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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and we’re supported by Delve with the top-level context engine for comms. My co-host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Sean 00:27
On this episode of Attention Shift, we're talking all things Reddit with Anna Soellner. Reddit is my favorite place on the internet, and Anna is one of the most brilliant communicators I know. So prepare for me to totally geek out. During her almost nine year run at Reddit, which ended recently, Anna managed a successful IPO, more controversies than you could count, ownership changes, and so much more. We hear her perspective as she transitions into what next? But first, let's talk about what's going on in comms now and how all corners of the internet play into that. There has been a story that happened in the last couple of weeks. I seem to remember it had to do with a concert.
Allison 01:09
Has crossed my desk. BCV is an investor in the company, Astronomer, so I am going to recuse myself from this discussion.
Sean 01:15
Ah, Astronomer. I remember that.
Allison 01:19
I am looking forward to hearing what you two think about the situation and where to go from here. I'll take, I'll take some notes.
Sean 01:28
Let's just be clear, we're recording this like, a week or so in advance of the run date, and so there's still so much that could happen.
Allison 01:36
We are. We're, like, four and a half days into this. So, yeah.
Sean 01:40
They're like, somebody…. Hani, what's up?
Hani 01:46
Hey guys, thanks for thanks for having me back on.
01:48
Hani Jersey joining us, joining us back. And Hani. Hani, thanks so much for being here.
Hani 01:50
Yeah, inviting me back after my first time. Yeah.
Sean 01:54
I know it was, you know, Allison, and I had to have a conversation about that. But we decided. We decided, like, you know, there's a theme here, second chances, Hani.
Hani 02:03
I'm happy I made the final cut the first time.
Sean 02:07
Hani, as everybody knows, is one of our favorites. And also, you know, follow Hani on LinkedIn, follow his newsletter. But Hani is, besides being a brilliant practitioner, also is one of the few people who takes the time to really analyze, like, what's going on in coms. Who’s doing a good job, who’s doing a bad job, and come up with, I think, very thoughtful perspectives that I think go past, like the typical pablum on LinkedIn.
Hani 02:33
Well, I appreciate that, that kind introduction, and yes, I've seen, I've seen more bad than good as usual recently. But I do have a couple of thoughts about Astronomer, like basically everybody else in the country and probably most people in the English speaking world right now, that I'd like to share. And I actually think they've done some really good things in the wake of Coldplay gate. So.
Sean 03:02
But what did you see that was actually that you thought that was beneficial?
Allison 03:07
Well, by the way, I have a gun at, um, at Hani’s temple right now.
Hani 03:13
This is not, this is not pandering to get back on to future episodes of Attention Shift. I really do believe this. I mean, I, like everybody else, was gobsmacked when I saw that video and then everything else that came out about it, some real bad choices being made, but those are not in short supply.
Sean 03:30
And you're just talking about all the… all the LinkedIn posts about it, right?
Hani 03:33
Oh, my God, yes. I was caught cheating with my head of HR. Let me tell you how that will benefit my B2B software sales skill set, yeah, yeah. There were probably quite a few of those. But I will say, you know, after, after all the hoopla and the fake statement, which I gotta say, was brilliantly written, whoever wrote the fake statement did a really good job, because even I thought it was real and had to gag at the end when, when the statement actually blamed artists for causing a… for making a spectacle out of me making a spectacle out of myself. I thought that was really funny. But, you know, watching the company's response since then, particularly the new, I believe, interim CEO co-founder, Pete DeJoy put up a statement yesterday, I believe, July 21 on LinkedIn that's gotten a ton of traffic, about 4000 likes so far, that I thought was really, really well written. Allison, I don't know if you had anything to do with that or not, and I truly don't know that, but I thought it was really well written, because it did focus on the employees, and it did admit that they were not prepared to get this kind of media attention. And I think if they ever were to get this kind of media attention at this point in their, in their life cycle, it wasn't going to be for this. I don't think they could have guessed. But I thought he did a really good, balanced job of talking a little bit about the company, talking a lot about employees, and making a commitment to customers, that they've always been there for them. They always will be there for them. And I just thought it was a great way to turn the page on something that really had nothing to do with the company or the brand to begin with. As much as you can separate a CEO from a brand. That it was unfair to to taint Astronomer, the company, and the people that work for it by this incident or with this incident. And I thought he did a great job of turning the page on that.
Sean 05:35
I don't know why we're not talking about the real winner here
Hani 05:38
And who was that?
Sean 05:40
I mean, Coldplay. That's true. I mean, let's talk about a band that deserves zero relevance becoming like so tied with like the zeitgeist in the moment. Like, I mean, I have feelings about Coldplay, obviously. But they, but they. I mean, can you imagine like they were basically like on the fast track till irrelevance? I mean, sure absolutely they had their fans, otherwise there would not be, like, really significant attendance to their shows. Like, I get it, people like Coldplay, that's fine. But are they culturally irrelevant? Even the biggest fans, I don't think would say that.
Hani 06:15
Well, now, now Gen Zers is now who Coldplay is?
Sean 06:18
100%. 1,000%
Hani 06:20
Just swamp their their Tiktok feeds.
Sean 06:24
1,000%. And so, I mean, I, you know, I don't think they did anything necessarily like to me, they kind of played out the story, and they, like, you know, there's a couple things they did their next show, but it's enough of a meme. They don't really need to do anything. But, like, Absolutely, they're the big winners here.
Hani 06:38
I mean, my first response when someone asked me, oh yeah, what do you think of this? I said, well, it serves those two right for going to a Coldplay concert.
Sean 06:45
That was exactly my that was, that was my text message too.
Hani 06:49
I know we're music snobs. Sean, we can admit it proudly.
Allison 06:54
I will say the brand memes, some of them, I had no choice but to stand the one RyanAir did. That was like, What do Coldplay and RyanAir have in common? Separating couples. I was like, no choice but to appreciate that one. Damn it.
Sean 07:11
That's how you're just like shit. I need to really click like on that.
Hani 07:17
Yeah. Well, it will be interesting to see, though. Now what I'm paying attention to is not the fallout from all of this. Like I said, I think that Pete DeJoy did the best job he could of trying to turn the page, and that that LinkedIn post got so much media attention, which I think says something about LinkedIn, could probably apply the same lessons to Reddit, which you guys are going to do later on. Go owned and let the media pick up on that, but what I'm paying attention to now will be, what do they do with this newfound attention? Because I think that they have this could be one of the best things that ever happened to the brand, if they handle it correctly. Allison, you probably have some ideas that I'm not going to ask you what they are.
Sean 08:00
They may have already happened by the time this airs.
Hani 08:006
They may have already gone by the time this airs, yeah. And then the second thing is, where, when does, when does the former, now former CEO, make his reappearance on the public stage, and how? I'm putting the over/under at nine months. And I think there are so many podcasts out in the manosphere that he has his choice of platforms to go to. So we will see. But me down for about March.
Allison 08:29
Maybe on episode 30 of Attention Shift.
Hani 08:33
Exactly. I'll come back and talk about it when he reappears. Yeah.
Sean 08:35
Perfect.
Allison 08:37
I mean, I have to say, as soon as something goes viral, it becomes so challenging to recon, regain control of a narrative. And one place where many things have gone viral is Reddit, which we'll talk about later in this episode. One of the things Anna says on the episode that I really resonated with me was around listening. But what do you do with that listening? Right? Like you have to communicate natively to the platform that you on, you're on. And the number way, one way I see people fuck up on Reddit is by ignoring sort of Reddit parlance, and the way people speak there. And each subreddit has its own parlance. Like, I'll admit this is, you know, I feel like I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous, but like, I'll admit that I have a problem with true crime podcasts and true crime Reddit. I'll admit that I have a problem. And if you were to go on those channels and not know all of the little acronyms and things people are saying, it's immediately it just feels foreign. And like a place that scares me, that's sort of Reddit adjacent, at least in my mind, is Discord. And I've never spent time there, and I certainly wouldn't go there and immediately start yapping. I would, I would try to understand first. Do you guys have any other thoughts on fringy places on the internet and how to how to go there?
Sean 09:46
This is actually well timed. And I think Reddit, Reddit came out recently with a new product that basically enables brands to do deeper… what’d they call it, community listening? And their pitches basically kind of social listening was one Dotto, and now community listening is two, Dotto and and what you can do with that. And I think that, you know, the interesting thing about Reddit is that I think brands and people tend to look at, what are people saying about me? How are people talking about my thing and my product, and what's going on with me? And then if you really get deep into Reddit, just as a normal citizen, going on true crime stuff, or my case, like baseball stuff or music stuff or whatever, you get to see kind of like, where things like, where conversations are going to go, and what people starting to get angry about. Like, you know, just like, as an example, on the, you know, San Francisco Giants stuff, you can see, like, where fans are kind of really getting agitated and what they're going to be pushing for next. Or like, kind of like, where, kind of like the mindset is and is going. And I think, like on social, it's kind of like in the moment. It's like, what are people talking about right now and what's today's snapshot? I think Reddit really provides an opportunity to see where things are gonna happen next. You know, it's kind of blown my mind in thinking about, like, the power of Reddit, because I, again, I'm a huge fan of Reddit. You'll hear me say that to Anna like 100 times, but I do think it's a place, and Discord probably too, is a place to kind of really go deeper and kind of see better trends. And you know, now there's tools that enable that.
Hani 11:27
Totally agree, especially on that snapshot of the moment, versus watching people's opinions evolve over time. I've had, I've had some experience with Reddit as a platform, as a communications advisor, and I think, you know, table stakes, you have to listen, because that's where people… you got to go where people are, and you have to listen to what they're saying. Brands that aren't doing that aren't doing the most basic due diligence that they need to be doing about their brand, because your biggest evangelists and your biggest haters are already there talking about you, or talking about the space that you're in. I have advised one brand in particular that I'm not going to name, but this is a brand that has had some rough news lately, and I just had one conversation with them. They wanted my take on, what should we do about this? Because people are attacking us on Reddit. And my response was simply, well, are you involved? Are you there? Are you responding to anything? Because they're, you say they're spreading falsehoods about you. Okay, well, what are you doing about it? Right? And yes, I do think that you have to speak their language if you want to be heard and you don't want to be attacked even more. But you have to go into it. Brands have to go into it. They have to have a thick skin. They have to go into it knowing that for most of the people that read whatever they're talking about, it's not going to make a difference in terms of that person's opinion about them. That's okay, like, if you can move the needle a little bit. Who was it that said 80% of life is just showing up? I think it might have been Woody Allen. Another problematic person, I suppose.
Sean 13:06
Because FDR, Woody Allen, you know, Shakespeare.
Hani 13:12
Yeah. You gotta, you gotta show up.
Allison 13:12
It’s probably in the bible.
Hani 13:13
And Reddit is now an absolute required place to show up, if you're a brand.
Allison 13:17
Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, you know, one of the things about that that's so interesting to me is you're lucky to be in a position that people care enough about you to talk about you on Reddit. I work with a whole bunch of early stage startups who would love to be criticized on Reddit just to be there. And so, yeah, you're kind of, you're kind of lucky to even be in the discussion. If you're not, you know, trying to just listen and understand where you fit into the macro trends that people are talking about is probably the way to go.
Hani 13:45
It's an exceptionally valuable platform for all of those reasons. And the other way that I'm thinking about it now, I think, and I'm certainly not alone in this, is, how can you start to put good, compelling, useful content? It's got to be useful if you want to participate in a Subreddit and be heard. But how can you do it in such a way where you know that that information is going to get crawled by large language models?
Allison 14:12
How do I end up in that AI overview at the top? Given the timeliness of this and everything we've talked about today, we're really excited to have Anna Soellner on Attention Shift. She can tell us how she managed untold issues over her tenure there. And she's going to give us a bunch of tips on how brands can succeed on Reddit, like the ones we just talked about, and much more. She's also going to talk about the Reddit IPO, and I was super intrigued by that, and the way that they brought Redditors kind of in on the financial windfall that the internal team was subject to. And so, you know, our friends at Delve, the AI powered insights engine for communicators, ran some searches around their IPO and found that 76% of the discussion around it was positive to somewhat positive, 13% neutral, and only 11% was negative or somewhat negative. And honestly, the strategy around it, the stock price speaks for itself. Reddit is today, and at the time of this taping, trading at 148 bucks versus 50 bucks on the first day closed. So, company has been off to the races and comms can't take total credit for that, but I think Anna, you know, had a significant hand.
Sean 15:11
Anna, so awesome to have you. Let's just jump right in. A million years ago, in 2016, you joined Reddit. I think it's like hard for people to zoom back in time sometimes. But Reddit, like Twitter, not so much to Twitter. I totally experienced but even with the time I was at Twitter, like there were so many different chapters of that company, and I feel like Reddit is similar in its chapters, and you join in a pretty turbulent time. There was a bunch of CEO changes. There was kind of reputational issues. There was a community that obviously represents the product in so many different ways, but there was this kind of some trust issues and but you were like, I want to do this thing. I want to jump in and work with this organization. Why did you join Reddit when it was about, what 150 people in 2016? What made you take that leap?
Anna 16:04
That is an interesting question. And I have to say I don't have a quote/unquote typical tech comms background, though I do think more and more tech companies are, you know, hiring folks like me. So I came from two different industries. One was politics/policy communications. I worked for a think tank for a long time. I worked in government for a senator in an administration and even overseas. And then I had spent a good deal of time working in the entertainment industry, specifically for the Motion Picture Association, and I knew from the beginning the power of Reddit, and that is because I had worked in two industries that had been deeply touched by Reddit. First, I'd worked in government, both on the nonprofit Think Tank side of the house, but also on the hill in the administration, et cetera. And then also I worked in the entertainment industry. I'd worked at the Motion Picture Association for a long time, and in both of those instances, both on a positive way, and, you know, maybe what they would say on the film side of the house in a negative way. And really experience the power of the Reddit community to move messages to get their point of view across. And so it was so obvious to me that this would be an incredible opportunity. I love democracy, and to me, Reddit represented the most democratic example of human connection and communication on the internet. I had spent time in Hong Kong working in the pro-democracy movement, and to see the way in which communities on Reddit were able to lift up their voices was something that really spoke to me. And even though there had been all kinds of challenges, both on the kind of corporate side in terms of leadership, as well as on the community side, it seemed to me to just be really the place to be at that moment in time, and it wasn't going to be boring. That's kind of like my first mantra when I want to work in something is I don't want to be bored. And Reddit is never, ever boring.
Sean 18:22
So I assume you never had a boring day there.
Anna 18:25
No, not really.
Allison 18:27
I believe that.
Anna 18:29
But it also in, like, beautiful and hilarious kinds of ways. I think a lot of communicators, when they first hear Reddit, they're like, Ooh, wow, that must be tough. But you know, there was so much evolution. Evolution is a word that we use at Reddit all the time to kind of talk about the way in which we approach problems, etc, and so. So yes, there were some really tough moments, but there are also hysterically funny moments and touching moments, etc.
Allison 18:59
You've called it a really human place on the internet, and I really feel that in what you're saying, and that sort of inherent optimism in the way you talk about Reddit. And it's got a lot of wonderfully empathetic communities dealing with, you know, medical conditions, or this, that, or the other thing. And then you've got sort of your weirder, edgier communities. Do you see comms as a way to make sense of that for people who come to Reddit? Because it does feel like so many different groups coexist in one place.
Anna 19:27
Yes. So fairly early on in my tenure, as we were thinking about how to address that very question, we knew we needed a quick one sentence description of the ethos of Reddit, and what we landed on was that Reddit is the most human place on the internet, and I totally stand by that statement to this very day in the era of AI. It was a terrific encapsulation of an earlier time on the internet. I'm speaking to the time that Sean referenced before, you know, 2016, 2017, 2018, when there were lots of questions about, you know, what's going on on the internet, etc. Because everything on Reddit was created by humans, particularly then, and so it meant that Reddit was really a reflection of what was going on, of people's psyches. And so we never tried to run away from that. We obviously understood that some things were, you know, were not going to be appropriate for Reddit. However, we were going to approach it that these are human thoughts and human feelings and human expressions, and so therefore, not always illegitimate, though sometimes not welcome on the site.
Sean 20:51
I mean, I have so many questions about this piece. I personally find this so fascinating and like, how do you manage like, open communities like this? I think it feels like to an outsider that, wow, that'd be relatively easy. Basically, you have all these like people doing all the work for you and doing all this great stuff on your platform. But the reality is that they are doing all these things, but they're also defining Reddit in ways that are singular to them. And so you have all these different groups who are defining what your product is, and you have an organization and a company that also is trying to take hold of, kind of that ownership and definition of this product, and there's always natural tensions that exist there. Meanwhile, you're also going to this place where you're trying to build and grow and go from, you know, a small number of employees to a large number of employees and a relatively modest valuation to now $26 billion valuation, post IPO. Like that is not an easy trick. So how did you see kind of that transformation over time? And I think how did you stay consistent to kind of that core belief of this human place on the internet and how did that kind of transcend over that time?
Anna 22:09
I would say there are a couple of different ways in which we approached it. One is, we always knew that there were going to be questions about some salty thing or some, you know, not something you'd want to bring up at the dinner table type of thing that was happening on Reddit. However, there's all these, like, incredible, amazing resources that Reddit was providing people, and so therefore, we wanted to make sure that those stories also got told. So, fairly early on, when I was building the team, we brought in consumer communications so that we could really hunt around and find incredible Reddit stories that needed to find a home. And in communities, frankly, that the general public didn't necessarily know existed, but were incredible. So I have this memory of this amazing basically, five-page spread in Allure magazine. Sadly, Allure does not exist as a print magazine anymore, but it was all about the makeup communities on Reddit and how the makeup communities on Reddit were serving all these different audiences who had different kinds of needs. And so that, to me, was very emblematic of the approach that we were taking, that we were trying to broaden the understanding and therefore the appeal of Reddit, and that how comms actually played a very important role in expanding out the kind of brand opportunity that Reddit provided because of the kinds of people that it was attracting, the kinds of problems it was solving for people. And so that's just like a small example of one of the approaches that we took.
Sean 23:58
Yeah, that's super cool. I mean, it's similar to the early days of Twitter, when we were trying to define what is Twitter and what is this kind of noisy thing that exists? And we really focus, start focusing on different verticals. And I remember early on, a very similar story was, you know, we got the one of the founders of Twitter on the cover of Billboard magazine, and it was like, Yes, this is like Twitter and music, right? And then that began to shape kind of how people view Twitter as like being connected to these different communities and kind of different interests that people have really interesting. At the same time you have pretty significant business pressures, and this evolution where you're going into this IPO, and I think you took a pretty unique approach as a company to, I think, be inclusive of this community during that process. How do you think that kind of helped build trust over time?
Anna 24:50
Well, I will say that the company has an incredible community team who basically, you know, works directly with moderators, with others, just regular community members, helps to foster communities, especially in markets where we may not be as active, in order to both build trust, allow them to get the kind of resources they need to make their communities flourish. And so I will say that there was a really strong partnership between communications as well as this community team, to try and put together what we wanted to be a real community based IPO. Now, I will say that we did a lot of social listening, and let's not forget that our IPO kind of came, it was not meant to be years after, but there were some market issues that caused a delay in our IPO. When we first confidentially filed, it was not long after Wall Street bets. So I think there was a lot of curiosity, there was a lot of skepticism, there was a lot of concern, depending on the audience that you were talking to, about how kind of quote/unquote legitimate Reddit could be or was. But in some ways, Wall Street bets was incredible because it opened the eyes to, particularly the financial services community, as to the power of Reddit. I talked earlier about, you know, I think the entertainment industry, and particularly the studios, became very aware of the power of Reddit in terms of fights around things like net neutrality or going way back to SOPA and PIPA, but the financial services industry didn't necessarily understand the fundamental powers of the Reddit community until something like Wall Street bets happened. And for better or for worse, they certainly became aware of what a bunch of strangers on the internet could accomplish. And so it was net-net, like very positive for Reddit, but certainly it was wild to see Reddit on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal and, you know, on CNBC for days and weeks on end, when that was going on.
Allison 27:12
And how did the team react to that change? For context, I worked at Conde Nast around the time we had acquired Reddit, and the company sort of didn't know what to do with Reddit, was my read on it. It turned out to be an incredible investment for them. But at the time that there was this sense of like, okay, we really understand top-down media, but, and we're trying to understand social media, but we don't, we don't, necessarily, you know, get it yet. And then obviously the company grew up, and you went through, you know, IPO, after all of that, all that building and time, how did the team adjust to that change from sort of being this band of rebels to being this Wall Street darling?
Anna 27:47
So the Reddit IPO was a lot of fun, and it was a lot of fun for a number of reasons. I think primarily, we tried to make it the most community centric IPO that we possibly could, and that meant providing allocations for our moderators and our users to as many folks who were eligible. Unfortunately, because of SEC rules, we couldn't broaden it out beyond US users, but it was really important to us that they felt and they could benefit from the IPO because as we and as Steve says over and over again, Reddit is nothing without its communities. And so that was how we approached the allocation. So users got the same price as all of the bankers and, you know the market makers, if you will, that we priced it at a reasonable amount. So we priced our IPO at $34 which we believed would still be accessible to a large number of users. And then that we also engaged with the community as much as we legally could, leading up to and then after the IPO. So to this day, once we do earnings, we invite questions from users. We set up a special community of users who are interested in how the business is doing. So you know, Reddit takes questions from users during our analyst calls, and then Steve, our CFO will take questions later on, after the call has wrapped, to pick up any questions that weren't answered directly on the analyst call. And then finally, even in terms of ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, it was the first time it was done, but it was, it was great. We did not have a bevy of executives up on that balcony. We had Snu, our mascot, who is this alien traveling across the Internet universe, ring the bell to be representative of all Redditors that they were the ones who were actually kind of the front and center of this transaction. And that it was meant to be representative of them in that moment.
Sean 30:04
It's very cool. And so, I mean, just be, just get very tangible here. If you were a moderator, and you're basically given options, if you held on to it to this point, you're buying a pretty nice car.
Anna 30:15
They weren't given options. They were given the opportunity to buy at the IPO price.
Sean 30:20
If they bought at the IPO price, and they held on, they probably could buy a nice car at this point.
Anna 30:27
Yes, there were stories about that later on, particularly because there were some real run ups on the stock. So there were some amazing stories of people paying off their cars or paying off student loans and so that's something that was really meaningful to us.
Allison 30:43
It's a great reminder that you can post your way to success. You know, so people think you can't, but you can. Anna proves it.
Anna 30:52
If you were working at Reddit in 2015, 2016, you were not doing it because you anticipated that there was going to be an IPO around.
Allison 31:01
Doing it for the leg of the game.
Anna 31:05
I mean, it really like a lot of those folks were there simply because they loved Reddit. They had a personal connection to it. And so I certainly recall at that, at that time, you know, recruiting all of that. And Steve has been… Steve, our CEO, has been very explicit about talking about those periods of time where, you know, it wasn't easy, and it took convincing to get people to join the company who weren't real hardcore Redditors, but with the evolution, with the opportunity that we had to kind of help shift that narrative, it allowed for a professionalization of the workforce, and, you know, it allowed us to kind of get to the spot that the company is at now. I will joke that when I was hired and when I first met Steve in some of the interviews, I said, okay, so you're at the stage where you need a person like me. And he was kind of like, Oh no, do I? Really? And… but I think you know, over time, it became clear that the service that comms provides both to amplify the good, to tamp down the bad, and to be a defender in the public square of the company.
Sean 32:23
Well, I think he really did need you because, you know, one of the reasons why I wanted you to have you on, and it's something I told you at a conversation that we had many months past. But I always get asked this question, who's doing a good job in comms? And, you know, about six months ago that came up, and I really, like, put some thought into it, because I don't honestly always have a great answer when people ask me that. And I really, you know, maybe I was on Reddit that day, or maybe something just popped up, but I really started thinking about Reddit and the job that had been done there, because of, like, the basic fact that over the last four or five years, basically since the dawn of Covid… Well, and even since the beginning of the first Trump administration, frankly, there's just been like a great dissolution of trust with so many different social media platforms and social platforms generally on the internet. And I feel like conversely, Reddit trust has increased and the value of the platform has increased during that very turbulent time. And what kind of discipline or what about Reddit allowed you to basically, kind of counterbalance, kind of just the general trend and the vibe of the internet over that time?
Anna 33:44
I think there were a number of actions that we took in order to help build trust, but by no means, Sean, was it always a picnic, and there were moments certainly, where the community did not agree with some of the approaches that we took. But we tried to explain as best as possible our point of view, why we were doing the things that we were doing. And sometimes, you know, it was, it was actually a bit ahead of the curve, which I am proud of, ultimately. And I think, you know, hindsight being 2020, we were certainly in the right in those decisions. So if you want specific examples, you know, in more recent times, we were very out front with regards to data and our user data and how it was being used and scraped, particularly by AI entities, and so I think we were amongst the first, really to articulate that we were going to be locking things down. Now, in the process of locking things down, it did certainly ruffle feathers, because of the fact that some third-party tools were going to become more restricted, or that they would need to renegotiate terms, some of whom were open to that, and others were not. And so that definitely ruffled some community feathers. But I think if you were to, you know, fast-forward to today, now everyone is doing what we had done, you know, at this point, years ago. And so, because I think Reddit is so tapped into the zeitgeist, we saw what was happening and acted swiftly and to the benefit of both the company and we believe, the community, because we wanted to take actions. For example, if Redditors decided that they wanted to delete comments or content that they put on the site that would not be ingested by AI companies that we had partnerships with. So those were the kinds of mechanisms that we built in. You know, Reddit is so special because you actually get to, kind of, if you pay attention, you can see where the ball is moving. And so there have been a couple of those instances where we took action early on and articulated it to the community. And I think it really allowed us to have, as you say, increased trust with the community.
Allison 36:22
Yeah, that makes sense. You know, these are really deeply human problems you're talking about, where humans are doing human things and having human feelings about it. And so it goes back to your original point. But as the internet goes from being more human to being more synthetic with AI and this advent of AI slop, I had so many brands come to me and say, Allison, you know, we've got to crack Reddit, because that's what the LLMs are crawling, or if we want to show up in the AI-powered search box at the top of Google, like we have to be on Reddit more. And so do you worry for Reddit that Reddit is going to become more synthetic as a result of this and dilute itself? And how can brands continue to play on Reddit in a… in a way that is human? Or should there be brands on there at all?
Anna 37:01
There have been brands on Reddit since the beginning. Going back to one of the reasons why I joined, one of the most fascinating things that I found, particularly with entertainment industry, in terms of how they were using Reddit. So on the corporate legal side of the house, they hated Reddit because people were sharing files and telling people where they could find pirated movies or there's issues.
Allison 37:32
If there’s anything lawyers hate, it’s humanness.
Anna 37:34
Exactly. But then on the creative side of the house, they were mining Reddit and doing a lot of social listening on Reddit for who were kind of maybe obscure superheroes that had actually these huge internet fan bases that they should explore for their next film. What are books or sci-fi novels that people are totally obsessed with that have these large untapped audiences? And so to me that was fascinating to see how one entity for this entire industry that is, you know, kind of one of the preeminent alongside tech industries in the United States, how they were harnessing the power of Reddit in both very positive and maybe on the kind of more negative legal ways. But going back to your question, at the very baseline, you… as brands explore or dip their toe into the Reddit waters, they have to listen and see how they're showing up. And that is something that I, you know, have been talking about ad nauseum for the entire tenure I was at the company, is that Reddit is the largest focus group that you've ever seen that's totally free. You can go on there and just read and feel and just get a sense of what you're doing right, maybe what you're not doing right, and get real time feedback on your product or your services. And so at the bare minimum, that is something that I think brands should be doing. They sometimes, you know, wince a little bit because they're like, do I really want to understand what strangers on the internet think? But I think you were… would be in a world of hurt if you didn't go in there and understand.
Sean 39:25
Once they understand, and let's just say they're willing to take the next step and move, listening to like, talking or action, or whatever you want to… activating, whatever term you want to use. Like, what are, what are your recommendations for people making that dive?
Allison 39:44
So there's a couple of different ways in which you can approach it. So there's the organic way. So it's been very interesting. So Comcast, for example, via XFINITY, and this has been going on for years. They actually started, not unlike how some brands on Twitter actually execute on customer service. XFINITY did it similarly on Reddit. So that is a very simple way of just, you know, reading and then responding and, you know, setting up your accounts in order to be verified, if you will, to be able to just directly do customer service on the platform. And so that's kind of, I would argue, sort of baseline. And then obviously activating through advertising is another mechanism by which, you know, people find great success. And so the most important thing to consider, though, is where you're showing up and how you're showing up. And so that's why the listening is so essential, right? Because you know, your brand may be very well a community on Reddit, but… or your brand is showing up in another, like kind of larger community that touches on the, you know, on the products that are inclusive of your brand. So thinking about how you're showing up, and also, what's the tone of that community? How do they speak to one another? Just so that the folks who are acting on your behalf on Reddit are thoughtful in how they're showing up, so that it doesn't come across as inauthentic, but it comes across as real and genuine.
Sean 41:17
What are some examples of types of executions that you've seen to be successful?
Allison 41:22
So it's interesting, because there's a combination of approaches that people have taken, either through Reddit advertising or organically on the site. So there are some brands who elicit questions. You've seen a lot of campaigns where they elicit questions from the community to address. So one of my favorite campaigns that I saw on the site, and this was, this was a few years back, but Lagunitas, the brewery, actually asked Redditors around what kind of qualities they would be interested in in a new IPA. And the community responded, and they legitimately made this beer. And so I remember, when we… they launched it, I gathered up a whole bunch of colleagues, and we actually went, drove out to the brewery in Petaluma, I believe, is where their HQ is, and enjoyed these fantastic beers that Lagunitas had made after getting feed…
Allison 42:24
What did they call the beer?
Anna 42:25
Oh my gosh, I apologize.
Allison 42:27
Big mistake not to call it r/IPA.
Anna 42:28
They did… they did? Hold on, I bet I can find it. The flavor profile, the name, it involved a dog.
Allison 42:40
Okay, all right. Well, who can be mad at a dog-named beer?
Anna 42:44
But that was like an awesome example of just Lagunitas wanting to directly engage with the Reddit community, especially the beer-loving community, the communities that are on the platform and actually building out a legit beer to celebrate the community. That was, that was a fun one.
Allison 43:02
That's like listening and action, like, I think a lot of people listen and don't act on it, and so actually bringing it to life makes a lot of sense.
Anna 43:10
Yeah. But, you know, it doesn't have to also be that difficult, right? And I think listening is so essential, particularly in communications. And I would say that that was something listening and reading, that was something that I did very early on, and to find the journalists, the podcasters, et cetera, who were interested in Reddit or who it was clear that they probably spent time on the site. And so cultivating them, because I knew if they had experience on the site—and this could also work in the inverse, they maybe had too much experience on the site—but that to me was a way in which we could begin to build relationships. Because Reddit had not really had communications for a while before I joined the function. And so it really was very much a retail experience in those early days, in cultivating folks who ultimately became very interested in the site because of their personal use.
Sean 44:17
I find, like, kind of like, the whole transformation story of Reddit so fascinating, but I but I also think, like, obviously, Anna, as you stated a bunch of different times, you have community… you have community function within Reddit. You have obviously an executive team. You have all different facets of things that sit… that comms sits next to and around. Then you obviously have this very vibrant platform. You know as someone who, kind of, who worked in government and then worked for the MPAA, you know that many of those roles are very kind of, I don't know, like you're, you're, you're focused on a message, you're very, try to be very consistent. I'm curious, like in the messiness of Reddit over this time, what did it teach you about what comms can and what it can't control, and kind of how you gain comfort with the lack of control?
Allison 45:10
This is an example of where Reddit is very zeitgeisty. We're in a very fractured media environment now, and so there's a lot of things that you can't control, because maybe you haven't heard of a podcast that is either rallying around your brand or not. Doing the exact opposite. And that is not dissimilar to the Reddit experience. It… Reddit can be very humbling in the sense that as a communicator, I can never pretend that I know everything that's going on with the community, but that I will try and represent it as best as possible. So whenever some kind of issue would pop up, I… you know, you really in the classic Reddit way, you really have to do your own research to understand what, fundamentally the issue was, why it was an issue, etc. And so in many ways, it's a little bit like constituent service, if you go back to that mindset, because you have to really dig in if you are going to be effective in addressing what the problem was and assuming knowledge will get you nowhere fast. By the way, I did look up the name of the…
Allison 46:35
Of the beer! I'm gonna go buy one.
Anna 46:40
It's called Updoot. Updoot like as in an upvote. But yes, so it was Updoot.
Anna 46:45
At least there's some Reddit deep in there. I appreciate that. And obviously you mentioned you're stepping away for a bit from Reddit. I don't blame you. It sounds like some portion of your time was spent being a human fire blanket, but obviously, happily, a lot of it was spent planning future and sort of the big picture, which is, which is great that you were able to do that. In situations where I've worked on things that were complex, like that, I felt like I couldn't ever get out of the mode of like problem solving, and into the mode of strategy. So it's really impressive what you did. But when you think about the future of comms and look ahead, what is the biggest opportunity or risk you see for communicators right now, or both?
Anna 47:25
I do think this fracturing of I think for folks who came up in comms and think they can do things the way that they've always done them, or have the assumption that those older strategies will work. That is where you're going to run into a lot of problems. And this is communications across all sectors. I really believe in the power of listening and to get that vibe check. You know, it's something that Steve's always said where, you know, sometimes controversially, where he said, Well, you kind of can get a sense of, you know, who's going to win the next election, or who… you know what the what's going on with the economy, if you're paying attention to Reddit, because you get a sense of, is there momentum? What kind of issues are people raising? Are they concerned? Or are they speaking with confidence? So that sense of listening is so essential right now and to get out of bubbles. That's something that I think, as a communicator, I have always really had a tougher time with but also genuinely tried to broaden my aperture of where I was ingesting news. I still go on X because I want to see what's going on on X because it's, you know, it is… It is what it is. And I try and listen to podcasts that I, you know, is not necessarily my demo, if you will, because it's important to get a feel for what's popular. So I will gen… I will often try and scroll through, like, what are some really popular podcasts that are popping off on different topic areas, just to get a get a contrarian perspective from maybe you know what, what I've been typically reading or absorbing.
Sean 49:30
This nicely brings us to our last question that we ask everybody. What is capturing your attention? Out of all this kind of noise that's out there, what is capturing your attention right now, Anna?
Anna 49:41
So I will say, and this is probably kind of a… I don't want to be a downer, but one of the reasons why I have taken this break is to help out my parents, who are getting older, and have, you know, all kinds of health issues and. Just, you know, they've gotten hacked and all this. And so for all the beauty that AI it's been foretold to bring, in reality, it is still very human. So for all the hype that's out there, it's clear to me that the human to human connection and interaction and execution of day to day life is very real, and so that's something that I am feeling very directly as I read about all these different jobs that are going to evaporate, or all these ways in which life is going to get easier. We're not quite there yet, so I'm just… I think a bit of a reality check is important in that sphere.
Sean 50:47
Very cool. Well, we're so happy to have you. Thank you so much for joining us. Good luck in your next chapter, and good luck in this current chapter of human reality.
Allison 50:56
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift, for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at delve.news and Mike Worldwide at mww.com. Please like and subscribe to Attention Shift on Apple Spotify or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode.