mankind new meaning amid the Cosmos.

Thanks to , , Sholto Douglas, and for reading drafts — as well as to the unnamed people who shared their own experience evaluating offers. In lieu of $100M, please accept my gratitude.

If you can't keep up with all the comms work that needs to be done, you're a bottleneck and need to get help. And while you should never outsource the story and strategy, you can and should get help with things like managing press inquiries or doing outreach.

When do you need external help?

At the very beginning, you can just do it yourself. Some VCs have really excellent comms and marketing people, and they can help you. Then as the company grows, the best thing you can do is get a great full-time comms leader.

But if you haven't found the right person or that person/team is overloaded, you might need external support. A good PR agency can help with crafting pitches, doing outreach, or managing a project like a launch or crisis. Finding strong writers is hard, so unless you luck out, you’re better off doing the writing yourself. Even if it’s mid, at least it’ll be mid in your voice.

What are your options for PR agencies?

Start with referrals from other founders. While people in the industry might want to advocate for their friends or bash competitors, founders will usually give a frank assessment of their experience, because they’ll remember forever when someone has made a big impact on their company and similarly will begrudge someone forever for wasting the company’s time. I put a lot of weight on word of mouth, because reputations matter for a reason.

You’ll also want to consider the type of agency you need. There are different kinds:

• Large global agencies, eg Brunswick, Edelman, Sard

• Boutique agencies specializing in corporate comms and special situations, eg Milltown, Haymaker, or my former firm TrailRunner

• Agencies specializing in tech startups, eg Outcast, Six Eastern, Bulleit

• Comms shops embedded with lobbying firms, eg Invariant or Tusk

If an agency seems like overkill or you just need help with something targeted, you might also consider freelancers like Cristin Culver, Cameron Langford, Melissa Rubenstein. There are many other people and firms; these are just some examples.

How do you choose the best agency?

There’s no objective best; it depends on the people on the team, how well they’re matched to your situation, and how well they vibe with you.

One of the most common complaints about agencies (which I share) is when they have a senior person pitch you but then have a junior person actually end up doing all the work. So you want to make sure you know who’s actually on the day to day team, because there can be a big discrepancy between the quality of the pitch and the quality of the work. Always meet the team and account lead.

Then consider:

• How quickly are they sending you a proposal? This is the fastest and most responsive they will ever be, so use this to evaluate their operational tempo and make sure it keeps up with yours.

• Is the proposal good? And by good, I mean: is the writing clear and precise? Are they asking the right questions? Are their ideas and their assumptions sound? Do they have a sense of aesthetic? Is what you’ve told them reflected correctly; did they know what to do with the information?

• How badly do they want the business? Is it excitement about your mission (good) or desperation to land business (bad)?

• Who’s recommending them? Are their former clients the kinds of companies you want to emulate: Do you respect the taste and judgment of people who like their work? If they have a logo in their marketing materials and you call the founder, does the backchannel review match the company’s representation? A lot of people will agree to an endorsement just to be nice, but their private assessment might differ.

• Do they “get it”? Can they instinctively pick up on problems or opportunities without you telling them?

• Do they know the players in the space? Actually know them, not relying on Google or AI or databases to look them up and find their emails? You want people on a texting basis with at least some of the influential people you want to speak to.

How much should you expect to pay?

PR agency fees are typically a monthly retainer or project fee. Some charge hourly, but I try to avoid these arrangements because the incentives are misaligned (if they work more slowly, they get paid more!).

The amounts are typically very opaque, and each contract is separately negotiated. Here are some ranges based on what I’ve paid consultants while running comms at a startup and a public company, and also what I’ve seen PR firms charge a wide range of companies.

Beyond leading an agency, I’ve hired or seen the pricing for dozens of agencies, so I think this is pretty representative, although there’s a long tail. For example, I’ve charged $1 for crisis assignments where I didn’t care about the fee but just needed to be formally “on retainer.” I’ve also seen seven-figure retainers that probably paid off in avoiding even higher legal and reputational costs.

Monthly retainers can range from $5K for a single junior freelancer or young firm to $500K or more for a massive global firm with a big scope. The most expensive agency I’ve had was around $400K a month (but it was silly and we ended the engagement).

Typical tech PR firms tend to charge startups $20-35K a month, while more specialized or high profile shops might charge $60K-100K, depending on the person and project.

Factors in pricing are seniority of the team, intensity and difficulty of the work, reputation risk, and opportunity cost — basically, supply and demand. If a firm is in high demand, they’ll charge more because they can.

Take these negotiations seriously. Palmer Luckey has zero patience for wasted motion, and he gets the value of good propaganda; and he has said thinks Anduril’s comms has added hundreds of millions of dollars to the company’s value.

You should not think of the work as dollars per hour. Comms can be a multiplier on your valuation. It’s worth doing right, and getting the right people is part of that. If they’re not the right people, even free is too much.

The duration of the contract reflects your confidence in the team. You can always fire an agency even during a contract (usually with 30 days notice), but if you’re not sure how things will go then I strongly suggest starting with a shorter contract (3 or 6 months).

How do you manage the agency and get the most out of them?

First, set clear goals. Real goals like landing a big enterprise or growing users, not made up comms goals like share of voice or message pull-through. I used to get weekly reports from all my agencies and found these things to be low signal pseudometrics that correlated weakly with reality.

Qualitative metrics are less precise, but I’d argue more meaningful.

• Do you feel calmer and more assured when the team is handling something?

• Are their recommendations good?

• Can they pull off what they set out to do?

• When they fail (which will happen and you should give them some space to make mistakes), do they find learnings or make excuses?

Decide the frequency of your meetings. Meeting too often sucks because people will chew the clock with nonsense. Updates are a gas — they’ll expand to fill the space they’re given. But meeting too rarely will cause things to fall through the cracks. I suggest:

• If it’s a crisis: daily, at minimum

• If they’re handling all the day-to-day: weekly syncs

• If it’s a high level engagement for strategic direction: monthly

• If in between: fortnightly

Make sure you have their cellphone numbers and have a Slack channel or chat group for quick responses. Don’t make the channel too big; a dozen or more people will create a chilling effect where the bar for posting feels too high and people get wary of being contrary.

Lastly, look at their pitches every once in a while. This will feel annoying and like micromanaging, but it’s important to make sure you’re aligned. Does the pitch make you feel like “you said it better than I could!” or more like “wait, this makes us sound like a random vendor in the Yellow Pages”?

If you need more recommendations, I’m happy to give thoughts on teams I’ve worked with — or, again, the best referral sources are peers whose taste and standards you trust.

For too long, founders have yielded control over their narratives to media and middlemen.

Before the internet, it was by necessity. The way to reach large audiences was through the media, and the way to get media coverage was through professional publicists.

Today, most of the planet is directly reachable by social media or email. There’s no longer a need to go through traditional gatekeepers of information and brokers of reputation — especially as their own credibility has plummeted. 

The old PR playbook of relying on third parties with misaligned interests is obsolete.

But while the world has changed, comms norms have not. Still encased in amber are the old habits: prioritizing media over social media, fishing for clicks instead of fostering communities, and avoiding risk by recycling worn-out tactics.

“Corporate communications” itself is now an oxymoron, as nothing meaningful can be communicated by a faceless committee. If press releases read like they were written by a baker’s dozen of middle managers, that’s because they were. Their only discernible purpose seems to be to avoid upsetting anyone and jeopardizing the future job prospects of those middle managers.

The resulting stories are bland and generic, with passion reduced to pablum. Traditional comms is an anachronism.

II. COMMUNICATION IS THE FOUNDER’S JOB.

For a decade, we’ve been told that tech founders are cartoon villains, venture-funded startups are grifts, and new technologies will destroy us all. 

Maybe there was a time when founders could just focus on building — they were seen by the media establishment as a curiosity, not a threat to the natural hierarchy who needed to be put in their place. But if that time ever existed, it is now long gone. 

You may not be interested in The Discourse, but it is interested in you. And if you bow out, you are forfeiting your license to build a movement and thus build a company.

Building a movement is hard, but it must be done, and it must be done by founders. A founder’s passion, vision, and conviction can’t be simulated by others — least of all the press-release-enjoying middle managers already scouting for their next jobs.

The best spokesperson for any endeavor is not the one who has the most polish, the longest tenure, or the “right” credentials. It’s the person who holds the secret knowledge upon which the enterprise is built, the person who can not only describe the idea but, in the face of inevitable opposition, fight for it and win.

Founders need to take their narrative as seriously as they take the rockets or robots. They would never outsource their product — and when it comes to convincing others to support the mission, the story is the product. Outsourcing comms is as bad as outsourcing code.

As evangelists, founders are irreplaceable.

III. GO DIRECT OR GO HOME.

Going direct to the people who matter is how founders retain control over their narratives and preserve their companies’ uniqueness. Those who are stubborn, unorthodox, and disagreeable should never have their edges filed down for fear of offending entrenched interests. 

But going direct doesn’t mean going it alone. It doesn’t mean refusing help or spurning others who can amplify your message. And it certainly doesn’t mean just poasting more.

Going direct means crafting and telling your own story, without being dependent on intermediaries.

Just as founders might have more natural talents at product, management, or engineering, some founders will be naturals at communicating while others have a harder time. 

The good news is that going direct and building a movement, while not easy, are skills that can be developed with discipline and time. The bad news is that, unlike with engineering or management, communications failures are immediately public and personally humiliating. It’s not surprising that many are loath to take on this responsibility.

At the same time, founders willing to pick up that gauntlet will find that it gives them a massive edge in recruiting, fundraising, selling, and shaping the information environment needed for their companies to thrive. 

IV. IT’S TIME TO REBUILD THE ROSTRA.

At the center of Rome, as it transitioned from a Republic to an Empire, stood a speaker’s platform from which the city’s leaders would address the public directly. 

It was called the Rostra, so named because it stood atop the captured battle rams (or rostrums) of enemy warships. From here, speeches were given that would sway opinion, change regimes, and alter history.

That physical structure has been lost to time, but we now have something much more powerful: a free and open internet with which to build a speaker’s platform of limitless scale. All we need is the will to build it.

The conventional way of communicating has its allure. Outsource your message, let some removed third party go through the motions of getting “impressions,” and spare yourself the risks and discomfort that come with putting your own name on the line.

But that way is incompatible with greatness. 

Reject convention — build your own platform, build your own audience, and build your own narrative.

Go direct.

—

Today I launched a new company, called Rostra. This is our manifesto. There is no “call to action” here, but I wanted to share it with you and thank you for your support and readership.

I’m grateful to be on this quest for better and more candid communications together with you all.

Based on psychology research, here are some tactics for finding and keeping love.1

1. Understand what causes love

2. Show your interest

3. But not too much

4. Impress their friends

5. Think different

6. Be good but not perfect

7. Scary, stressful, sexy

8. Embrace TMI

9. Ask a favor

10. Mirror moods

11. Gas them up

12. Good guilt only

13. Give to get

1) UNDERSTAND WHAT CAUSES LOVE

Research shows that three major factors cause people to develop feelings of love: proximity, similarity, and familiarity. (Obv physical attraction plays a role but that’s out of scope here!)

Basically, people are more likely to fall in love with people they interact a lot with, have a lot in common with, and whom they know well. As a starting point, this simply means you should open up, find things in common, and just be around each other more.

2) SHOW YOUR INTEREST

In one study, 90% of people said that knowing the other person was interested in them was a major factor in their falling in love.

3) …BUT NOT TOO MUCH

Research shows that people are the most romantically interested in someone who MIGHT like them, much more than someone who definitely does or doesn’t.

Uncertainty reduction theory says people will spend more mental energy on figuring out something unknown, and the principle of scarcity also tells us people place more value on something less certain. Uncertainty is more intriguing to men in particular, who are more likely to take chances and seek out a challenge.

4) IMPRESS THEIR FRIENDS

Younger people especially are more likely to seek the approval of their peers, so it’s useful to get on good terms with the other people in their life. Time for an influencer strategy!

5) THINK DIFFERENT

I mentioned that research shows similarity makes a relationship more likely. The theory of self expansion also says that, after the initial attraction, the presence of opposite traits make a relationship more likely to last, as people see more opportunity for self expansion.

6) BE GOOD BUT NOT PERFECT

Another factor in attraction is competence. Likeability through competence can be increased through the pratfall effect: if someone perceived you as competent to begin with, then making minor mistakes or showing vulnerability will make you even more likable (again, only if you’re seen as competent to begin with!).

7) SCARY, STRESSFUL, SEXY

People are much more attracted to someone they see after experiencing danger or excitement. Misattribution of arousal is when people get physiologically stimulated and attribute their higher heart rate etc. to the person they’re with, instead of the situation they’re in. Apparently rock climbing or a horror movie are solid first date ideas.

8) EMBRACE TMI

A key ingredient in love is intimacy. Psychologist Arthur Aron’s experiments at UC Santa Cruz showed that people who shared private information tended to feel a closer attraction to each other.

The idea is that intimate conversation puts people at risk of embarrassment, and risk and vulnerability lead to trust and mutual affection.

9) ASK A FAVOR

The insufficient justification effect means people will update their beliefs to justify an already completed action.

The same way Ben Franklin used to turn enemies into friends by asking to borrow a book from them, you can make someone like you more by asking them for help in small (!) ways.

10) MIRROR MOODS

Bonds of affection are strengthened by shared moods, which create a sense of solidarity and promote long term stability in relationships. Happy moods are better than sad moods for bonding. Laughing moods are exceptionally infectious. Go to a comedy club together.

11) GAS THEM UP

The need to preserve self esteem is seen as one of the most basic and powerful human motivations, and research shows there are few better ego boosts than knowing that someone loves and is attracted to you.

When people experience an increase in self esteem, they’ll continue or double down on the actions that led them there. That’s why even small compliments are considered so powerful.

12) GOOD GUILT ONLY

When we think of guilt, we might picture the bad kind that comes from resorting to threats or distancing yourself in order to solicit attention, and that’s rarely effective. These are seen as manipulative ploys and will only make people withdraw further.

The strongest guilt comes from hurting someone we love, and that’s actually healthy. It comes from vulnerability (I read that the best way to dissipate an argument is simply to say, “Ouch.”) This earnest kind of guilt is shown to be an extremely effective agent of apologizing and making changes, motivating relationship repair.

13) GIVE TO GET

It’s a truism that love takes compromise. The reason comes from evolutionary psychology: the reciprocity norm exists because by helping others, we can secure their help in return, making it easier to survive together in this hostile world.

Survival of the species isn’t the most romantic way to think about doing nice things for someone, but in a way, isn’t that what love itself boils down to?

If anyone is interested in some further reading, check out the work of:

• Roy Baumeister and Sara Wotman (on unrequited love)

• Peter Gray (on the psychology of love)

• Carol Nagy Jacklin and Eleanor Emmons (on the psychology of sex differences)

• Peter Salovey (on the triangular theory of love)

• Shelley Wu (on psychological theories about the dynamics of love)

The recipe for a successful announcement includes (1) objectives, (2) audience, (3) message, (4) execution, and (5) validation.

Ramp recently nailed all 5, so it’s worth taking a moment to study what they did. 

Let’s get into the specifics of each ingredient of the announcement...

1. OBJECTIVES

You need clear goals. Publicity for its own sake is wasted motion; it’s only worthwhile if it helps propel the business forward. A fundraise gives you an opportunity to create an attention spike that you can then use to (a) motivate employees, (b) recruit new talent, (c) build the confidence of customers, and (d) attract new customers. You might have other objectives, but these are the most likely. From what I can see, Ramp’s announcement moved the needle on all of those.

2. AUDIENCE

The general public doesn’t matter, so get focused. Your real audience consists of the people who will decide whether you achieve your OBJECTIVES. For Ramp, and for 99% of startups, that means the audience is employees, potential employees, customers, and potential customers. At other times, the audience might include investors or regulators, but not in this instance.

3. MESSAGE

The good stuff! This is what you need to tell the AUDIENCE so they’ll help you meet your OBJECTIVES. The biggest mistake for fundraising announcements is to focus on themselves and the funding: “We are excited to announce that we have more money now, thanks for the money, we like it.” That’s boring and self-centered, and it leads to something between indifference and outright hostility. It’s also a huge missed opportunity to talk about what your employees and customers actually care about. 

Eric’s thread focused on Ramp’s accomplishments and plans instead of the funding amount, and on customers and employees instead of himself. You can see it in his thread: he starts with the lede (the raise and marquee names involved), then immediately switches the focus to customers. Next he highlights Ramp’s performance, with concrete metrics, and gives third party validation with Ken Chenault’s quote. 

Then - importantly - he describes the terms of the deal and addresses head-on the fact that this is a down round. Now it’ll be tired and petty if other people were to point to this; he’s owned it and disarmed potential critics. He immediately adds context: Ramp is far outperforming most other tech companies! All this shows transparency, builds trust, and demonstrates confidence.

Then, Eric puts the focus back on customers with a shoutout that simultaneously flatters Ramp customers (they get it and they’re valued) and offers social proof to attract new customers (15,000 businesses already trust Ramp!). Before wrapping up, there’s a recap of the most notable accomplishments, a call to action (if you like this, then here’s how to become a customer or apply for a job), and love and gratitude for employees. 

Finally, Eric ends the thread how it began: with a focus on customers.

4. EXECUTION

Where most comms fail. After crafting your MESSAGE, you have to actually get it out into the wild so your AUDIENCE can see it and be prompted to do the things to meet the OBJECTIVES. 

First of all, the cofounders shared the news in their own voices, and the CEO stepped up as the chief ambassador for the brand. We’ve already covered Eric’s thread, which was clear and well executed. Karim’s thread was also authentic and humble, focusing on gratitude toward customers.

But there’s a lot more to it.

“Going direct” doesn’t just mean tweeting. Eric’s first post linked to Ramp’s own blog where they told the story in full, with their own narrative, before it got filtered through anyone else’s agenda. Eric also went on the record to shape the story in the media.

Now here’s the elephant in the room: there was a leak last week that broke the news of Ramp’s raise, with emphasis on the fact that it was the down round. (Note: leaks are very common during fundraising talks. Shoutout to investors who coordinate with founders before talking to press. Undermining a portco’s comms strategy hurts your investment!) I noticed Ramp handled this intelligently, in two ways: 

(a) With timing, Ramp didn’t jump to respond last week when the leak happened or rush something out on Monday. Instead, they had the discipline and savvy to take their time to prepare a thorough and thoughtful announcement. 

(b) With the narrative, Ramp reset the story by going proactive instead of reacting to the leak. They reset the narrative on their own terms instead of responding while on the back foot. They waited and then came out with a clean, confident narrative that didn’t get sidetracked by answering the claims in the leak. Notably, they still addressed the down round directly, turning the elephant in the room into part of the decor. “Here’s our elephant...everyone else has one too, and ours is actually nicer.”

5. VALIDATION

Saying nice things about your own company only goes so far, even with concrete metrics. You need other people to back you up. The most impactful validators are customers, employees, and investors. Ramp had all of these. With employees talking about loving their jobs (including new hires!), customers praising the business, and investors vouching for the founders, there is a surround-sound effect that tells the audience the hype is justified.

You can simply ask people to do this, but the best is when their statements reflect trust and respect built over years, not days, and it shows.

It’s also worth noting that Ramp did not ice out the media even after a leak. They worked with Bloomberg on a fresh story that focused on the bigger picture. It did include the down round but also quoted investors like Keith Rabois to put the numbers in context.

HOW TO USE THIS

I’d venture to say 100% of companies announcing a round need the same 5 ingredients: you must have clear goals, know your audience, craft a compelling narrative, execute with excellence, and show third party validation. 

That said, you don’t have to do it exactly the way Ramp did. They showed one way - not the only way - to pull off a great fundraising announcement. You may have different objectives and audiences, so do what makes sense for you.

Use the same ingredients, but make it your own flavor. 

It was the memes.

Not all heroes wear capes, and not all marketers wear employee badges. The non-stop surround-sound buzz that dominated our feeds for months came not from Warner Bros staff, but from online people making content for free.

That’s lucky for the rest of us, because Barbie’s official marketing campaign, while excellent, isn’t very instructive for companies that don’t have brand saturation and $150 million to work with. Virality, on the other hand, can be cultivated (and shots on goal cost nothing).

Of course, it’s impossible to guarantee something will become a meme — people are unpredictable and a lot of luck is involved — but you can engineer your content to have more luck.

This is the real lesson to take away from Barbie’s marketing: how to go viral by mobilizing the power of memes. There’s no single formula for bottling lightning, but here is what Barbie did.

1. Provide a good canvas

The key to getting people to latch onto a meme is to give them a good template, and Barbie provided a host of exquisite meme templates.

Memes can be in any format: text (e.g., “Some of you never xxxxx and it shows”), images (see below), or videos (e.g., Planet of the Bass), but images travel best. They get more of an algorithmic boost than text and are easier to edit than a video.

Here is a list of what makes an image meme-worthy, with examples using the content from Barbie.

1. It embraces absurdity

   

2. It’s visually arresting

3. It evokes emotion

4. It stokes debate

   

5. It invites people to make it personal, especially with any caption that starts with, “Me…” (more on this in the next point)

A lot of Barbie memes checked multiple categories, like being simultaneously absurd, visually striking, and personal.

In contrast, images like the ones below don’t accomplish any of those things and are accompanied by the kind of overt ask that would make any potential meme-maker cringe.

2. Put the “me” in “meme”

Barbie’s marketing campaign has the same key ingredient as Soylent Green: people.

Hype doesn’t happen without millions of people participating, and people are usually loath to share promotional content. But you know what they love to share? Self-promotional content.

That’s not disparaging; it’s a law of human nature. If you rank the things people like to talk about, number one is themselves (and number last is products and services).

So the best way to get people to share your content is to make your content a vehicle for people to talk about themselves. The most powerful memes involve some form of self-expression: what you are, what you feel, or what you believe.

To boost the virality of your content, make sure it gives people an opportunity to express:

• Their sense of humor

• Their opinions

• Their cultural references

• Their style or appearance

• Their experiences

Barbie content provided a catalyst for people to share all those things, such as their:

1. Opinions
   Against the backdrop of a national discourse obsessed with topics like womanhood, masculinity, and patriarchy or the lack thereof, Barbie became a vehicle for discussion and debate, with each side claiming it as evidence for their position.

   

2. Style and appearance
   People like to share pictures of themselves, especially in fun settings or nice outfits. Barbie explicitly encouraged people to insert themselves into content related to the film, with their selfie movie poster generator and life-sized toy boxes in theaters.

   

   

3. Experiences
   Barbie’s strong nostalgia factor prompted people to discuss and connect over their experiences playing with the dolls as children. Here’s a sweet example.

   

   Things got meta and the Barbie hype itself created shared experiences, resulting in gems like this.

   

3. Form a tribe

The biggest lie ever told was, “I don’t want to be labeled.” People freaking love to be labeled. That’s why people are perpetually enthralled with astrology, Buzzfeed personality quizzes (What type of croissant are you? Which romcon are you??) and whatever kind of labeling exercise this is:

@kyliejenneri’m still a supermodel on the inside

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Joining a tribe, or a fandom, gives people a feeling of belonging with kindred spirits (e.g., fellow nostalgic millennials), while deepening their engagement with whatever that community is centered around (e.g., Barbie).

As I’ve written before about fandoms: Like religions, fandoms have symbols, rituals, shibboleths, and their own vernacular. They even enter into rivalries with other fandoms, which further deepens their sense of identity, connection to each other, and commitment to their favored band [or movie!].

All this makes people more likely to publicly signal their affiliation.

Barbie gave its fans no shortage of shibboleths, from the “Hi Barbie” greeting to the color pink. It made people feel like part of a community.

The real Barbie marketing campaign was, literally, the friends we made along the way.

And the coevality with Oppenheimer only heightened Barbie fans’ sense of group identity — the comically stark contrast between the two films basically made for a giant Buzzfeed personality quiz, letting people sort themselves and defend their camp.

The Barbenheimer dichotomy even became a symbol of choosing a side:

4. Find a great foil, aka the Barbenheimer effect

This is hard to do, but if you can find a great foil, it makes your own brand stand out more and rallies loyalists around the flag (see: RyanAir mocking the high prices and baggage fees of other airlines, Samsung positioning itself against iPhones, or Lyft making a marketing push during the #DeleteUber campaign).

The Barbenheimer phenomenon was a virality amplifier and an absolute gift for both Barbie and Oppenheimer. In addition to stoking rivalry and tribal loyalties, Barbenheimer provided the perfect meme canvas, combining every kind of meme fodder at the same time.

Going back through the list I described earlier:

1. It was totally absurd

   

2. It had arresting visuals

   

3. It evoked strong emotions

   

4. It stoked debate

   

5. It invited people to make a statement about themselves

   

Conclusion

Beyond the big-ticket marketing campaign, Barbie also gave us a master class in hyping a product for free: by getting other people to do it. The dynamics I described above can be seen in the McDonalds’ Grimace Shake trend and other viral brand moments — watch closely next time one pops.

There are no guarantees of virality even if you have a big budget and name recognition, but by creating meme-able content, centering your audience instead of yourself, inviting connection, and building in the right incentives, you can increase the odds of a lightning strike.

Barbie has been a doctor, an astronaut, and a president — and now she has become a poaster. She’s relatable at last.

The same goes for CEOs.

We saw this play out over the past week, with a devastating profile of CNN CEO Chris Licht in The Atlantic that immediately sparked a frenzy of chaos and commentary, culminating only days later in Licht’s ouster.1 It all happened, like Hemingway’s description of going bankrupt, “gradually, then suddenly.”

As with most crises, we should remember that everyone involved did their best, no one has the full picture, and all of us make mistakes. I have no dunks to give. What I’ll offer is a clinical analysis of the PR of it all, with 3 reminders, 5 pain multipliers, and 7 safety protocols for doing press.

Here’s what the CNN disaster can teach us about managing a profile piece and how it might go wrong.

3 Reminders

While it’s true that bad comms can deliver the KO in an already losing fight, don’t think of PR as the reason Licht went down. It’s important to understand that:

1. The Atlantic article wasn’t the instigator, it was an indicator. It didn’t create Licht’s problems, it revealed them. The article gave people permission to say out loud the things they had been thinking all along. As a CNN reporter told Shawn McCreesh, “The events of the past several days have seemed to some like that moment that comes halfway through a Pakula flick when you realize everybody really is out to get the guy.”
   

2. Narratives can kill. The real sting of the article came not from breaking a story or exposing any meaningful new information at all — it came from taking existing information and weaving it into a coherent narrative. While there were many disparate data points about disappointment over Licht’s tenure, The Atlantic article assembled them into a clear narrative of failure. And, as cognitive psychologists have shown, people make decisions based on narratives, not data.
   

3. Even the worst press doesn’t take down a CEO on its own. A fire requires fuel, heat, and oxygen — The Atlantic brought heat to the situation, but it only ignited when combined with the dry tinder of already strained relationships and the oxygen of intense media interest. That’s a recipe for ashes.

5 Pain Multipliers

Bad press doesn’t always do damage. Hit pieces can even be helpful for rallying supporters (Coinbase is an example of using an external attack to galvanize their base). 

In Licht’s case though, the bad press was not only bad but catastrophic, due to these 5 pain multipliers:

1. The calls came from inside the house: Just as internal bleeding is worse than external bleeding, criticism is more damaging when it’s coming from within. Licht couldn’t stem the criticism and leaks coming from inside CNN, inside Warner, and inside the media industry. On top of that, Licht’s efforts to assuage his employees came far too late. As one employee told Brian Stelter: “It’s very frustrating that we learn more about Licht’s motivations from interviews than we do from internal communication.”
   

2. Details trump descriptions: In the Atlantic article, the positives about Licht took the form of forgettable generic descriptions (bromides about the mission of journalism), while the negatives came with specific and vivid details (Licht picking up a metal pole in the gym while saying, “Zucker couldn’t do this shit!”? I mean, what??) The details are what people remember.
   

3. Media drama attracts media attention: That’s why, as Axios’s Sara Fischer pointed out, Succession got a massive amount of coverage relative to its viewership numbers — reporters were obsessed with the show.

   

   The Licht drama got insanely outsized coverage for the same reason: there’s nothing the media loves more than media about the media.

   

4. Amplification by association: The people involved in the CNN drama all had big name recognition or big platforms or both, which dramatically amplified the reach and resonance of every story about it. When someone criticizes you or me, it’s whatever. When someone criticizes Chris Licht, it’s Jake Tapper.
   

5. Pun fact: People retain information better when there’s a pun. They’re cognitively catchy. An academic paper even concluded, “Puns constrain and limit the information that can fit in the final line of a joke and thus make recall easier.” Unfortunately for Licht, his name invited a good pun, and the press. Ran. With. It. “Licht’s Out,” “Out Like a Licht,” “Licht is licked,” and so on — it was a field day unlike any since the era of Anthony Weiner headlines. A line like, “Licht faces criticism for his editorial decisions” leaves room for rebuttal. But “Licht’s Out” is a mic drop.

7 Safety Protocols of Doing Press

Maybe you’re reading all this and thinking, “Sign me up for that!” OK... well, it is possible for profile pieces to be positive, even defining — recall the iconic “Tomorrow’s Advance Man” profile of Marc Andreessen in The New Yorker. But proceed with extreme caution.

The allure of media coverage, especially that of the elusive Big Profile Piece, can impair your judgment. If you do pursue coverage, make sure to follow these basic safety protocols.

1. Evaluate the go/no-go
   Before agreeing to any interview, consider each of the below.

   • Objectives: What do you hope to achieve? What’s the optimal outcome and the unacceptable outcome, and the likelihood of each? Is press the right channel for this, or should you choose a different tactic?

   • News cycle: Where’s the news cycle for you or your company? Are you on the upswing or are you primed for a takedown? Where do you stand relative to current events and the media mood?

   • Readiness: Are you and the company ready for this level of scrutiny? Are you disciplined and prepared enough for this reporter?

   • Reporter selection: Is this the right reporter based on their beat, interests, opinions, and style? Do they appear to have strong views on an issue that would put them at odds with you? Do you have a trusted relationship with them?

   • Backup plan: How bad would it be, and what would you do, if this went poorly? (Just in case, here’s a crisis comms playbook and a guide to apologizing.)

   • Recent exposure: Have you been overexposed? When someone has already done a ton of press, as Licht had, each subsequent article has to dig deeper to find something new to report, and that leads to the kinds of spelunking expeditions that can end badly.
     
     If you still want to proceed, then make sure that you…
     

2. Know your desired narrative

   • What does the business need you to say as its public advocate?

   • What are your key messages, and who are you trying to reach?
     

3. Choose the right timing

   • Timing is crucial. The wrong timing can put you in a bad news cycle, make your messaging seem irrelevant or out of touch, and introduce a host of risks. If you’re on a downward trajectory, a poorly timed article can even put you in free fall.

   • For Licht, the article was written early in his tenure, before he had a firm foundation as CEO. That made it very risky: if the profile went off the road, as it did, there would be no list of accomplishments or established record to fall back on.
     

4. Give the right amount of access

   • Decide the extent of access you’ll grant to the reporter. How much time do they get with you? Can they join internal meetings? Will you connect them with others to interview about you? Some reporters will ask to come to your office or home; in what physical surroundings will you be spending time with them?

   • In Licht’s case, there was no reason his gym routine should’ve made it into a story about his leadership of CNN. If a reporter wants to watch you work out at 6 a.m., and you’re not a professional athlete or CEO of a fitness company, that’s a hard pass. To paraphrase the subject himself, “Zucker wouldn’t do this shit.”
     

5. Set a reasonable time frame

   • Plan for a long profile piece to take months, not weeks. Giving it 2-6 months is reasonable.

   • But reporting that goes on too long starts to become an outstanding liability on your reputational balance sheet. Max Tani at Semafor told me that CNN PR was originally hoping for the Atlantic profile to be published around the relaunch of the morning show last November. If it had, the fallout wouldn’t have been so bad. But Licht and his team kept the window open for another 7 months! Even in ideal circumstances, that’s just leaving too much time for things to go off the rails.

     

6. Expect wedding crashers

   • An article about you is likely to include quotes from other people, like industry experts, business partners, or colleagues. So be aware that your perspective won’t be the only one represented.

   • If you’re looking to tell your side of the story because you can’t trust those around you, then understand that those people will work their way into the story anyway — and they may well hijack it, overshadowing or altering the narrative you wanted. Anticipate what they might say and plan accordingly.
     

7. Establish clear boundaries

   • Over-communicate with the reporter. Be collaborative but firm with red lines, and set expectations upfront for what the piece will look like. Document all your agreements in writing.

   • The ground rules should include what’s on the record, on background, or off the record (here’s how). Licht’s “gym scene” should never have happened at all, but it certainly should never have been on the record.

   • A comms person should be staffing each interview and intervening when needed (which Licht did have), then following up to clarify points, offer additional information, or help with fact checking. They should also be tracking the general direction and status of the reporting (which Licht did not seem to have).

   • If it’s not working out, be prepared to walk away. Yes that would suck and you would lose credibility, but remind yourself it’s better to take a small l now than take a big L when the thing runs in print. With the Atlantic profile, apparently Warner CEO David Zaslav declined at the last minute to go on the record, which must have irritated the reporter, but was better than making a public statement he’d later regret.

In conclusion

Don’t treat the Licht disaster like you’re a spectator, study it like you’re watching tape because this is an incredible case study packed with comms lessons. Maintain boundaries. Keep your insiders close. Watch the clock. Read the room. Never take a reporter to the gym.

Above all, remember that not all press is good press. The more you’re willing to give up for coverage, the more likely you are to make a mistake.

What initially looks like a spotlight might be a flame — and if you can’t resist its draw, then consider that you might be a moth.

Unpopular opinion: Twitter Blue is a decent product.

I mean that literally — it’s a very unpopular opinion. Twitter users have reached a general consensus that there’s something embarrassing about paying for Blue. Around 97% of previously verified users, including many of the platform’s largest, have refused to sign up, while accounts from The New York Times to have publicly expressed their aversion (with the former getting their checkmark revoked as a penalty).

But Blue is a decent product, with features like the ability to edit tweets, which people have requested for years. So why the mass shunning?

There are many reasons, but a big one is messaging. While the legacy blue checkmark was positioned as a luxury good, the new Twitter Blue became marketed like an inferior good. Twitter’s messaging antagonized and humiliated influential users, made the product feel like it was made for arriviste social climbers instead of respected power users, and framed it as a cheap imitation of an old status symbol rather than a fresh offering with useful benefits.

In this post, we’ll look at why Twitter Blue wasn’t positioned for success and what it can do now to win over users. In the process, we’ll see three important comms lessons:

1. How to position something as a luxury item

2. How a luxury item loses its cachet

3. How to sell a mass-market product

The making of a status symbol

In economics, luxury goods are things that people are more likely to buy when they have more money (because they can). In contrast, inferior goods are things that people are less likely to buy when they have more money (because they don’t need to). These terms refer to buyer behavior, not quality, so for clarity we’ll refer to inferior goods as “mass-market” or “practical” products.

The legacy checkmark was a luxury good, a status symbol. That seems counterintuitive because it was free. But on Twitter, the primary currency is social — status comes not from money, but from followers and influence. The rich folks on Twitter are those with big followings, and the free checkmark procured with social currency was worth more than the new checkmark bought with dollars.

That brings us to…

Comms lesson #1: How to position something as a luxury item

Twitter successfully positioned its legacy blue check as a luxury item by:

1. Targeting the right audience

   • The legacy verification program focused on public figures, celebrities, politicians, journalists, and influencers who tend to have the biggest followings.

2. Offering a clear value proposition

   • Twitter always highlighted that the blue check stood for credibility and authority, which marked its owner as “notable” and famous enough to have impersonators.

3. Establishing a distinct visual brand

   • The blue checkmark was widely recognized.

4. Creating exclusivity

   • The limited availability created a sense of scarcity. Luxury items have a high bar for access (typically you’d need a lot of money; in this case you’d need a lot of social standing). Brands like Tommy Hilfiger or Under Armour became seen as less prestigious after they showed up in discount stores.

5. Serving “insiders”

   • IYKYK. It’s why Loro Piana clothes don’t have a visible logo and why some credit cards can’t be applied for because they’re invitation-only. The opaque and inconsistent way Twitter verified users may have been unfair, but it added to the perceived prestige of the blue check.

6. Winning over influencers

   • Luxury brands get celebrities and other brand ambassadors to promote brands to their followers — think Harry Styles for Gucci. With the legacy blue check program, Twitter gave white-glove service to high-profile users and got them talking about their verification process.

7. Making people feel special

   • Luxury brands create emotional appeal by evoking a sense of accomplishment, and getting the blue check made people feel “notable.”

8. Protecting authenticity at all costs

   • The main purpose of Twitter’s blue check program was to verify real identities, and authenticity is central to prestige. There’s a reason luxury brands are fanatical about cracking down on counterfeits. High-end products get cheapened by an association with low-quality fakes; Prada customers don’t want to carry a bag that looks like it could be a Plada. 

But cachet is hard to gain and easy to lose. Here’s what happened next.

The problem: Twitter Blue was marketed like an inferior wannabe

Blue was, commendably, designed to be democratic and widely accessible. It could have easily become a normal mass-market product, marketed to the general population on the basis of its own benefits and value.

Instead, Blue ended up being perceived as an inferior good, like a knockoff luxury item, because of three key decisions on its branding:

1. Using the same blue checkmark as the legacy verification program

   • The Passat is a great car. But imagine if the Volkswagen Group made a Passat that looked just like a Porsche. The Passat would attract customers who couldn’t otherwise drive a luxury car, while rich people would abandon the Porsche so their peers wouldn’t think they were driving a Passat.

     

2. Not killing the legacy checkmark before rolling out Blue

   • By allowing the legacy verified checkmarks to coexist with the Blue checkmarks, Twitter created negative incentives. Very few legacy “notable” people signed up for Twitter Blue, because they already had the checkmark that was marketed as the marquee feature of Blue. Instead, they loudly complained about Blue, both to vent about being asked to pay for something they previously had for free and to certify their legacy “notable” status.
     
     It got so bad that Twitter changed their popup to give cover for Blue subscribers, but it’s only going to prompt legacy verified people to post more tweets avowing they did not and would never sign up for Blue. What Twitter needs to do is kill the blue check entirely (see Comms lesson #3).

   

3. Focusing disproportionate attention on the checkmark as a feature

   • The marketing of the blue checkmark as a Blue benefit made it look like anyone who signed up for Blue was pursuing a backdoor to a status symbol. Twitter should have just marketed the new product as a nice practical Casio, but their messaging made it feel like a fake Rolex. And while no one would give you a hard time for wearing a regular Casio, prepare for a red-hot roast if you’re called out trying to stunt with a fake Rolex. 

     

Comms lesson #2: How to make a luxury item lose its cachet

On top of that misaligned framing, Twitter Blue suffered from comms decisions that eroded its cachet:

1. Stoking resentment among big accounts

   • Not only were there no special offers or outreach to encourage big accounts with legacy blue checks to convert, but those users were mockingly told to pay up or lose the blue check. It invited defiance and dumped chips on shoulders. It gave these users an incentive to prove that they actually couldn’t care less about the blue check. (I know a core tenet of Blue is that “no one gets special treatment,” but that doesn’t work in influencer marketing, and big accounts get special treatment all the time anyway.)

2. Off-key messaging

   • As I noted above, the marketing for Blue focused on the blue check, which again made Blue feel like a knockoff of a luxury item for status-seekers. In addition, the messaging centered on what Blue could do for the company (generate revenue) instead of what it could do for customers (improve their tweets and grow their following).

     

3. Over-saturation

   • The value of the blue check was partly driven by scarcity. By verifying accounts indiscriminately en masse, Twitter removed its sense of exclusivity and prestige.

4. Association with distasteful figures

   • The most damage dealt to the blue check comes not from media hit pieces, but from appearing next to some anonymous user with 8 followers who just posted an anti-Semitic screed or a link to win crypto. 

     

5. Proliferation of fakes

   • Twitter Blue users no longer have to prove their real identity to get the blue check. The checkmark is now associated with fakes, especially after viral impersonation incidents like the Eli Lilly fiasco.

     

These things ultimately led to the flood of tweets from legacy blue checks distancing themselves from Twitter Blue.

The solution: A new strategy

Mass-market products can be just as successful as luxury goods, but they have to be marketed differently. Here are some ways that Twitter Blue — or any other mass-market product — can appeal to customers and thrive as a good solid Casio.

Comms lesson #3: How to sell a mass-market product

1. Know your target audience

   • Home in on potential customers and brand ambassadors: Market specifically to Twitter users who are highly engaged and willing to pay for a premium experience, e.g., people or organizations who tweet a lot and want an extra boost to grow their followings. The company could personally reach out to top accounts to brief them on new features, extend special offers, and solicit their feedback.

   • Reset relations with legacy blue checks: Crucially, since Twitter has already alienated many legacy blue check holders by painting them as the pompous old guard, this would require a cessation of hostilities (ending the open mockery and trolling of top users) and a reset or peace offering, like a free trial of the new product. Some are irreversibly hostile to the company or its owner, but many could be persuaded to give Blue another chance. 

   • Tailor the messaging: Create comms and advertising campaigns that speak to existing verified users and big accounts that could be potential new subscribers. Understand their preferences, pet peeves, and cultural erogenous zones. 

2. Get the messaging right

   • Publicize the value proposition: Position the product as being for people who are serious about quality content, not chasing a status symbol. Move the messaging for Blue away from any talk of checkmarks, and emphasize practical benefits like more reach, bookmark folders, the ability to edit or undo tweets, and priority customer support.

   • Document outcomes for users: Share examples of users seeing higher growth and a better experience after subscribing to Blue, including people who already had the legacy checkmark but leveled up after getting Blue’s premium features.

   • Focus on quality and reliability: Address the initial glitches and reassure users that the product is now reliably meeting or surpassing expectations.

3. Create a strong brand identity

   • Differentiate the offering: In all communications, draw a clear distinction between the legacy verification program (authenticity) and the Twitter Blue subscription (premium features). Avoid confusion and baggage associated with the blue check.

   • Have a clear visual identity: Rebrand. Kill the checkmark. Create a new visual badge for Twitter Blue, separate and distinct from any badge denoting a verified identity. If people are building Chrome extensions to expose and embarrass users who paid for your product, you need a rebrand for your product.

     

   • Foster brand loyalty: Cultivate a persona and tone that will appeal to target customers. Consistently deliver on promises, to build customer trust and loyalty. 

4. Get users to promote the product

   • Curate early adopters: Carefully select and target the initial batches of influential users — they should be the people and organizations that subsequent users aspire to emulate (for all its later failings, Clubhouse did this brilliantly in the beginning).

   • Collaborate with influencers: Give free subscriptions to legacy verified users or large accounts. Work with influencers to endorse the product to their networks — in an understated and natural way, so they don’t get ridiculed for it, especially now while the brand is shaky.

   • Encourage testimonials: Positive word-of-mouth helps establish trust and credibility. Encourage and incentivize satisfied users to share their experiences through reviews and testimonials (with a paid product, it’s easy to offer the most engaged users a free month for reviewing the product and “supporting the Blue community” or whatever).

5. Hold the line

   • Be aggressive about social listening and fact checking: Actively offer clarification and correct false rumors about the product. Use an official account (e.g., @TwitterBlue) where possible, so the exchanges don’t become personal.

   • Monitor user feedback: Keep a close eye on user feedback and quickly address any concerns or confusion before FUD can spiral out of control.

   • Maintain standards: Don’t say “This account is verified” if it isn’t verified. Twitter should regularly review accounts with special badges to make sure they’re not sketchy or scammy.

     

6. Fight the negative with the positive

   • Create content: You can’t erase negativity, but you can inject positivity. To showcase the product’s benefits, develop engaging content like videos, threads, case studies from users, how-to guides, Twitter Spaces, and longer posts.

   • Hijack competitors: Create content designed to infiltrate competitor social networks, and use it to advertise the benefits of your product to win over users from competing platforms.

   • Media outreach: This is not how Twitter rolls, but other companies may benefit from selectively building relationships with journalists and sharing updates and success stories.

Twitter’s transition from the prestigious legacy blue check to the more practical Blue subscription is a case study for any company looking to build and maintain desire for a product — and the shunning of Blue shows just how dicey this can be. But, as Twitter has also shown, it’s never too late for a second act.

My crisis comms approach is inspired by advice from Urijah Faber, a Hall of Fame UFC fighter and a very wise person. I once asked how his team prepares for fights, and he repeated a mantra, “Don’t get ready, stay ready.” Because a big fight can come when you don’t expect it — and when it does, there won’t be enough time to prepare.

A crisis is similar. When crisis is upon you, it’s too late to craft a good plan. By then, time is short, noise is high, trust is low, and anger is building — all while you’re squinting through the fog of war.

Don’t wait until the shit is flying fanward to make a crisis comms plan.

Below is a crisis comms playbook to keep on hand just in case. Save this email or bookmark this link — and here’s hoping you’ll never need it.

The “Flack” Crisis Comms Playbook

1. Assembling the team

People in the war room

Keep an updated list of cell numbers and locations for the following people — and save it locally on your devices in case you can’t access your cloud during the crisis. 

This is who you need to assemble when a crisis unfolds:

• CEO

• President/chief operating officer

• Chief financial officer

• Chief technology officer

• Chief people officer

• Chief communications officer

• General counsel

• Head of product

• Head of investor relations

• Head of compliance

• Other relevant execs depending on the organization

Roles & responsibilities

Establish clear roles and responsibilities for key execs ahead of time. Examples:

War room leader and primary voice of the company

• [Name], usually COO/President/CEO

  • Direct and approve all substantive decisions

  • Approve and have final say on communications to employees, board, investors, writers

  • Acts as primary spokesperson for the company

  • Approve requests for outside resources (legal, forensics, etc.)

Crisis comms

• [Name] leading comms overall

  • Assemble crisis team

  • Designate internal and external spokespeople

  • Recommend proactive and reactive messaging

  • Cascade information to key audiences

  • Manage media and social media

• Questions about comms team roles to answer in advance if possible:

  • Who will be the air traffic controller for incoming media inquiries? 

  • Who will need to chase down approvals for messaging?

  • Who will be the spokesperson for various issues?

  • Who will prep the spokesperson?

Risk management

• [Name], usually in legal 

  • Legal review and approval of all messaging and procedures, recommends modifications as needed

  • Supervise outside counsel as needed

  • Liaison to law enforcement or regulators as needed

  • Ensure compliance with any regulatory reporting requirements

Employee safety

• [Name], usually HR

  • Check in with employees and ensures that internal operations are minimally disrupted; provide information about employees’ wellbeing and state of mind to the crisis team

  • Provide timely information to employees and their families about the situation and relevant resources

Other roles might include:

• Customer relations

• Investor relations

• Board relations 

• IT & forensics

• Product

• Real estate & facilities

• Etc. 

2. Assessing the situation

Is it a crisis?

Align ahead of time on what you consider a true crisis, e.g., something that:

• Disrupts the ability to continue normal business operations

• Seriously jeopardizes trust with customers

• Materially affects finances and valuation

It’s probably time to activate the crisis team if any of these conditions appear to be met:

• People

  • Have there been/could there be serious injuries or fatalities?

  • Is there a serious issue related to illegal behavior?

  • Has an important company promise been broken or trust been destroyed on a wide scale?

• Reputation

  • Could it harm the company’s reputation over the long term?

  • Is it visible to the public/will it become visible to the public? 

  • Is the issue of special concern to employees, customers, or investors?

  • Are government agencies involved?

  • Is it related to a high profile current event, like an election?

• Finance & operations

  • Is there a significant negative financial impact?

  • Is there major financial misconduct?

  • Does it disrupt your ability to do business?

3. Principles for engaging

Priorities 

In a crisis, you have to be ruthless about choosing what to prioritize. When setting priorities, consider the following:

• People — keep the team safe and informed. Protect both employees and customers. Their welfare is at the center of all operational and communications decisions.

  • Know your most important audiences, e.g., employees, customers, board, investors, regulators.

• Accuracy — you must be the single source for accurate and timely information. Never exaggerate or speculate; calmly share the facts.

• Transparency — share what you can, but only information you’re absolutely sure of.

• Speed — move quickly and provide regular updates to the people who matter most, using the mediums they use. Be agile in knocking down falsehoods before they become accepted as facts.

• Focus — any crisis is chaotic and mired in the fog of war. Focus on the most important facts, delivered to the most important people.

• Legal compliance — everything you do should involve legal counsel. Find the balance between being being careful and being transparent (this is hard). Keep communications privileged when it makes sense.

Rules of thumb

Follow these practices at all times when approaching crisis communications:

• Speak decisively, using clear and simple messaging. No jargony obfuscation or fumbling around.

• Speak using the most relevant mediums, e.g., email, social, print, broadcast, website.

• Be aggressive about correcting the record. Rumor ossifies into fact quickly in the age of social media.

• Constantly monitor what people are saying and asking.

• Guard your relationships (and you should have built up important relationships before you need them in a crisis).

4. Immediate actions

Break-the-glass checklist

• Assemble the war room. Notify the crisis team (call on the phone).

• Agree which communication channels to use, how often to check in, and subject line protocol to avoid chaotic email chains. Agree on what needs to be documented. Include legal counsel on all relevant communications.

• Confirm all available information and determine the severity and scope of the situation (see “Fact-gathering questions” below).

• Get real-time monitoring of media and social media.

• Establish a war room, likely virtual, where the crisis team can hold check-ins and discuss decision-making and media inquiries. Schedule regular meetings (e.g., 3 times a day or every morning).

• Communicate with employees as soon as possible, and make sure they find out facts from us directly. Remind the team about the protocol for incoming press inquiries (don’t respond to inquiries, forward all inquiries to X) — because reporters will start hitting up random employees on LinkedIn, etc.

• Take an inventory of key audiences/stakeholders; confirm who’s reaching out to which important people and develop messaging materials for them. Divide and conquer to get to everyone quickly.

• Develop public messaging materials (e.g., holding statements, Q&A and talking points, website update, social media responses, etc.) and disseminate as needed; there should already be generic holding statements for the most likely scenarios that you can tailor (see the “Scenario planning” section below).

• Identify and brief third-party allies, e.g., influential organizations or individuals that might be asked about the situation or are likely to opine on it publicly.

• To the extent possible, plan for the next day, week, and month in terms of post-crisis recovery and understand how future plans are being affected.

Fact-gathering questions

Communicate answers to these in person or over phone whenever possible.

1. What happened? 

• What is the nature of the situation? 

• When and where did it occur? 

• What was the cause?

• How certain is the information? What is the source of the information? 

• What is still unclear or in doubt? What is being done to find out? 

• When will new information be available? 

2. What is the scope of the situation? 

• Is there a threat to people? Threat to finances, sensitive data, or physical assets?

• How many people are affected? Who? Are there others indirectly affected?

• Who knows about this situation internally? Externally?

• Is the issue local, regional, national, or global in scope?

• Are any political, NGO, or activist groups attaching themselves to this situation? 

3. Who needs to be involved to address the issue? 

• Do any subject matter experts or point people outside the crisis team need to be involved?

• Do you need to bring in external help, like PR or legal support?

• Are law enforcement, emergency responders, regulatory bodies or local government officials involved?

• Are there regulatory obligations to disclose information or cooperate with government entities?

4. How is the company being perceived? 

• Will this situation be viewed as having been preventable? Is this a recurring situation? 

• Have you been alerted to this previously? 

• Are the media involved? Social media? What are people saying?

• Are your ongoing communications initiatives appropriate in this environment, or do you need to cancel or retract messages to avoid being tone-deaf? For example, you might pause an ad campaign or cancel a planned event

• Are there activities that should be put on hold or suspended indefinitely? 

5. Can you shape the outcome?

• What’s the full range of options you can take,  and what are the pros/cons of each?

• What eventual recovery/compensation plans need to be set in motion now?

• Do you need any outreach to others who might decide your fate, e.g, lobbying regulators for intervention?

5. Messaging guidelines

General framework

In any crisis, people need to hear from you as quickly as possible about:

• What happened and why/how

• What the company is doing about it now

• Where people can go to get more information

• If there's something they need to do

• What the path forward is

For any specific messaging, think through these things.

• Goal: what do you need the audience to understand, feel, or do?

• Context: what do they need to know about the background or what’s at stake?

• Facts: what hard facts can you point to?

• Actions: what specific actions are you taking now, and what can people expect next?

Guidelines for spokespeople in a crisis

1. Never lie, fudge, or speculate on hypotheticals.

2. Exhibit calmness and confidence, with voice, tone, and body language.

3. Never become annoyed or defensive, even if a reporter is combative.

4. Stick to clear, declarative language. Avoid jargon and passive tense.

5. Know the facts cold. Be comfortable with the summary of what’s happening and what you’re doing about it. No fumbling or stuttering.

6. Be consistent; don’t contradict yourself.

7. Never say, “no comment.” If you don’t know, admit it and say what you’re doing to find out.

8. Assume everything is on the record at all times unless explicitly agreed otherwise.

9. Don’t use humor or sarcasm.

10. Don’t bank on uncertain early information that could evolve as you learn more; avoid needing to backtrack or revise later.

Handling negative or unfair questions

In a crisis, everyone is mad at you. When everyone is mad at you, the questions will be aggressive, even rude. That doesn’t mean you should hide from questions, but here’s how you can handle them effectively:

1. Be aware of how your emotions are being perceived (angry? defensive? evasive? etc.).

2. If a reporter says something inaccurate, address the premise or framing of their question. 

3. Give crisp answers in full sentences that are harder to take out of context.

4. If the question doesn’t make sense or isn’t something you can answer, zoom out and identify the key points that really matter. 

5. Again: sarcasm and humor don’t translate well in a crisis.

6. If someone ambushes you in person with a camera, don’t throw your hand in front of it; just calmly let them know you’re not able to talk right now or to contact press@company.com if they’re trying to get an interview.

6. Tactical execution

Scenario planning

Before a crisis happens, be prepared with basic plans for the most likely scenarios.

• Identify your top risks and draft a basic plan for each scenario so you’re not caught flat-footed if one of them materializes.

  • Examples include data breach, financial collapse, natural disaster, catastrophic product failure.

  • Include holding statements for employees, customers, investors, and the public — with blanks to be filled in when needed.

  • Include plans for social media and influencer relations.

• Get ready to move quickly; tempo is key!

When I had the privilege of being Substack’s first head of comms, my primary job was helping writers promote their work and grow their audience.

Here is a collection of the advice I would give writers.1 This is focused on Substack and its unique growth features, but most of it will apply to any blogger or newsletter writer looking to build their following.

1. The groundwork: what’s on offer?

Your [sigh] “personal brand”

People hate this term, I get it. But it just means your professional reputation, i.e., what you’re known for. Your “brand” will determine how readers will perceive the value they’ll get from subscribing to you, so you need to define what you want that to be and let that guide your work.

If you already have a well established brand, then the best promotion might simply be, “Hey, if you like Person, then you’ll like Person’s blog.” If you’re relatively unknown or even pseudonymous, you’ll have to be more mindful about shaping a brand, including through your writing.

Your value proposition

Launching a newsletter is like launching a new potato chip flavor. There are already so many varieties on offer that yours has to be distinct (“slightly more salty” won’t work), and it has to be something people want (“vanilla salmon” won’t work either). 

Your value proposition is the reason someone should subscribe, and it comprises these things:

1. What you’re offering to readers — your content strategy and the topics you’ll focus on.

2. Why you’re unique in offering this — whether a unique background (your experience or identity), unique content (your perspectives or chosen topics), or a unique voice (your style or personality).

3. Who would benefit from receiving this — understanding your target audience

A common question is whether to be a generalist and try to appeal to a broad audience, or to choose a niche and focus on a smaller, more targeted audience. As with the question of which bear is best, there are two schools of thought. I’m a big advocate for finding a niche. That's also the recommendation from top Substackers like, who often says, “The riches are in the niches!”. 

Don’t try to be another for example; you’ll never out-Lenny Lenny. Be #1 at your own thing.

Even if your topic is only interesting to 0.1% of the bazillion people on the internet, that’s still a TAM of a gajillion people. Claim your tiny corner of the internet and conquer outward from there.

Get your mind right

Your newsletter is a startup and you, as the founder, are your own chief evangelist. You have to believe in this project more than anyone else, and — I’m sorry — you’re going to have to self-promote. 

You can’t be sheepish and half-ass this. Share your work proudly, with no apologetic throat-clearing when asking for subscriptions. Ignore the haters who hiss from the stands. They don’t matter: they’re not your audience. Your audience will find joy and value in your work, and by connecting them to that work, you’re doing them a service. You have to believe this and remember it.

To promote yourself, you have to get over yourself.

2. Blog basics: settings, strategy, posting

Settings 

Your writer Dashboard has many Settings to customize. These are the things that matter most:

• Publication name: Pick something you like, and don’t sweat this too much. You can change it later if you need to. One of the biggest Substacks, belonging to , was literally just called "TK” for months.

• Short description: This is a one-liner or short paragraph describing your publication. It appears on your landing page and affects how you turn up on Google, so you want a compelling, succinct description. Refer to your value proposition from the section above. NOTE: please don’t make elaborate inside jokes with yourself or drop esoteric references here. The point is for readers to understand what they’re getting.

• Categories: These are like tags for your publication that help readers discover you. Sometimes writers try to game the categories by choosing obscure ones where they might rank higher, but that means your target audience won’t find you as easily. Go with what’s most accurate.

• About page: Introduce yourself, explain your value proposition, and clearly state what subscribers get in return for inviting you into their already-crowded inboxes. Include your full name and past work to make the page easier to find on Google. Also include the type of content to expect, any relevant examples of your past work, and the frequency you plan to publish. Here’s mine. Again, don’t stress about it too much. You can change any of this later. 

• Welcome email: Personalize your welcome email to new subscribers. You basically want to (1) thank people for subscribing, (2) point them to any notable past posts to get started, (3) ask them to move your email to the primary inbox to signal to their email provider that the newsletter is not spam. If you’re a subscriber, you can check out the welcome email you got from me, with the subject line, “Welcome to Flack.”

• Email header and footer: These appear at the top and bottom of all of your emailed posts, and they’re blank by default. You should have at least one of them contain a Subscribe button and a reason to subscribe. Headers are a good place to reiterate your value proposition, in case your post gets forwarded. Footers are a good place to invite people to share or subscribe if they like what they just read.

Strategy

Your Substack strategy is your plan for how you’re going to manage and grow your blog. Think through these things:

• Frequency: “How often should I write?” Ideally, at least weekly. (I’m far from reaching this bar myself. We’re all just doing our best out here.) If you’re charging for your Substack, aim for two or more posts a week so people feel they’re getting their money’s worth. But don’t burn out! If you need time off for a vacation or personal reasons, just tell your bosses (your readers). They tend to be very understanding, even if they’re paying subscribers.

• Length and format: There’s no right answer here; don't try to fit someone else's mold. is an example of breaking convention, with analytical deep dives sprinkled with memes. Other writers post essays, poems, videos, or drawings. You do you.

• Metrics: Don’t get caught up in open rates or clicks, or conversion rates if you have paid turned on. The single most important metric is the growth rate of your free list. With a big enough denominator of free readers, things like open rates and conversion rates are less important. has a great post about this.

• Reader service: Make it rewarding to be a subscriber. You can offer a sense of community (e.g., subscriber chats in the Substack app), hold fun contests ('s iconic View from Your Window contest), interact in the comments, or organize in-person meetups. You should also personally check in with your most dedicated readers, who will be your biggest advocates.2

• Whether to charge: I suggest having paid subscriptions turned on from the start (another thing I didn’t do myself; I was a Substack employee and it felt weird). You might be surprised how many people will choose to support a writer they enjoy. didn’t paywall anything for months, yet her paid subscriber growth still exploded during that time because people wanted to show their appreciation for her work. 

• How much to charge: Price point varies by audience. If you write for casual readers, a more accessible rate makes sense, like the $5/month charges for Garbage Day. If you write for professionals like does with The Pragmatic Engineer, you can charge more (in his case, $15/month), especially because people will expense it to their employers. You also have the option to set a “founding” tier for people who really love your work — go for it. Set it high (a few hundred?), and invite fate to smile on you.

• If you do charge: You should (1) still make your best posts free, (2) offer free previews on paywalled posts, and (3) offer a free trial period. 

Posting: bake growth into each post

Here’s how to optimize each of your posts for growth:

• Title: The title is what gets people to actually open the email or click the link. The title should preview what the reader will get in return for their time or stoke curiosity in the subject. Shorter is generally better — one of ’s most popular essays is called, simply, “Jump.” And this might be controversial, but I don't recommend doing the numbered title thing (e.g., “Flack #47…”). A random number does nothing to enlighten or intrigue the reader, so you’d be leading with the least useful possible piece of information.

• Body: I suggest breaking up long paragraphs and mixing up the formatting where it makes sense. Try to always include an image in each post, which will make your homepage look nicer, especially if you use the magazine format (in Settings). Images also make your post look more compelling when shared on social media.

• CTAs: Your posts should contain at least one CTA (Call to Action). The most valuable CTAs are to subscribe, share, or upgrade to paid. A lot of writers have a longer blurb accompanying their Subscribe button, describing how their independent journalism is only made possible by the support of readers ( does this well). When you add CTAs, just don’t put too many of them (desperate) or put them too close together (confusing).

• Post Settings: The most important thing here is your social preview, the card that shows up on Twitter or elsewhere if someone shares the link to your post. You want the headline to be ace and the picture to be interesting. You can also enter a short description, but the description doesn’t show up on mobile which is where most people will see it, so don’t spend much time on it.

• SEO: That’s search engine optimization, which makes it easier for people to discover your work. Especially if you’re breaking news, you’ll want to have the right keywords in your post (especially the headline) for people seeking news on that topic to find you more easily. 

• Big swings: Take them. Invest time in writing one outstanding post instead of 10 mediocre posts. That’s because one outstanding post can go viral and generate more subscribers than 10 mediocre posts combined. Mr. Beast strongly recommends this approach for YouTube growth, and I suspect it’s similar for most other platforms.

3. Promotion: gateways, networks, platforms

Create gateways

Gateways are entry points for people to discover and become interested in your work. 

Here are gateways you can use.

• Platforms: Where does your target audience intellectually reside? Do they spend more time on Twitter or TikTok? Are they going to professional conferences or listening to podcasts? Show up where they are, e.g., by being a guest speaker or offering interviews. 

• Topics: Obviously when you write about X, you should promote your work to people who care about X. But the real marginal benefit comes from promoting your work to people who care about topics adjacent to X. To use a simple example: if you write about fintech, don’t just target fintech people; also target finance people and tech people. That instantly exposes your work to a much bigger pool of readers.

• People: Collaborate with influential people in your field or writers who have adjacent audiences (maybe you cover finance and they cover tech, and you collaborate on a fintech post). They’ll likely promote your collaboration to their audience. I also recommend commenting on other people’s work; they’ll often engage in return and their audience will get a free sample of your writing.

Use the Substack network

Make sure you take advantage of the many features Substack has built specifically to help writers grow faster. 

• Recommendations: If you’ve seen people sharing their Substack growth graphs where the line suddenly steepens, chances are they turned on recommendations. Basically, you can recommend other writers to your readers, and those other writers will be notified that you did, and they may recommend you in return. Definitely use this feature.

• Endorsements: Similarly, you can endorse other writers and have them endorse you. The endorsements show up on your homepage and function the same way book blurbs do, by vouching for you to readers.

• Guest posts: Collaborate with writers who have overlapping, larger, or adjacent audiences, by guest posting on their Substack or vice versa. You can also offer to interview other writers and have them interview you — basically, feature each other to get exposure to each other’s audiences.

• Special offers: If your newsletter is paid, you can offer discounts, free trials, and gift subscriptions, which all help grow your paid subscribers. The crafty at Substack recently built Substack Boost, which automates the process of tailoring and sending marketing offers to subscribers at key moments.

• Pro tip: If you’re on a different newsletter platform, you should switch to Substack. Then you can do all these things.

Other platforms 

Many of your potential readers are people who will encounter you on other platforms. Here’s how to make the most of those encounters to turn them into subscribers.

• Twitter: Add your Substack link to your URL field and in the body of your bio (since only your bio will show up in people’s notifications).
  I strongly recommend connecting your Twitter account in the Substack dashboard’s Settings, which means your Twitter followers (who have opted in) will get notified that you’re writing on Substack and be sent a link to subscribe.
  Whenever you publish a post, tweet a summary or a teaser. Screenshots of post excerpts tend to do well, and remember to include a link to your post. Twitter may still be stifling tweets containing off-platform links, so share the link in a reply to your own tweet.

• Facebook and Instagram: Put your Substack link in your bio, in the body of relevant posts, and in the first comment. Jessica Reed Kraus is the platonic ideal of promoting her Substack via her Instagram.

• LinkedIn: Add your Substack link to your headline, summary, and experience sections. I did it and you should too, especially if you’re writing about industry or professional topics.

• Email: Include a link to your Substack in your email signature. It doesn’t have to be overly promotional; it can be a simple hyperlink.

• Online communities: Share your work with relevant communities on Hacker News, Reddit, Quora, and elsewhere.

• Interviews: When you do a podcast interview, ask them to put your Substack URL in the show notes, like Jim O’Shaughnessey kindly did for me here. When you do a TV hit, ask them to note your Substack on the chyron. When you win a beauty pageant, have them print it on your sash?

4. Springboard off big moments 

Big moments are opportunities to capture attention. They can lead to big jumps in subscriber growth — if you know how to use them. 

Launch

The launch of your Substack is your first and most important “big moment.” Milk it. Email your contacts and post on your social channels about what you’re launching, tease what you’ll be writing about, and obviously share the link to subscribe. Some writers prepare a whole week of posts in advance so they can post very frequently right at the start and build momentum for their new subscribers.

Make sure to link your Twitter account in Settings so your followers (who have opted in) can be notified that you’ve started a Substack. 

News hooks

Huge news stories direct a lot of people’s focus toward the same topic at the same time. If you have a unique perspective or idea about that topic, write a post and share it around. If you have a related post in your drafts, tailor it for the moment using the news story as a hook. I did this with my post about rules for talking to reporters, which found a natural hook with the SBF news cycle. You can set a Google alert for specific topics or just keep your antennae up.

Once you’ve shipped your post, share it on social media. You can also send it to press or event organizers to offer interviews on the topic, or offer to guest post for other writers as described above. Just move quickly — most news cycles are short, and so are people’s attention spans. Fast beats perfect; ship it before it loses relevance. 

Make your own

You can create your own “big moments” to draw attention and intrigue: launch a new series, announce a new offering, drop an unlikely collaboration, or celebrate a milestone. One-year anniversary posts have become a Substack tradition, and they typically do well, especially combined with a special offer on paid subscriptions.

Don’t just wait for a big moment to come along; if there is no wind, row. 

LFG

You don’t need to do all of these things all of the time. Do what you can, be consistent, and give it time. You’ll be amazed at the audience you can build.

If you’re a Flack subscriber, please reply and tell me your growth goals for 2023. Let’s check in next year and see how you did!

Here are the basic ingredients that every apology should have.

1. Say the words

The first rule of apologizing is to apologize. Say the actual words: “I apologize” or “I’m sorry.” Have it come from a specific human being. (After all, if no one was at fault, why apologize?)

The more human and heartfelt the better, which is why “I’m sorry” is better than “we’re sorry.” Don’t try to qualify or hedge. Say, “I’m sorry I…” NOT “I’m sorry you…” or “I’m sorry if…”

And anything is better than the phlegmatic “We regret…”

2. Sorry for what?

Sometimes the corporate apologizer tries to get cute by apologizing for things that are clearly out of their control (sorry about the storm!). Take responsibility for what you did wrong, specifically.

You might need to do some investigation first to make sure that you only share accurate information about what happened. Don’t sugarcoat it or use euphemisms (“the issue”!) and don’t use passive tense (the invertebrate mantra, “mistakes were made”).

Give an explanation (here’s where we went wrong) but not an excuse (it wasn’t really our fault because…).

3. Berate yourself so they don’t have to

Put yourself in the position of the person or people you wronged. Show empathy by describing how you would feel or the specific impact on them. Don’t minimize this or - God forbid - say “at least.” As wrote in The Hard Thing About Hard Things: "If you are going to eat shit, don't nibble."

They’re likely in the mindset of being ready to disagree with whatever you say, so give them a reason to react with “oh it wasn’t that big a deal” instead of “you don’t seem to get how big a deal this was.”

4. Make amends

Say what you’ll do to make it right or make sure it doesn’t happen again. Warning: at this stage, it’s easy to lie. It might be by accident and with the best intentions — when you’re trying to win someone back, it’s tempting to promise the world.

But do not mortgage your future credibility to make this moment slightly less painful. Only say things that are absolutely airtight and true. What you say here must be able to be taken literally and interpreted liberally. After a breach in trust, the last thing you want is to have to later clarify, “well technically, what I meant was…”

5. Extra point

Follow through, then follow up. Do exactly what you said you would, and if possible, beat expectations: do it sooner than you promised, or give more than you offered. Then, show you’re going the extra mile with accountability by following up: check in with them, apologize again, thank them for their grace and patience, and confirm that you’ve kept your promises.

The key is to do this unprompted, on your own initiative, as you don’t get any points for doing the right thing with a gun to your head.

An effective apology should contain all of these things. Fixing the actual crisis is hard enough. A botched apology doesn’t need to compound your troubles.

FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried enjoyed better media coverage than any other company I can think of. Both the flattering tone and the sheer quantity of articles about the company and its founder were wildly out of proportion with their actual merits.

Now, coverage like that doesn’t just happen. Reporters are not known to be pollyannish about ambitious new tech and crypto startups — in fact, the common view among founders is that the media is too hard on tech. For FTX, the glowing coverage was the result of a sustained campaign to charm and persuade reporters, strategically orchestrated by SBF and his team.

This is not a post about where journalists fell short (and to be fair, it wasn’t just reporters who succumbed to that charm). This is a post about how SBF won over the media, and how other founders can use the same tactics to get better coverage for their own companies.

1. Tell an interesting story

SBF offered what described as “a story too good to check.” Sam was a young nerd on a big mission, with colorful quirks that peppered every article. People love unlikely heroes, and the “disheveled mogul saving the world” narrative touched a lot of journalistic erogenous zones. Each article about SBF was lively and entertaining, which attracted more readers and more subsequent articles.

Lesson: Ditch the robotic corporate speak and show some personality. Don’t just give people dry facts (like announcing a product update) but make it part of a bigger story that invites emotional investment and intrigue (like how this new product came to be against all odds, or how it brings the human race closer to a 200-year lifespan).

2. Money talks, and writes

Between the sponsorships, ad buys, investments, and straight up donations, SBF splashed money across much of the fourth estate. Some handled it properly (e.g. Semafor’s prominent disclosure), but not everyone is equally scrupulous, and common sense would suggest at least some writers would have been reluctant to antagonize someone holding loose pursestrings.

Lesson: I don’t recommend trying to use money to compromise reporters — a good reporter will see through it, and you’ll only end up irritating and offending them. Instead, build influence more ethically and less expensively. You can offer other incentives for positive collaboration, such as scoops or access to people and information.

3. Flood the zone with content

SBF was always doing something bold or expensive or just weird, and FTX had a constant stream of new investments or launches or partnerships. There was so much stuff happening at all times that it was hard to keep up, much less dig deeper. Most importantly, the drumbeat of announcements meant that they were usually on offense, putting things out into the world and proactively establishing their narrative, rather than on defense, reacting to incoming queries.

Lesson: Be on offense as much as you can. You don’t have to be announcing something every other day, but you should maximize the stories you’re telling versus stories being told about you by others with their own agendas. The latter is inevitable, but your job is to change the ratio in your favor.

4. Credibility loves company

SBF always surrounded himself with credible people in highly visible settings. His panel appearance alongside Bill Clinton and Tony Blair is a great example, or his interview with the famous Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. It established a perceived peer group of heavy hitters, which lent him (in this case, unearned) seriousness and trustworthiness.

Lesson: Be selective about the settings in which you appear and the people you appear alongside. If you’re having trouble getting invited to the conferences you should be at, build relationships, grow your company, and keep trying for those aspirational opportunities. Don’t settle for accepting invitations for low-value 8-person panel talks that erode your credibility and prestige. Choose your perceived peer group carefully.

5. Education > advocacy

With an esoteric topic like crypto, the demand for information is much greater than the supply of people qualified to provide it. SBF talked to everyone all the time to explain and demystify crypto. He offered briefings to reporters, on background and on the record. He gave talks and hosted events. He chatted with policymakers and influencers to inform their understanding of the crypto industry. All of this resulted in his being viewed as an authority figure and a sort of Sherpa for crypto. So when he said great things about his own company, they were hard to disentangle from the rest of the seemingly true and objective insights he provided.

Lesson: Don’t just nakedly shill your company or product. You’ll gain more trust and respect by being an honest broker, giving a broad view of the industry and helping people understand how your company fits in to the big picture.

6. Be the human mascot of the company

This is the most important point of all: the great press for FTX all stemmed from SBF’s personal engagement and disarming vibe. Tech journalist has noted that SBF was personally reachable for many reporters - no phalanx of handlers.
As Jeff John Roberts, who wrote the now iconic “Next Warren Buffett?” Fortune cover story about SBF, said later:

“I was charmed by his nerdy affect as SBF, unkempt in a T-shirt and bushy hair, as he twirled a fidget spinner…it was all bullshit, of course, and I didn’t see through it.”

Lesson: People trust people, not companies. It may be hard for introverted founders to hear this, but every founder has a responsibility to be the human mascot for their company. All companies take on the reputations of their leaders. If the founder is trustworthy, then so is the company; if the founder is a technical genius, then the company’s products must be worthwhile; and so on. And I wince to repeat the hackneyed advice to “be yourself,” but the truth is that your genuine personal traits (whether volubility, optimism, shyness, humor, even awkwardness — whatever you got) are usually the best way to win over reporters — or anyone. You have to show up as a leader. Don’t outsource this to your PR team.

7. Looks matter

SBF’s physical appearance was a major part of his persona. Clothes make the man, and in this case, bad clothes seemed to make a good man. SBF’s sloppiness was one of his strongest assets; he used it to build a personal brand of earnestness and candor, which he deployed with great effectiveness on behalf of FTX.

Lesson: Just as with SBF, your look will shape your brand — think Palmer Luckey’s Hawaiian shirts, John Fetterman’s basketball shorts, or Lex Fridman’s suit and tie. However, it only works for them because it’s authentic! A corporate talking head showing up in a new hoodie and pressed jeans might as well be Dukakis rolling up in a tank.

FTX may have used this playbook to fool the world, but the tactics themselves are smart, effective, and ethical. Please use them responsibly!

Sam Bankman-Fried recently gave an accidental interview to a Vox reporter, resulting in one of the most remarkable articles in recent memory.

The below tweet is about running FTX into the ground, but it applies just as well to his accidental interview:

The first time he fucked up was when he assumed the reporter was his friend (or, even if she were, that this would somehow negate her also being a reporter). The second time was when he neglected to confirm that the conversation was off the record.

Accidental interviews happen all the time, even to people who deal a lot with the press.

Famously, Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired as White House communications director for an accidental interview he gave to the New Yorker, claimed that the “spirit” of the conversation was that it was off the record — but he never confirmed that with New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza, who published an article with the amazing title and subtitle, “Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon: He started by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. It escalated from there.”

It’s also happened to an exec of a top PR agency, whose email to a reporter “on background not for attribution” was screenshotted and posted on Twitter along with this note:

It’s even happened to experienced journalists, like Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. She sent an email to a Politico reporter with the subject line, “OFF THE RECORD,” prompting Politico to print the following: “Since we never agreed to conduct such an off-the-record conversation, we are publishing it below in full...”

But it will not happen to Flack readers! Let’s review the rules together. 

First and foremost: any time you are speaking with any reporter, in any setting, you have to clarify the ground rules before having the conversation.

These are the common protocols.

On the record

Unless you specify otherwise, you are on the record.

Your name, your title, your quotes, and even your body language are fair game. Your “no comment”? On the record. Your “ums” and “uhs”? On the record. Your outfit? On the record. You ordered pineapple pizza at lunch? All on the record; none to blame but yourself.

Reporters naturally prefer when you’re on the record, and it’s not on them to remind you that you are. It’s on you to ask and get confirmation otherwise if you don’t want to be.

Use this when: you want your exact words and identity to be reported, when you’re making an announcement, or when you want your statements to carry maximum weight. If you’re defending yourself against an attack, go on the record and say it with your chest.

Off the record

Fight Club, for example, was very much off the record.

When you’re off the record (which, again, is only after you’ve asked and they’ve agreed), you can’t be quoted, you can’t be mentioned as a source, and what you’re saying can’t even be paraphrased. The reporter simply can’t use the information in their story.

But that doesn’t mean it’ll never make it into print: if a journalist is able to get other sources to tell them that same information, it becomes fair game to report. You can’t prevent them from investigating further or talking to other people. 

Being off the record also won’t prevent the reporter from forming an impression of you. If you say something dumb or sketchy, it may not get reported but it will still taint your credibility.

Use this when: you want to build a relationship or inform their future reporting through providing context. Even off the record, never divulge something you actually want to keep a secret.

On background

The conditions for being on background should be negotiated each time.

In general, a reporter can use the information you give them, either with a quote or a paraphrase, but they can’t identify you by name. It can get murky though, so make sure you negotiate exactly how you’ll be described. It’s a negotiation because a reporter wants to maximize the credibility of their coverage by being as specific as possible (“according to a human female” won’t cut it for their editor), while you probably want to protect your identity by being more vague. Often they’ll say something like, “according to a person familiar with the situation.” 

Use this when: you want to provide context that might shape the reporting or want specific information to be included, but without identifying yourself as the source. An example would be if you’re sharing views on policy issues but don’t want to make news by appearing to endorse any political positions.

On deep background

This term is even more nebulous. Typically, deep background means that your identity will be obscured and you won’t be quoted. You should carefully negotiate the exact terms, or better yet, just don’t use this at all. I think it’s usually just code for, “on background — but make me sound mysterious.”

Unless you’re meeting someone in a parking garage to report a presidency-ending scandal, spare yourself the eye roll of whoever is on the receiving end of this request. 

Use this when: you’re breaking open a massive government scandal.

Some additional notes

1. Anything you say might become an interview — dinner conversation, DMs, or an encounter on the street can all count as an interview. And the interviewer doesn’t have to have a press badge, by the way. There’s nothing stopping anyone from tweeting something you said to them. Citizen journalism!

2. When in doubt, skip the jargon and just discuss in plain English what you think should happen: will you be quoted by name? Will you be unnamed but described in some other way, like “a person familiar with the matter”? Will the information you’re giving be reported, or used in any other way?

3. Think of these terms as a gentleman’s agreement, not as a legally binding contract. It’s the ethical thing to protect sources, but nothing is guaranteed in this world. Even Bob Woodward has given up the identity of a source who spoke to him off the record, and it’s common practice for reporters to share the identity of unnamed sources with editors.

4. Unless there’s a really good reason, avoid switching back and forth between off the record and on the record during an interview. It creates friction and potential for misunderstanding.

5. Don’t just assume an interview is over because it “feels” over, or you’re packing up to leave or whatever. If you’re in earshot, the interview is still going.

6. I strongly recommend dispensing with elaborate crane dances around benign information, like the corporate PR person who goes on background just to send a link to their own website. It’s counterproductive for building trust, and it’s lame. The Verge’s ethics statement gives some great pointers for how corporate PR can be less annoying, and everyone who deals with the press should read it.

And always remember, if you haven’t clearly negotiated the terms of an interview in advance, this is the only thing you should be saying:

That’s a different question from “whether to go on TV” (only if the tactic makes sense for you and you’re good on the spot) or “how to get on TV” (get to know producers and have a current events hook).

Assuming you’ve decided it’s useful to be on TV and you’ve landed an interview slot, you probably won’t have much time to get ready. Most TV segments are tied to what’s in the news and therefore get booked within a couple days out, or even same day. So you should be pretty comfortable with your material and your “stage presence” before you even pitch or accept an interview. The good news is that once these pieces are in place, you can prepare quickly.

These are the 5 steps for making sure you have a great TV hit.

1. Prepare your ONE headline message and your FIRST answer

Before even accepting the interview, you should already have decided (1) what you’re trying to get out of doing this, (2) the audience you’re speaking to, (3) how to frame your message in a way that will resonate with them.

Use that information to distill the ONE big thing you want viewers to take away from your interview, and start conveying that message in your FIRST answer. TV interviews end abruptly, sometimes after five, or even three, questions. I once had a founder doing an interview on one of the biggest shows on TV and he was cut off after the first question because of “breaking news.” So, get your headline message in right away.

Use anecdotes and stats to make your point, instead of adjectives. No one will remember or care about the fact that you think your company is great/disruptive/innovative/etc. “I saw on TV today that 85% of unused restaurant food gets thrown out” is more likely to be recounted at the dinner table than “I saw on TV today that a lot of food gets wasted.”

2. Negotiate with the producer in advance

Make sure the producer has (1) the full context for the topic you want to discuss; (2) a few brief bullets about yourself for the hosts to use for introducing you, including name pronunciation, preferred title, and anything you want to plug; (3) any images or B-roll video you want them to have on the screen while you’re talking. 

Of course a producer can get any of these things without your help, but why leave it up to chance and Google? Here’s your opportunity to set the scene correctly, and if you can make their jobs easier in the process then you’re more likely to get invited back.

I also suggest always trying to negotiate the chyron, i.e., the lower third of the screen, the banner that sits below your face while you’re talking. It’s important because it sits below your face while you’re talking, and also because it often affects how the segment is described when it gets posted online, which in turn affects your Google and YouTube results. The producer is under no obligation to take your request, but it doesn’t hurt to at least offer.

3. Study the tape

Watch some clips of the show to get familiar with the hosts and their style, and to build comfort. You should already have researched the hosts before committing to go on, in case there’s something about their interview style or views that could lead to a clash (unless you’re seeking a confrontation on purpose, but that should be very rare and TV probably isn’t the right medium for it).

You might also want to watch your own past interviews to look for things to improve on (I know this is excruciating, sorry).

4. Remember these things during the interview

• Body language is king.

• Get one clear message across, starting with the first answer you give.

• Use anecdotes and stories, not adjectives.

• Don’t get sidetracked by irrelevant topics; stay on track and don’t get sucked into someone else’s agenda.

• End your answers cleanly, with a period instead of an ellipsis or question mark. Get comfortable with a half beat of silence after you’re done talking.

• Never memorize a script; it shows.

5. Complete your follow through

Right after the interview (unless it really went sideways), thank the host and the producer. To open doors for more opportunities in the future — and for the sake of courtesy in a world that has too little of it — I suggest that the guest sends a brief personal note to the host, referencing a specific topic they might want to discuss more in the future, while the comms lead thanks the producer.

Then make sure to share clips with employees and investors, amplify content on your own channels, and use the clips to build new relationships (e.g., “Hey Prospect X, a while back we had discussed Y topic, so I thought you’d like this clip from Z”).

That’s it. Break a leg.

Join my new subscriber chat!

This week I’m opening up the Flack subscriber chat. It’s like a group chat exclusively for subscribers, in the Substack app. I’ll post short prompts and you can all jump into the discussion. If you want to join, get the Substack app and go to the Chat icon on the bottom bar:

Fortune favors the bold. Corporate comms, traditionally, does not. As an industry, we communicators are very skilled at being careful, measured, safe. These can be good things, but they stand in the way of great things.

There’s a common belief that less risk equals less error. That’s wrong. When you avoid risks, you don’t make fewer mistakes — you make different mistakes. You make mistakes of omission. And for startups in particular, those are the worst kind of mistakes because your enemy is the status quo. When you only play it safe, you forfeit opportunities to define a new category, change people's minds, stoke an important debate, and maybe even change the whole trajectory of your company. 

Won’t taking risks also lead to mistakes? Yes, inevitably. But here’s the key: don’t do anything obviously dumb.

Or, more straightforward, don’t do anything illegal or unethical. Don’t let your instincts be overridden by fear or emotion.

Then take educated bets on your judgment and abilities, and even when you make mistakes they’ll be mistakes of commission — data-rich mistakes, the kind that help you hone your craft. Over the long term, you’ll win more than you lose, and your Ls will be productive and respectable, even if they feel crummy as all failures do.

In any case, you don’t have a choice. When you’re building software, the quickest way to improve the product is to get what my old boss, Substack CEO Chris Best, calls “contact with reality,” so you can learn from real-world experience and calibrate accordingly. In comms, when the product you’re building is opinions (the softest ware of all), testing out ideas in the real world is even more important because the interaction between your comms strategy and the collective human psychology of your audience is simply too complex to predict in the abstract. You have to put things into the wild and see how they do. Cross the river by feeling the stones.

It’s easy to find an excuse to avoid risk. The compliance officer in your head will tell you that you don’t have enough resources to take big swims and should just focus on the basics, or it won’t work anyway so you should just let your CEO interview with a bunch of low-quality media outlets that you secretly know are a waste of time. 

That kind of FUD creeps in easily; even as I’m typing this post, I know I’ll have to fight it later today. But sheltering in the safety of “tried and true” tactics is like keeping your assets in cash. You should definitely do it some of the time, but if that’s all you ever do in the long term, you’ll never build your portfolio. In fact, as the rest of the economy grows, your purchasing power will fall further and further behind. 

When you’re creating something original, you don’t have the luxury of following someone else’s dog-eared playbook. Great companies don’t get built on minimizing downside, but on maximizing upside. The same goes for the comms strategies that define their brands over time.

So if there’s an idea that’s been tugging at you, try it. If it doesn’t work, try something else. And never stop. Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious brand?

If you want people to evangelize for you, stand up for you, and stick with you long term, you need fanatics. You might have a different preferred term (diehards, zealots, tribe?) but for this piece let’s go with fans. 

There is a science to gaining fans. For years I’ve analyzed how people, groups, and companies build fandoms, and there’s no one in the world better at this than K-pop bands. If there is a science to building fandoms, the K-pop industry deserves a Nobel. 

K-pop fans are devoted on a whole other level, and they are legion. They buy out stadiums in minutes, raise $1 million in a day, take over Twitter on command, sell out products from lip balm to fabric softener, buy Times Square billboards, and on and on.

I spent some months following BTS and Blackpink and others, butchering my algorithmic recommendations in the process, and concluded that there are four key things all K-pop bands do to cultivate their fandoms. I’ll describe each below, along with examples of how founders and execs can modify these tactics to build passion for a product, brand, or mission. No dancing required.

1. Remove barriers to entry

There are virtually no barriers to becoming a K-pop fan. You don’t have to know Korean (songs have English lyrics and get translated into multiple languages), be a certain age (lyrics are generally appropriate for all ages), like a specific genre (a given band might perform pop, rap, R&B, and rock), or use a specific platform (their content can be found on every conceivable platform). You don’t even have to like the music — bands make a point of incorporating dance, visual spectacle, memes and comedy.

 How to execute:

• Eliminate corporate jargon. Corporate-speak is a barrier to understanding and an enemy of joy. It’s incomprehensible. It’s meaningless. It alienates everyone. Kill it with fire.

  

• Mix up your content and platforms. People absorb information in different ways. Communicating only through press releases or only through Twitter creates a barrier for people who may prefer podcasts or newsletters or Instagram. Switch it up. Use a blog post for controlling the message, use earned media for making an announcement to a broad audience, use short video clips for social engagement, or use audio for nuanced conversations.

• Don’t get involved in political issues outside your mission. Every time you or your employees take a stand on some political issue, it alienates the people on the other side. On issues related to your mission, it is worth taking a strong position even when it makes people mad, because you can’t be loved by everyone and by taking firm positions when it comes to your mission, you’re sending a beacon to the right supporters. But activism on unrelated issues, even important ones, puts up barriers for no good reason.

2. Spotlight individuals, not just the group

Quiz: Fans of different K-pop have their own fanchants. What is the BTS chant?

A: You may think it’s “BTS! BTS!” and you would be wrong. It’s the names of the individual members. Each member of a K-pop group has their own public persona and plays a distinct role within the group. A given member is associated with their skills (dancing, vocals, rap, or “visuals”), their relative age in the group (older members vs. younger members), other roles in the group (like “center” which is…the person who usually stands in the center?), and personal quirks (hobbies, fashion sense, personality, etc.).

This is huge for turning casual fans into diehards: people may like groups, but people fall in love with individuals.

How to execute:

• Speak as a person, not as a corporate entity. It’s a turnoff when someone is delivering lines as A Company Representative. If there's a crisis, let your genuine devastation show. Don’t mumble something about “regretting the circumstances.” If you’ve been falsely accused of something, you’re allowed to be pissed. Because that’s how a human being would feel (especially an innocent one). If you’re celebrating a big moment, you’re allowed to sputter with excitement or tear up with pride. People don’t form emotional connections with robots (yet!) so don’t be one.

• Spotlight multiple executives. Even if the company has one key exec, like a visionary founder, companies shouldn’t put the spotlight all on a single person. It’s a lot of pressure for them and it’s risky for the company – if that person screws up, then the whole company goes to PR jail. Plus, investors like to see a deep bench of talent and employees like to hear from a range of different leaders, so show off more of your team.

• Make spokespeople nonfungible. When you show off more of your team, don’t roll out five executives who all look the same, sound the same, and recite the same talking points. Let each person have a distinct role and persona, and let their individual personalities show. This kind of differentiation is especially crucial if you have co-CEOs or multiple co-founders.

3. Connect fandom to community and identity

What’s true of cults and political revolutions is also true of fandoms: members’ commitment grows as they find community in the group and as membership becomes part of their identity. 

K-pop bands are very intentional about fostering a sense of community and collective identity for their fandoms. Each fandom has a name (Blackpink fans are Blinks, BTS fans are ARMY, TXT fans are MOA, etc.), and it’s a big moment when a new band gives its fans their collective name. 

Like religions, fandoms also have symbols, rituals, shibboleths, and their own vernacular. They even enter into rivalries with other fandoms, which further deepens their sense of identity, connection to each other, and commitment to their favored band.

How to execute:

• Embrace inside jokes and memes. If your community is coming up with good jokes, run with it, even if they’re joking about you. It’s a sign of affection. A great example of this is the iconic Palmer Luckey TIME cover and ensuing photoshops, many of which were created by Palmer fans. He was unfazed and responded with good humor, gaining even more fans in the process.

  

• Get your community to interact with each other. As the leader of your community, you should be modeling the kind of engagement, enthusiasm, and behavior that you want members of the fandom to have toward each other. For instance, if  you want them to be active in the Discord or on Twitter, you should pop into the server occasionally and reply to posts. If you want them to be doing meetups, host a meetup yourself or show up unexpectedly at theirs. I keep mentioning Lenny, but he’s really a savant at this.

• Make strategic swag. Design an iconic item that’s your equivalent of the New Yorker tote or the Boring Company flamethrower, and give it to your top fans. The pinnacle of strategic swag is the red MAGA hat — love it or hate it, but it worked. Pro tip: for virality, I suggest making something that can be worn by dogs or babies. Everyone’s always looking for an excuse to publicly share photos of their dogs and babies.

4. Bring people into the process

K-pop bands don’t just release completed songs. They share an endless stream of behind the scenes updates, from footage of dance practice to videos of members just hanging out. There are shows that document the process of bands getting formed, recording their first single, or going on vacation. By the time of the next album drop or tour kickoff, fans feel like they’ve been on the journey with that band and are deeply invested in their success. 

The ability to snowball fandom by bringing people on a journey is something K-pop has in common with its polar opposite: MMA. Look at the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, starring fandom-building genius Dana White. In its very first season, the show made interest in MMA and the UFC explode, by showing the process fighters go through to train and compete. By the final episode, when the big fight for the UFC contract actually takes place, the show had already gotten fans totally hooked regardless of the outcome of the fight.

Different genre, same principle.

How to execute:

• Build in public. Show people the process, not just the outcome. SpaceX gives a play-by-play of everything that goes into preparing for a launch, marking frequent milestones throughout a long process. Faryar Shirzad and Paul Grewal, who lead policy and legal at Coinbase, make a point to share what they’re working on and how they’re thinking about crypto regulations. The economist and writer Noah Smith often shares updates  on the growth of his Substack. In different ways, all these things bring people along on a journey. (And note the jargon-free plain English they all use!)

• Make your milestones their milestones. Hitting 1M followers, selling 1000 units, winning an award, having a successful IPO, etc. – these are all occasions to thank the fans that helped get you there. Give them credit for shared accomplishments and make them feel like insiders. For example, you can invite your biggest evangelists to a company retreat, have them be special guests at an employee all-hands, give them the first look at a new product, or send them (better yet, their dogs and babies!) some special swag that can’t be purchased.

• Talk to your audience when you don’t have a reason. Sometimes founders and CEOs only show up when they have to, like for an announcement or an apology. While senior execs shouldn’t be too accessible, it’s a mistake only to show up when you have to. First, it conditions people to think that if you’re talking to them, something must be up. Second, it causes people to disengage when they don’t hear from you for long spells. Third, fostering your fandom is a skill and you can get rusty.

These tactics are simple but powerful ways to foster fanatics with the kind of loyalty and passion that mere followers can’t replicate.

Now go forth and build your own ARMY.