Where do Reddit and comms intersect?
Talking Points highlights the topics, trends, and technology, defining the media and communications sectors.
Where do Reddit and comms intersect?
Last month, we saw a sudden spike in new subscribers—why? Because a user shared Talking Points in the public relations subreddit.
With over 70 million daily active users, we’ve always appreciated Reddit as a powerful platform. But experiencing its ability to drive rapid awareness and meaningfully contribute to our KPIs first-hand got us thinking: what role should Reddit play in our work as communicators?
It's a platform many of us already use in our daily lives—as a hub to connect with others who share similar interests, get advice, and much more. And of course, we find ourselves often appending “Reddit” to the end of a Google search in hopes of finding a truthful and real review of a service or product. We’re far from the only ones doing this, either–one user even described Reddit as “one of the few places you can read an actual human thought.”
And that behavior is being increasingly formalized: large language models (LLMs) are pulling directly from Reddit to inform how they answer questions, further intertwining the platform with the way people discover and evaluate information online.
AI search is growing rapidly, too–underscoring its importance for communicators and marketers. While still a drop in the bucket relative to traditional web search volume, data shows age-old avenues of search discovery–like Google–is increasingly being encroached on by AI. Brands need to understand how they’re showing up in AI search results and how to influence them, while startups like Profound are developing software to tackle this growing challenge.
Known for its anonymity, deep subcultures, and fierce resistance to corporate intrusion, Reddit might seem like an odd fit for PR or strategic comms. But it’s where the most honest conversations about brands and public sentiment are happening, with many consumers–ourselves included–interacting with it as a truth hub.
So, where does Reddit actually fit into a communicator’s role?
One of Reddit’s most powerful use cases in communications isn’t content distribution, it’s intelligence gathering.
David Johnson-Igra, who founded Scribes to help executives create thought leadership content, tells us Reddit can function as a real-time sentiment scanner. “It’s a platform that can directly engage your customers,” he explained, “and that’s actually not considered against the ethos of Reddit. Being a participant is inherent to the platform—as long as you're being sincere, transparent, and not overly promotional.”
He points out how Reddit’s structure enables communicators to:
Identify early signals of reputational risk
Monitor how a message or campaign is being received
Pinpoint users’ interests and listen to feedback
Study competitor reactions and industry sentiment
Reddit is a focus group you don’t have to pay for—if you’re willing to do the work of listening and interpreting.
When something goes wrong—an outage, a bad story, a blunder—Reddit is often the first place people turn to vent, especially as these communities tend to represent a product or brand’s core audience. For communicators, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity.
While at 8tracks, a community for creating and sharing music playlists, Johnson-Igra had built relationships with a group of power users, many of whom actively used Reddit as a distribution channel for their mixes. Ahead of a crisis moment that would disrupt the user experience–such as a major partnership dissolving–he would reach out to these users directly to share the news ahead of time and answer any burning questions.
By engaging them early, 8tracks’ users were better equipped to act as informal ambassadors when the broader community reacted, helping clarify the situation and ease tensions on Reddit as the news spread.
“Not only did it make our users feel like they were a part of the company—basically as ambassadors—but then when the news came out and started hitting the fan on Reddit, they were the first line of defense… Our messaging was getting proliferated by not just us.”
Keith Nieves at Sonos followed a similar playbook. When the company faced backlash for an app redesign, he engaged Reddit users directly—not as a spokesperson, but as a community member. That trust didn’t happen overnight. It came from showing up early, responding often, and treating Reddit not as a marketing channel, but a community lounge.
The temptation with any new platform is to treat it like a stage. But Reddit users punish brands that show up just to broadcast. Instead, communicators should view Reddit as a strategic lever in three key areas:
Crisis comms: Engage transparently in high-stakes moments. Reddit rewards sincerity and speed.
Reputation management: Track sentiment trends and identify friction points—before they become headlines.
Thought leadership: AMAs, subreddit participation, and direct Q&As can deepen credibility when they’re rooted in honesty, not talking points.
There’s been a lot of hand-waving in marketing about the value of community. But in communications, community isn't something you build—it’s something you earn.
Brand strategist Lara Kristina’s research comparing the Sephora subreddit to its official forum showed that consumer-led spaces are often more active, engaged, and trusted than brand-run platforms. The key difference? Peer-to-peer interaction.
As Kristina put it: “We do not have a community if it’s just brand to consumer and consumer to brand.”
On-Record with ESPN’s Alexa Philippou
Alexa Philippou is facing more competition than ever–and that suits her just fine.
The ESPN women’s basketball reporter, who is gearing up for the start of the WNBA season later this month, is at the center of one of the most-talked-about cultural moments in sports: the surge in popularity of women’s professional leagues, not just in hoops, but volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, and more.
Philippou, a Baltimore native, didn’t see this coming when she signed on with ESPN in February 2022 after a three-year stint covering UConn women’s basketball and the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun for The Hartford Courant. But she’s found herself at the heart of the storytelling around a watershed moment for both the sports industry and the media that cover it.
“The demands internally have just kind of increased, and it feels like there's more attention on what we do,” Philippou said of ESPN’s women’s basketball reporting. “We're approaching it with the same work ethic that we always did, but it definitely feels like there's more eyeballs.”
From League One Volleyball’s inaugural season success to the momentum of the recently launched Women’s Lacrosse League, the ongoing expansion of the National Women’s Soccer League, and more, women’s sports is having a moment that you can trace back to well before the days of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese.
Well-known personalities like Michael Voepel (also of ESPN), Doug Feinberg, and Mel Greenberg have been telling women’s basketball stories for decades individually and carved a path toward what we’re seeing today: dedicated beat reporters across multiple high-profile publications, with around a dozen outlets adding dedicated women’s sports reporters, including USA Today, Front Office Sports, and more.
“It's fantastic to see that there's been more competition, more full-time women's sports reporting and media roles,” Philippou said. “I think that only elevates everyone's game, because more competition means it brings out the best in other people and other reporting.”
Along the way, Philippou has found herself making the transition from newspaper reporter to regular TV spots, just as the professional league she’s covering is getting more national airtime than ever before. That spotlight also makes it even more important that Philippou and her colleagues remain objective observers, even as so much positive momentum and fervor overtakes their sport.
“It's a hard conversation to have, because I think there are people that are in the space that care so much about women's sports, women's basketball, and don't want to see them attacked or held down in a way that's unfair, in a way that historically has happened,” she said. “But if we're advocates, then we're not doing our job as journalists.”
So, what’s missing? Analytics-based reporting, Philippou says, has become a staple of men’s basketball and is an area of opportunity in the women’s game, too. There’s also room for new perspectives and coverage that goes beyond the court, such as ESPN colleague Katie Barnes’ reporting on LGBTQ+ athletes and black voices in the game.
All of this is supported by a growing, yet unsated, appetite for these kinds of stories, across multiple women’s sports leagues. From 1.25 million people tuning in to this year’s WNBA draft, to the 2026 launch of the first second-tier women’s soccer league in the U.S., the groundswell of support for women’s sports remains one of the most important stories in the industry.
“I feel like every time I open an app, I'm finding a new story,” Philippou said. “And it's always about some new women's record, interim attendance or viewership, or new leagues being formed… Between the media investment, and hopefully the investment from corporate sponsors, and all the important indicators that make these things work like fan engagement and attendance, things will continue to go in that direction.”
How digital culture turned ‘A Minecraft Movie’ from bust to blockbuster
When "A Minecraft Movie" underwent review cycles ahead of its release, critics did not hold back.
Reviewers called the film everything from “the worst film of 2025” to “an absolute disaster even gaming fans will hate.” Yet, that didn’t stop it from blowing cinemaphiles’ expectations out of the water–claiming the title of Hollywood’s highest-grossing movie so far this year, earning a whopping $816 million and counting.
A major contributor to its box office success? The viral “chicken jockey” trend causing teen moviegoers to wreak havoc in theaters around the country by screaming and throwing popcorn during key Minecraft references. Younger generations–who’ve historically abandoned seeing movies IRL–are now flocking to theaters for a chance to experience the trend first-hand, proving digital culture’s tangible impact on the broader zeitgeist.
Younger consumers are eager to participate in trending online discourse, and brands are equally trying to jump on board. As of last week, Warner Bros. Pictures embraced the chaos with the launch of a “Block Party Edition” of the flick, inviting fans to scream as loud as they’d like–despite theaters’ previous warnings about unruly behavior.
Chicken jockeys aside, it’s impossible to disregard gaming IP’s equally as influential role in driving the impressive real-world turnout. We’ve seen this phenomenon prove true time and time again, from the success of The Last of Us to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”
As the best-selling game of all time, Minecraft’s adaptation was set up for success from the start with its multigenerational appeal and global recognizability. Its decade atop the charts has become part of the fabric of gaming culture, but that cultural ubiquity also comes with added pressure to get adaptations right.
Gamers are notoriously skeptical consumers. They aren’t shy about voicing a critical opinion, and as online natives, their commentary can spread quickly through social media. Given how beloved Minecraft’s IP in particular is, director Jared Hess anticipated potential criticism, even bringing on popular gaming creators on set as consultants in hopes of appeasing long-time players.
This proved true when the movie’s trailer was released last year, resulting in a nearly immediate influx of criticism on visuals and tone from fans who thought it inaccurately represented the game. Sound familiar? Because of this, gamers latched onto the few phrases or moments of the trailer that they did feel were authentic adaptations, and hence, the obsession with “chicken jockey” was born.
The shocking turnaround success story of “A Minecraft Movie” reiterates digital culture’s massive influence on real-world engagement, spending, and consumer behaviors. While it might not be winning any Oscars, it won the Gen Z and Alpha popular vote–and is potentially on track to be the highest-grossing gaming film adaptation yet as a result.
What we’re working on ☕
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Story ideas, feedback, or just want to get in touch? Email us at contact@jsapartners.co or drop us a line on LinkedIn.