Cultural Erogenous Zones
Stop trying to change what people care about; bridge from what they already care about to you.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Lulu Cheng Meservey's core messaging doctrine: changing someone's worldview or passions is a heavy lift and almost never works, while connecting your message to an existing passion is a light lift. You identify the things your audience is already emotionally activated by (their 'cultural erogenous zones'), then build an explicit logical bridge from that passion (X) to your thing (Y). If no bridge exists, that audience is not yours and you should not spend time on them.
Origin
Coined and popularized by Lulu Cheng Meservey (Head of Comms at Substack, later EVP Corporate Affairs/CCO at Activision Blizzard) in her comms newsletter Flack. The canonical illustration she cites is Kamala Harris's Senate-campaign framing of K-12 reading standards as a national-defense issue.
Core principles
- 01You cannot manufacture passion in someone who has none — you can only redirect existing passion.
- 02It is your job to build the bridge from their X to your Y, not their job to care.
- 03'Build it and they will come' does not apply to messaging.
- 04Not everyone is your audience; identifying non-audiences saves resources.
- 05The bridge must be a real, defensible causal link — not a rhetorical stretch.
How to run it
- 1
Name the specific audience you actually need
Define the exact group whose behaviour change would move your business goal — not 'the public'. Be concrete enough that you could name individuals or publications they read.
Pro tip Cap the list at five or six groups; past that you are inventing work you will never finish.
- 2
Map what already lights them up
List the topics this audience is already emotionally invested in — the things they argue about, share, and organise their identity around. These are their cultural erogenous zones. Do this from observation of what they already post, read and fight about, not from what you wish they cared about.
Watch out Do not confuse what they say they care about with what they actually spend attention on.
- 3
Test for a real bridge from their X to your Y
Ask honestly whether there is a genuine causal or logical connection between their existing passion and your product/message. If there is none, mark this audience as not your natural audience and stop spending time on them.
Watch out If the bridge is fake, sophisticated audiences will smell the manipulation and you lose credibility.
- 4
Build the message as the bridge, not as an ad
Write the message so its first move is inside their existing passion, and only then walks them to your thing: 'If you care about [their X], then you have to care about [your Y], because [link].' Meservey calls this creating the API between X and Y.
Pro tip The bridge often needs a surprising fact as its keystone — the fact does the persuading, not adjectives.
- 5
Deliver it where they intellectually reside
Find the specific podcasts, subreddits, newsletters, conferences and accounts this audience actually inhabits, and place the bridged message there rather than in generic channels.
In the wild
Running for Senate, Harris faced the problem that few voters are activated by K-12 education — it polls as a 'mom' issue. Voters were, however, deeply activated by national security. So the campaign told those voters that enlisting in the Army requires a 10th-grade reading level, because below that you cannot read the Army Field Manual — therefore if you care about maintaining a standing army, you must care about middle-grade reading standards.
→ The framing converted a low-salience issue into a high-salience one for a defense-minded audience, and was memorable enough that Meservey was still repeating it verbatim many years later on this podcast.
When journalists wrote unfair or untrue things about Substack, the instinct was to defend the company. Meservey's team recognised almost nobody outside Substack cares that a journalist was mean to a startup — but writers care enormously about free expression and the right to build their own media platform without controls. So public pushback was framed around free expression rather than corporate vindication.
→ The stand landed with the people who mattered most (online writers) — Meservey's free-expression thread earned roughly 30,000+ likes among exactly that audience, and vindicated the company as a side effect.
Common mistakes
Trying to create a passion from scratch
Founders write a message so powerful they hope it will make an indifferent person suddenly care. Meservey says she has never in her life seen this work — it requires superhuman gifts. Redirect existing passion instead.
Leading with what you want vindicated
Arguing your own case ('this journalist is wrong about us') is a corporate motive nobody else shares. It has to be re-anchored in something the audience already fights for, or nobody engages.
Refusing to write off non-audiences
If there is no bridge between an audience's passions and your thing, they are not your natural audience. Continuing to court them is pure wasted motion.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders, comms leads and PMs at underdog startups who need a specific, high-leverage audience (writers, engineers, regulators, investors) to actually act — and who have no budget to buy attention.
Not ideal for
Genuinely mass-market commodity products where the message must be broad and the goal is reach rather than conviction.
From the transcript
“it's a huge lift to try to change someone's world view or their passions it's a light lift to take the thing you want to…”
“if you care about the future of National Defense and being able to maintain a standing army you need to care about middle grade reading…”
From the episode
Navigating comms and PR
Lulu Cheng Meservey (Substack, Activision Blizzard)