In the early days of Web 2.0, several pundits told us that traditional PR was dead, especially for startups, where founders would be better served by handling their own public relations. After some disasters, along with many founders finding themselves overwhelmed by the need to build their business and craft thought leadership pieces while handling media inquiries, that philosophy faded. But now it’s back, and getting a lot of attention as Lulu Cheng Meservey, founder and CEO at the agency Rostra, has released a manifesto calling on leaders to skip the agency and “go direct.” Neville and Shel share their thoughts about the advice in this short midweek episode.

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The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, March 24.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients.

Raw Transcript:

Neville Hobson: Hi everyone, and welcome to for immediate release. This is episode 455. I’m Neville Hobson.

Shel Holtz: And I’m Shell Holtz. And several years ago there was a trend making the rounds of startups. Who are passing on bringing a public relations professional on board, opting for the founder to do their own pr. The rationale for this was that the founder was in a better position to tell the company’s early story, and that with resources limited, spending money on PR shouldn’t be a priority.

There were plenty of arguments on the other side, too, focused on, understanding the media, knowing what kind of story is gonna produce the kind of results you’re looking for and so on. In any case, the whole debate just seemed to fade away. Until now, a PR practitioner named Lulu Chang Meserve is shaking up public relations with this bold stance that traditional PR is dead.

I guess we could put this under our blank, is dead series. Her philosophy centers on empowering [00:01:00] founders and organizations to go direct, meaning they should take control of their narratives without relying heavily on traditional media.

Her philosophy centers on empowering founders and organizations to go direct, meaning they should take control of their narratives without relying heavily on traditional media intermediaries or PR agencies. This approach emphasizes authenticity. Transparency and direct engagement with audiences. We’ll explore what Meserve is saying right after this.

Messer V derives the label corporate communications as though it’s the corporation and not a team of talented communicators or even the company’s leaders and other spokespeople and thought leaders who are doing the communicating. But her [00:02:00] strategy is appealing to startups and tech companies that are eager to maintain their unique voices without the dilution that can come from conventional PR methods.

By advocating for leaders to communicate directly through platforms like social media, company blogs, and other owned channels, she believes organizations can foster more genuine connections and swiftly address issues as they arise. Now, this isn’t just theory that she’s slinging around. She’s implemented it in high stakes environments.

She was at Activision Blizzard where she NA navigated complex public scrutiny with assertiveness and transparency. Her approach has garnered attention and endorsement from prominent figures in Silicon Valley, including Sam Altman and Brian Armstrong, who appreciate the emphasis on authenticity and direct engagement.

Now critics of traditional PR argue that relying solely on established media channels can lead to misrepresentation or a loss of control of the [00:03:00] message. Messer v’s approach addresses this by cutting out the middleman, allowing organizations to present their narratives unfiltered. However, it’s worth noting the strategy requires a deep understanding of one’s audience and the nuances of various communication platforms to be effective.

Her approach also ignores the value of earned media having . A trusted third party tell your story. But in parallel, we’re witnessing instances where traditional corporate PR strategies are facing significant backlash. And DEI has been raised as an example. The question some are asking is whether companies were motivated by the anticipated PR benefit of promoting DEI than to a commitment to genuinely improve diversity inclusion in the organization over a long term.

Chris Gez, and I hope I’m pronouncing that it’s G-I-D-E-Z-A. Strategic Reputation and communications advisor asked this question in a LinkedIn article last month, and he concluded that PR [00:04:00] should share some of the blame for DEI becoming a four letter word in corporate America. I. He argues that a lot of companies wrap themselves in the DEI flag because they looked at DEI first and foremost as a reputational opportunity, or they said the potential risk was serious if they didn’t wrap themselves in that flag.

It’s a situation that highlights how traditional pr, can backfire, especially when it’s perceived as ina inauthentic or reactionary. So this backlash against DEI efforts underscores the importance of authenticity and direct communication in organizational strategies. When companies implement DEI initiatives primarily as Pete.

Our maneuvers without genuine commitment, they risk public skepticism and potential backlash. Mastery’s emphasis on direct and transparent communication can serve as a valuable lesson. Here. Organizations have to align their public messaging with their core values and actions to maintain credibility. [00:05:00] Of course, some, including me might argue that going direct is just the owned and shared part of the pay zone model.

There’s still plenty of evidence that traditional PR is still useful. Would you really wanna just go direct during an existential corporate crisis? I don’t know, Neville. I find the, all or nothing approach here not be one that I advise people pay much attention to.

Neville Hobson: Yeah, I tend to be with you on that.

Shall I? Had not heard of this lady before this conversation. But I did read the manifesto. She posts on her firm’s website, the firm called Roster. Traditional PR is dead as the provocative clickbait like headline. And she goes into her explainer on that, which is largely I suppose I could summarize it with the bold sentence she has on her site saying The old PR playbook of relying on third parties with misaligned interest is obsolete.

I wouldn’t disagree with that although I might say it’s not obsolete. It’s actually alive and well. People with misaligned interest is all over the place, but that [00:06:00] therein lies the issue that where you can agree with some of what she says but it’s difficult when she applies what she says to the entire industry.

The whole PR profession is basically full of charlatans and not worth your time. They have their own interest, not yours, and you shouldn’t waste any time with it. Spent quite a while dissecting this. I think if we wanted to and come up with a dozen, two dozen reasons why you shouldn’t do this to the exclusion of working with, as you mentioned, the talented folks who tend to occupy the PR space.

Certainly in most organizations. I did read as well a kind of a postscript to all of this. She published on X, which was linked to an article about all of this just a few days ago actually, where she posted a lengthy tweet. Obviously she’s got the account that lets you do the 40,000 characters or whatever it is.

When do you need a PR agency and who should you hire? That’s the first part of her. Submissive and she who has [00:07:00] a second part that goes into that in more detail, how much should you pay for one? These to me are quite provocative statements. All of it’s great for discussion. If you think it’s worth the discussion, I’m not sure it is shell to be frank.

Certainly not in the PR industry even though I would argue that she does make a number of. Kind of head nodding statements that you could say. Yep. I wouldn’t disagree with that. Where she does talk about some of the issues in pr, she talks about press releases, read like they were written by a baker’s dozen of middle managers where she she talks about corporate communication itself, an oxymoron as nothing meaningful, as you pointed out, communicated by face committee if it were thus.

I wouldn’t disagree hard, I don’t think with almost anything she’s written, but it is not like that at all. Maybe in her world it is other, I suspect these are serving statements that serve simply to reinforce the argument she’s making for why go direct is her mantra. And as you noted, I. We’ve [00:08:00] been here 15 years ago, if not 20 years ago, at the dawn of the social media age, where there were a number of people, particularly in that Silicon Valley startup environment you mentioned, who were talking very strongly about, you do not need pr, don’t waste your money.

You, the founder, can go direct and do all this stuff yourself. It became quite clear. That’s not really a wise thing when the founder is trying to talk to investors and raise money and actually do the founding work of his startup. But this, as you said, this kind of goes around and comes around and now here’s the latest wave.

She, is in the kind of celebrity PR area because of all the quotes she’s got there. She mentions an interesting expression the podcasting circuit sort of makes it sound like a celebrity magazine. So that’s the kind of era, this is not the real world at all, but good luck to her really.

I think there are a couple things we can learn from what she says though, that I think make it easy perhaps to . Reinforce the view [00:09:00] of why traditional PR is not dead at all. And you could actually counter all these with some sound arguments on that. I think it’s worth putting a list, a link to this website manifesto in the show nutshell.

So if anyone was interested, they can go and look at it themselves, but I don’t think this is anything. We should worry about in the PR profession, UN, unless or until or maybe both. We suddenly hear different from normal companies rather than celebrity types.

Shel Holtz: In this post on X she has a line here that I think is very telling.

She’s. Saying, of course I don’t mean that you need to do absolutely every communication activity yourself. She says, 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 . So it’s only a matter of being overwhelmed by it. She also says that finding strong writers is hard, so unless you’re luck out, you’re better off doing the writing yourself.

Even if it’s mid, at least it’ll be mid in your voice. I, again, I think this completely [00:10:00] ignores the value of, of third party coverage. She talks about misaligned interests. I talk about reporters who are writing about the things that you are interested in getting out to an audience and whom your audience is reading.

This is why you find those writers who are . Taking an angle that is consistent with the approach that you wanna take to get to tell your story and work with them pitch them appropriately so you get their interest and then they tell your story to their readers in a way that resonates.

And it’s credible because it’s not coming from you. Of course, you said that it’s your organization, you’re looking to get the best response you possibly can, that here’s somebody who went out and did some research and some interviews, and they said it based on. Their investigation or their reporting and that is of value there, there’s just no question about that.

Maybe their interests are misaligned. That’s why you work with them to get the best outcome that you can. Doesn’t mean that you don’t [00:11:00] go direct, it’s a long with not instead of, as Mitch Joel. So often said and anytime anybody says X is dead I, and I don’t mean x, the former Twitter I mean fill in the blank is dead.

I, I. Get very skeptical. We’ve been hearing this for so long now. We’ve done so many episodes going way back 20 years on people claiming that something is dead. That wasn’t traditional PRS is doing just fine. The other thing that I think she is saying here, and it has been said before and I have couched it in these terms before.

Is that bad? PR is bad. Don’t hire bad PR people. Don’t hire somebody who’s gonna write a press release. That sounds like it was written by committee. I know they’re out there. There’s a lot of them. It’s that situation that we exist in which anybody can hang out a PR shingle and say, I do PR and crank out crappy press releases.

Doesn’t mean that there aren’t. Agencies out there, or independent practitioners or people that you can [00:12:00] hire in-house who can write a great press release, it’s gonna get a lot of pickup and get a lot of the attention that you need. So you know, bad PR is bad. Don’t use it. Use good pr.

Neville Hobson: Ha. Yeah. Simple answer there.

Shall I agree with you? I think thinking about the reality of public relations practice compared to what what she writes about it does occur to me that again, reading her manifesto in particular, that it’s almost as if the kind of major thing a founder. Going direct is almost like telling the story in his or her own words, directly talking to influential people.

He or she may engage with, most of that kind of approach isn’t like that. Um, I’m thinking for instance, where and you actually touched on the point where you’ve got a, not you, not a potentially biased voice telling the story. Like you said, it was a sound, of course he’s gonna say this or that is someone who is [00:13:00] able to

Provide the nuances of the story tailored to the people they’re talking to which is, the relationships that you build, not just with other fou, with founders, it’s with journalists, it’s with influencers, it’s with industry analysts, policy makers who shape public discourse, all of that. So is a founder gonna have time to do all of that?

And there comes back to, I think a genuine reality. That this is not really the kind of job the founder of a startup could or should be doing. Even that’s why you have professionals. So you could apply the argument if you don’t need PR people ’cause he or she could do this themselves.

What about all these other areas in the business? The finance. What about strategic planning? You could do this all yourself. Unless you’re Elon Musk, of course. Then most people don’t do that.

Shel Holtz: I remember the Melbourne mandate from the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management 12, 13 years ago that put PR at the middle of the business because they understood.[00:14:00]

All of the issues that could weigh on a business and counsel the leaders about actions they’re going to take and what message that might inadvertently send and what kind of repercussions it, it might create. If a founder’s doing this on their own then there’s nobody there to say, wait a minute.

If you say that, then this could happen. They’re not experienced professional communicators, and again, it’s not a, it’s not a job where you just hang out a shingle and decide . Today, Hey, I think I’m gonna become a PR person. It takes practice, it takes experience. It takes work to be able to look at what a company is planning to do and anticipate what the feedback from various stakeholders is gonna be.

I just don’t think a founder’s equipped to do that. Should they be going direct? Yes. Yes, they should, but they should be doing it with counsel. And it should be balanced with paid and earned media.

Neville Hobson: Yeah. So if we take the manifest, going back to a manifesto, the section on communications, the founder’s job, you take that [00:15:00] literally as it is written.

You could pick holes in that. A big one would be in, in the event of. A crisis that erupts the communication that’s required from that the planning that goes into all of that, of course the monitoring, the paying attention, the nuanced messaging you might create, and identifying who you’ll deliver it to on a timely basis that you can’t do this.

I I’m. Pretty certain. She doesn’t mean it exactly like that, but that’s how it reads. Communicates to founders, they’re irreplaceable. They’re the ones who can do all the communication. They don’t need polished people or those with the. Right credential. So I’m not sure where she’s going with that argument, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense, it seems to me.

It, like I said, it’s worth a read to contrast that with what, if you’re in the PR business, how you see the role of public relations. I think though, one thing I would add to this is, to me this adds even more kind of pressure, [00:16:00] if you will, on . The, this whole issue we’ve discussed a number of times on the regulation of the industry, the licensing of practitioners where you could uh, sidestep being blindsided by bad PR people.

So it’s in that area too, it seems to me. But this is definitely not something a proce procedure. I would recommend to anybody to follow this line.

Shel Holtz: No, and I raised that whole situation about pr contributing perhaps to the fall of DEI by touting it when the commitment wasn’t there in the organization.

That’s cautionary we, we can’t engage in that kind of communication. I’m a full supporter of DEI, but if I were counseling an organization and saw that the leadership wasn’t really bought into it, I wouldn’t. Suggest that they make a big deal out of it publicly, and I think that’s what a lot of organizations did.

Neville Hobson: I agree. I-I-A-D-E-I hasn’t been a big thing over here in [00:17:00] the UK compared to the promise it has in the US and the kind of backed on it all. Certainly not that I’ve seen in mainstream media reporting, and certainly not what I’ve seen . Practitioners talking about on open platforms. But you are right.

What I’ve observed and this is mostly in the US is that there are numbers of things I’ve read about DEI initiatives and organizations where my first thought was. This is a PR activity they’re talking about. Yeah. It makes them look good. And in which case, yeah, no surprise, all this stuff is going on.

I dunno where this is gonna end up. Shell it seems to be going from bad to worse in terms of kind of de deprioritizing deleting even anything related to those three acronym letters. Don’t see that happening over here. But another interesting, as a kind of an aside to all of this is some US companies, I don’t have my notes at hand are not implementing what the parent company in the US is doing about DEI across a number of European countries.

That’s interesting. It seems to me, [00:18:00] because are we gonna end up with, severe battles going on between subsidiaries in different countries refusing to follow the lead of the parent? That’s interesting. May or may not happen, but it’s certainly something I’m seeing people talking about.

So it’s I, I. It is a tough one from a communications point of view. And if we go back to, it’s the founder’s job, go direct. You are the one who has to do all this. The founder of a startup is faced with a similar issue to communicate on DEI as the founder of a big global multinational corporation.

There’s an issue and you might be asked about what’s your DEI initiatives and how come you’re not employing this kind of people? Or how come you are employing this kind of people? What are you gonna say? That’s of course purely reactive. What about proactivity? About all of this? Yeah, there’s too many wooly holes in this.

That would make me very uncomfortable if I were having this conversation with a client saying, what about go direct? Should we ditch PR and and do all this ourselves? Although I don’t, I can’t imagine anyone asking [00:19:00] that question, frankly. Hel

Shel Holtz: Yeah. Oh no. My only concern is that people look at the blow back to DEI recognize that it’s partly because it was just a PR thing in the first place and say maybe this is right.

Maybe we do need to go direct and as true public relations, a council and I think it’s on the public relations profession to ensure that we don’t do that type of thing so that our value is not, tarnished by these kinds of mistakes. Yeah. Agree with that. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of four Media Release.

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