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There’s a very specific moment in the life (death?) of every company announcement.

Everyone is gathered around the conference table (or scattered across 14 Slack threads). 

Comms has drafted the announcement. 

Product has weighed in.

Marketing has made some edits. 

Legal has circled back with one tiny change that somehow requires rewriting the entire third paragraph. 

An executive has added a sentence that contains the words “excited,” “innovative,” and “industry-leading.”

At this point, the announcement has been through so many rounds of review it has legally become a different person. 🫠

Eventually, the stars align, the heavens open, and everyone agrees. That’s one good lookin’ announcement.

There’s just one little problem…nobody stopped to ask whether anyone outside the company gives a shit.

We’ve gotten very good at making sure an announcement is accurate, on-brand, legally sound, and approved. We’re much less good at making sure it’s interesting.

It’s a nasty habit in PR  – most communications are built from the inside-out.

When you spend six months building something, it’s pretty hard not to think it’s a big deal.

Your AI feature isn’t just an AI feature. It’s the AI feature. There were roadmaps. All-hands. Product meetings. GIFs shared. Slack emojis created.

Internally, it’s a major milestone. But externally, it’s basically just Tuesday. And man, Tuesday’s already got a lot going on.

Companies are not wrong to be excited about what they’ve built; the problem is confusing internal importance with external relevance. Sometimes you’re Leslie Knope unveiling a new park bench to a crowd that absolutely did not ask for a park bench.

There’s a difference between:

PR’s job isn’t just to get the first one into the world, but to find the path between the first to the other two. As much as we may wish it were true, no one is waking up thinking, “Huh, I wonder what that one startup launched today.” 🤔

They wake up wondering what’s changing in their industry, their job, their culture, their lives, and what the hell it means for them.

That’s the group chat PR needs to enter.

Think about the average communications approval process… You’ve got comms drafts; reviews from marketing, product, executives, legal; whoever’s boss’s boss. 

Some random person asking for “I don’t know…it needs something; make it punchier.”

Everyone in that process has a job. But there’s someone from the checklist missing that needs a spot at the table: the audience.

…Oh god, not literally, obviously. 😳

You don’t need to invite a random person from Reddit into your product launch meeting.

But someone needs to think about the outside perspective. 

Think reality TV producers. A Housewife might spend three weeks planning a beautiful charity gala and think this is the story. Meanwhile, the producers (and the audience) are wondering when someone will finally throw a drink.

PR needs someone asking the same basic question(s):

We’ve built approval processes (boy, have we) around protecting the company, but we never really go past “Does this accurately represent the company?” when we also need to think “Would anyone want to read this?” 

Two wildly different questions.

PR is gonna need to get a little uncomfy and ditch the emotional support checklist.

Companies tend to see themselves as the story, so they start with we: “We raised $40 million”; “We launched a new platform”; “We hired a new CEO”; “We added AI”.

But no one likes a date who spends two hours talking about themselves. Eventually you're going to excuse yourself to the bathroom and simply never come back.

PR has to remember the same thing.

💡Audiences don’t necessarily care about the company event itself; they care about its relevance.

Let’s take a looksie at Figma’s IPO. 

The interesting story wasn’t simply that Figma filed to go public, but what the filing said about the IPO market, the appetite for tech companies to go public, and the fact that Figma was heading toward the public markets after its proposed Adobe acquisition spectacularly fell apart.

Figma wasn’t the entire story but the evidence of a larger story. This 👏 distinction 👏 matters!

Companies are usually most interesting when they stop trying so hard to be the main character.

Not every announcement needs a Taylor-Travis-level news cycle.

The company can be the proof point.

The product can be the example.

The executive can be the expert.

The data can be the evidence.

The story itself, though, should be bigger than the company.

Some of the best corporate storytelling does exactly this.

Microsoft could spend its time telling us that Microsoft Copilot has a bunch of features. Instead, their Work Trend Index shares research about how work is changing, how people are using AI, what employees are doing with these tools, and what that means for the workplace.

Yes, Microsoft is obviously benefiting from being part of that conversation, but they’re staying humble. There’s no, “Hey! Look at our product! It’s so cool! We’re so impressive!”

Instead, they put something into perspective for audiences, showing them a way to understand XYZ new thing via what’s already happening around them.

Same with Adobe’s Creative Trends reports. They could just tell us the new updates to Photoshop and be on their merry way.

Rather, the report talks about where design is going, what consumers are responding to, and what’s happening in the creative industry instead of just promoting the tool.

It’s helping people understand the world the tool exists in, and putting it into context like this is going to make it travel way further than any announcement ever could.

Shared like this, it gives journalists a trend to cover, executives something to comment on, audiences a reason to care, and, conveniently for you, the company gets a much more interesting place to stand.

Now, relax. This doesn’t mean every company announcement needs to become a 2,000-word think piece about the collapse of Western civilization.

Sometimes you really did just open an office. You have walls now! Yay!

There’s probably a more interesting question hiding underneath it, though. 

Ask yourself, “What changed? Why now?”

Maybe the company’s rethinking physical space as hybrid work evolves; maybe the office is designed around a new way of collaborating; maybe the company’s moving into different markets and hiring in places they previously overlooked.

The office isn’t necessarily the story, but how your company works just might be!

It’s the mental move PR needs to make. We’ve gotta figure out which lunch table we're actually sitting at.

Before writing an announcement, answer these questions first:

Then – and only then – figure out where your company fits and what story it can be threaded into.

As PR professionals, we need to stop focusing only on how to make an announcement bigger. That’s not what makes it go viral.

Focus on what bigger story the announcement is part of. You want PR to be audience-centric, not company-centric. 

One starts with the company and works outward; the other starts with the world and asks where the company fits. Which lunch table it should sit at. The Art Freaks? The Jocks? The Plastics?

Announcements don’t make companies memorable.

Context does.

Ash & Lizzy

Who's going where and why it matters. Not just job shifts - power dynamics, layoffs, and who's headed out.

👀 AI scooped human reporters on a story about OpenAI and hacking. This will be a trend to watch for sure.

🧳 Jeff Beer has left Fast Company to join ALTO, an independent ad agency, as its Editorial Director.

🧳 Christina Cheddar Berk is now a Senior Editor at CNBC, covering stocks and investing.

👀 Deirdre Bosa and Jasmine Wu are starting a news show devoted to AI.

🧳 Emily Forgash is now at Bloomberg News, covering US stocks, equities, and investing.

🧳 Edward Menicheschi has stepped down as President of TheWrap.

🧳 Cade Metz will be changing beats at The New York Times to cover AI.

🧳 Leital Molad is joining The Wall Street Journal as Senior Director of Shows to shape the outlet’s multimedia storytelling.

💔 Longtime tech editor Darryl Taft died unexpectedly after a short illness.

🧳 Erin Woo has moved to The Wall Street Journal to cover Google.

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