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The Hype Handbook — Chapter-10: Embrace Theater and Drama
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A HYPE STRATEGY #10 EMBRACE THEATER AND DRAMA All business is show business. —JAN CARLZON imee Semple McPherson was the most successful preacher of her day—if you define success by the number of people paying attention to her and the number of dollars she brought in. She provided the template for modern televangelists and megachurch pastors like Joel Osteen, Pat Robertson, and Rick Warren. But before McPherson found God, she had wanted to be an actress. Her religious fanatic mother put the kibosh on that idea, and McPherson dedicated herself to spreading the Good Word. Prior to founding her world-famous Foursquare Church in Los Angeles, McPherson traveled across the country in the 1920s trying to make her mark. Living during that time, she faced plenty of challenges to her ambition, not the least of which was that she was a woman. On her way to the western United States (from her birthplace of Ontario, Canada), she ended up, at a certain point, in Lake Forest, Illinois. It was there she founded a church that would
eventually give her the launchpad to bigger—and more lucrative— endeavors in the Golden State. A few days after she arrived in Lake Forest, McPherson dragged a chair to a busy street corner, stood on it, and struck a rigid pose. Soon people started to gather. She remained frozen and silent. More and more people came to see the woman who looked as if she had fallen into a cataleptic trance. Some tried to rouse her. Some began to worry. Some called others over to look. Still, she remained where she was. It was disturbing. It was strange. But the crowd stuck around. People had to see what would happen. Then, suddenly, she snapped out of her stupor. She cried out, “Quick, follow me!” And she darted off in a straight-line shot. The crowd followed her as if her trance had been transmitted to them. She ran through the front door of the local mission hall. The now large crowd went right though the same door. She preached her first sermon to them soon thereafter and kept that congregation for as long as she remained in Lake Forest. Theater as we know it emerged in Athens during the sixth century BCE from its roots in a religious ritual dedicated to the god Dionysus. To the ancient Greeks, it was not mere entertainment. As a society that valued rationality and control over all else, Athenians saw the need to provide a valve through which citizens could periodically release their most primal emotions. At the same time, the city fathers viewed drama as a powerful mechanism for getting the citizenry to open up to challenging ideas and beliefs. In Aimee Semple McPherson’s time, there was no shortage of fiery preachers standing on street corners railing loudly about heaven and damnation. Following their lead would have been like putting up another flashing sign in Times Square. Instead, McPherson set herself apart using two key facets of drama—tension and mystery. According to a BBC article on the fundamental elements of drama, “Tension is a growing sense of expectation within the
drama, a feeling that the story is building up towards something happening. Without tension in a scene it is hard to keep the audience engaged with what is happening so the work may be flat and dull.” It is this ability to remove the flat and the dull that gives theatricality its power, even when applied far beyond the boundaries of the stage. So much of our lives is predictable. Of course, all of us receive our fair share of unexpected jolts (some more than others), but for the most part—especially in our bubble-wrapped modern reality— we know what we’re going to encounter day in and day out. Our shock when a world-shaking event occurs—like a pandemic or economic collapse—is indicative of how unfamiliar we are with these kinds of events compared with what our ancestors experienced throughout most of their lives. Eric Hoffer was a dock worker who spent all his free time reading about and studying what made people join mass movements and dedicate their lives to them. He published his findings in a short volume called The True Believer, which President Eisenhower would eventually cite as one of his favorite books. One of Hoffer’s great insights was that those who cling to and spread new movements with the most feverish intensity tend not to be, as many of us believe, the poorest and most hopeless elements of our society. Rather, it is those who regularly experience persistent, unrelieved boredom that are the most easily drawn to new religions, new political movements, and new causes. McPherson gave parishioners a way out of their boredom by ratcheting up the mystery (Why did this stranger appear like this?) and tension (When is she going to finally move?). If you go to see a play (or watch a movie or TV show), and you figure out the ending a quarter of the way in, you probably won’t recommend it to your friends. The same holds true for any movement. The same holds true for religions that take off. The same holds true in business.
Ask yourself honestly, How often do you surprise your clients, customers, or prospects? Fortunately, you don’t need to stand on a street corner to do so. Try thinking of the least expected point of view related to your field. For instance, if most people in your space are touting authenticity, can you come up with a compelling reason to embrace artifice? If “outside-the-box thinking” is what everyone in your industry is talking about, ask yourself: “What if we thought inside the box?” If you’re in manufacturing, are you able to conceive of some benefits to being more inefficient than everyone else? For a long time, it was taken as a given that making better software was a function of programming it to do more. If you were designing a new word processing software, spreadsheet tool, or project management system, you would work to give it additional features and functions. Why would anyone, the thinking went, want to buy a tool that did less? The founders of a web development company called 37signals saw things differently. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson developed a project management tool called Basecamp for their internal use. When clients began asking to buy it for their own purposes, Fried and Hansson shifted into selling Basecamp full- time. Today Basecamp is one of most popular and lucrative pieces of software in its category. And it has fewer features than almost any other comparable product on the market. From very early on, Fried and Hansson promoted a philosophy of technology and business as something that could be an antidote to the prevailing givens in their industry, which they felt caused great harm. In a tech-startup world in which six-day weeks and 10-hour days were viewed as the easy way out, the founders preached streamlined, efficient work schedules. They followed through by giving their teams every Friday off in the summer. In the midst of a climate where falling asleep at your desk was a badge of honor, Fried and Hansson encouraged their employees to work at home
(years before catastrophic global events made it a necessity). And as we’ve already discussed, they advocated for technology that had a few strong features and functions rather than always adding more with each update. The founders of 37signals (later renamed Basecamp after their main product) created drama by promoting bold views that were the opposite of what everyone in their orbit was likely to expect. They blogged about their views, gave interviews about them, and wrote books about them. With everything they published, readers wondered what these guys were going to say next. Fried and Hansson embraced their roles as gremlins in the machine. If there was a sacred cow, they found it, slaughtered it, and ate it with a generous helping of A.1. Sauce. As a result, word about their ideas, and products embodying those ideas, spread like crazy. By all accounts, Fried and Hansson believed everything they said. But the partners were also consistent in their roles as provocateurs. They kept people guessing. They made people angry. They generated mystery and tension. HOLDING BACK In the mid-seventies, a rash of posters appeared on lampposts and construction sites all over New York City’s Lower East Side. On them were printed, in a ghoulish cartoon font, a single phrase: PUNK IS COMING! At the time these posters appeared, “punk” did not have its current connotation. It was a word that, for most people, conjured gangsters and prison talk. And that was one of the reasons the posters almost immediately generated chatter and buzz. What was this “punk?” Why was it coming? Who was it coming for?
When it finally got out that Punk was a magazine, people in the publisher’s target audience of downtown bohemians snatched it up the moment it became available. It soon became so influential that it would lend its name to an entire subculture and genre of music. Roughly around the same time, a hospital sprang up in the town of Cleveland, Georgia, seemingly out of nowhere. It was called BabyLand General. There were nurses, cribs, and incubators. But rather than live babies, every crib and incubator held a dimpled, puffy-faced doll, each of which was available for “adoption.” The dolls were called Little People and were an immediate local hit. By the 1980s, founder Xavier Roberts had changed the name to Cabbage Patch Kids. And Cabbage Patch Kids became, famously, the biggest toy phenomenon the world had ever seen. According to the official (and endlessly promoted) narrative, Roberts had, as a child, discovered the kids in a magical cabbage patch behind a rainbow. He built BabyLand General Hospital to nurture them until they could find homes with loving families. Every kid was unique—with differences in hair, skin, facial expression, dimple position, and so on. Cabbage Patch Kids sparked runs on store shelves and even caused riots. I was alive during the time and remember it well. Yet I never recall hearing that Xavier Roberts was an art student with entrepreneurial ambitions or that the dolls’ individuality was made possible by the recent development of computerized assembly-line processes that allowed for randomized customization. That would have killed the mystery. The trend today among marketing gurus is to advise people to put everything out there all the time. Always include your web address so people know where to find you. Always include a call to action on every email you send out so people know what they will get if they “Click here.” And always make sure people can find you and your bio on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. There’s certainly a time and place for all this. But not every time and every place.
Can you imagine what the “Punk Is Coming” posters would have looked like with “www.punkmagazine.com” on the bottom? Do you think it would have been more effective if kids everywhere had had access to Xavier Roberts’s professional résumé? Sometimes it pays to hold back. Let people wonder what you do at first. Keep them in the dark about how to reach you, so when they finally find out, it will come as a delicious relief. Mystery builds anticipation. Anticipation builds desire. And desire ultimately creates sales. MASTERING THE ART OF STAGING Amway has annual revenues of close to $9 billion and operates in more than a hundred countries. The company makes so much money that it has a major sports arena named after it. And yet Amway’s individual products have only a fraction of the brand recognition of those produced by their biggest competitors. Compared with Tide, Red Bull, and Binaca, Amway’s SA8 laundry detergent, XS Energy Drinks, and Sweet Shot breath spray are simply not household names. This is not a shortcoming. It actually speaks to the sophistication of Amway’s marketing. Instead of trying to compete head-to-head with the gargantuan ad budgets of consumer product holding companies like Procter&Gamble and Unilever, Amway invented “multilevel marketing”—a structure in which revenue is driven by a series of contract sales representatives who recruit other contract sales representatives, with each recruiter getting a percentage of the money brought in by all the salespeople underneath them. And to ensure their sales reps maintain the level of excitement and fervor needed to play their roles, they rely on theatrical staging. At a typical Amway rally (of which there are many), hordes of sales reps file into an amphitheater an hour before the programmed
event begins. Loud music fills the hall, while huge video screens flash slogans and symbols in time with the beat. Excitement grows as the rows fill up. At once, a seemingly spontaneous chant emerges from the crowd. One contingent in the crowd shouts “Ain’t it great!” Another answers “Ain’t it though!” The chants build, working the crowd into a frenzy. Right as the anticipation of the crowd peaks and threatens to tip over into impatience, the featured event begins in earnest. The host and hostess emerge onstage, and those in the crowd who are not already standing spring to their feet, and a standing ovation explodes across the venue. This pattern continues throughout the evening. What makes the event so fascinating from a mass psychology perspective is the discrepancy between the perception of spontaneity that the events engender in their participants and the reality of how much choreography is involved. For example, high-level leaders of their downlines stand in strategic positions in the aisles and rows near the members of their groups to make sure they rise to their feet at the right moments. Those who don’t comply are informed how bad this makes their group look, and the misstep hardly ever occurs more than once. The light, the sound, and the us-versus-them dynamic (see Hype Strategy #1) combine to create a powerful effect. When speakers ascend the lectern to paint pictures of the sports cars and banquets and mansions that reps will obtain if they only work the program longer and harder, the emotional resonance of this heaven on earth is near impossible to resist. The net result of attending one of these rallies is that the audience members emerge with a renewed sense of fanatical energy around going out and making their dreams come true through the Amway system and worldview. Amway is massive, and so are the theatrical spectacles the company creates. But staging doesn’t have to be massive to be effective.
Real estate agents are masters of small-scale staging. They understand that while people talk about houses as if they have innate value, potential buyers who are allowed to see a property as it is normally lived in will not be willing to pay as much for it. This is why the most effective agents spend a great deal of time creating theatrical illusions. They use lighting, drapery, perfectly arranged place settings, new artwork—whatever it takes—to generate a dreamlike vision of what domestic life could be like if the buyer were to choose this and only this new home. Everyone involved understands logically that it’s an illusion, including the prospective buyer. But the subconscious still cannot resist the dream. Be conscious of staging, no matter what circles you play in. Of course, many of us already do this on a basic level. We make sure to meet clients at our offices (if we have them) instead of a park bench. We might invite important connections to a fancy restaurant instead of a local diner, even if the latter would make more sense for our present financial condition. But most of us are not anywhere near as conscious or consistent as we should be in approaching this vital art. When you do a Zoom call with a client, how much thought do you give to what will show up in the background? If the cluttered spare room you use for a home office is what the person on the other end sees, does that project success and competence? In fact, have you even thought about what you’re trying to convey through the environment you allow people to find you in? If you’re in a creative business and the artwork you surround yourself with in your office is whatever boring stock abstract print the interior decorator picked out, what do you think that says about the originality of your tastes? If you work in an industry where there have recently been some high-profile cases of unethical behavior, is meeting clients in an office full of harsh florescent lighting and cellblock-gray cubicle partitions the wisest choice?
In business, we need to drive people to take certain actions on a regular basis. When customers or clients or partners don’t buy from us or back out of a deal, they usually provide logical reasons. They say they can’t afford it, or the timing isn’t right, or it’s “not a good fit.” The real reasons for their decision, however, almost always happen well below the level of awareness. You can shift this dynamic back in your direction through the use of staging. Theater people have understood this for eons. Hype artists have understood it for ages. Many businesspeople still don’t. This gives you an advantage. Seize it. ALTERNATING DOSES OF PLEASURE AND PAIN Over the course of his career, Tony Robbins has provided coaching to Fortune 500 CEOs and US presidents, has given countless multiday seminars where he speaks nonstop for 10 hours at a stretch, and has taught millions on topics ranging from relationships to money. His reputation has recently taken a hit in many quarters in the wake of a negative chain of events beginning with a public confrontation with a defender of the #MeToo movement. However, regardless of how you feel about him as a leader, coach, or public figure, it is hard to deny his ability to get attention and drive enthusiasm among his followers. His rallies, loud gravelly voice, and weird sideways clapping all play a part in creating an addictive persona. But of all his theatrical tricks of the trade, it is arguably his fire walks for which he is best known. Robbins claims the objective of his seminars is to break down his participants’ mental patterns so they can emerge as ultraconfident beings with the power to achieve their greatest dreams. It is in this
spirit that his seminar participants strip off their shoes and socks and march barefoot over a track of burning-hot coals. If you ever get the opportunity to talk to a Tony Robbins fan who has attended one of these seminars, ask them about their fire- walking experience. I’ve done so, and the descriptions I’ve received invariably sound like something akin to a religious conversion. The level of intensity I encountered during these discussions interested me so much that I researched what might be really going on. In doing so, I happened upon an academic paper aptly called “Fire-Walking and the Brain: The Physiology of High-Arousal Rituals,” written by a cognitive scientist named Dimitris Xygalatas. Not only does this obscure study explain a lot about why Tony Robbins places so much emphasis on fire walking, but it also contains lessons for people who need to build a following and get members of said following to buy from them (again and again and again). The primary subject of Xygalatas’s study is a community of Orthodox Christians in the Greek village of Agia Eleni. The group is called the Anastenaria, and for hundreds of years, it has held a Festival of the Two Saints, which many in the mainstream church have condemned as heretical. During the festival, the Anastenaria engage in a week of religious processions, music, and ecstatic dancing. Then comes the main event. Devout participants clutch icons, strip off their shoes, and walk over a track of burning-hot coals—often scalding the soles of their feet in the process. Despite the pain and cost involved, the event’s popularity has grown every year, with people from all over Greece descending on Agia Eleni to take part. The event’s strange appeal has attracted the attention of researchers, and a number of them have interviewed participants over the years. Xygalatas reviewed this body of research. As a result of doing so, he concluded that “many of [the participants] perform fire-walking without any specific reason, but later come up with an explanation for it.”
Xygalatas categorizes fire walking as a high-arousal ritual, which he describes as an experience that “can stimulate the production of endogenous substances in the human body . . . [and] can lead to increased release of endorphins. Endorphins can affect emotion and motivation.” High-arousal rituals also increase the production of dopamine—the brain chemical associated with craving and addiction. By persuading someone to take part in a high-arousal ritual, a leader can literally stimulate the production of mind-altering chemicals. Furthermore, these brain chemicals benefit the leader above anyone else. As Xygalatas explains, “Endorphins can produce subjective rewards on a brain level, and dopamine can invest them with a feeling of significance. . . . This in turn provides participants with sufficient motivation to maintain and transmit the ritual.” In other words, fire walking makes people feel they are involved in something life-changing, whether or not any change ever actually takes place. There’s an old maxim about what a writer has to do to craft a compelling piece of fiction: “Put your characters up in a tree and throw rocks at them.” As professionals, we often assume our efforts should be aimed at making people feel better, but the most magnetic professionals learn to seed the pleasure they deliver with doses of discomfort. When Andy Warhol threw his Exploding Plastic Inevitable event in 1966, an immersive multimedia happening that inspired much of what would become known as club culture, he would continually observe how the crowd was responding to the music, strobe lights (the event was the first to use them in such a setting), and live performances. If he noticed the crowd simply enjoying themselves for any extended stretch, he would immediately introduce a discordant sound into the mix. Warhol knew that if his event delivered only fun and relaxation, attendees would forget about it soon after they went home. It
would lack the dramatic tension that would keep them wanting to come back for more. Pleasure is anesthetizing. A mix of tension, discomfort, and a little bit of pain keeps people focused; it gets them hooked. This concept applies well beyond the worlds of art and entertainment. Think about top keynote speakers—the ones who get hired to give presentations for the biggest fees at the most prominent conferences and get the fattest Fortune 100 consulting gigs. Regardless of their subject matter, these professional “thought leaders” invariably inject whatever constructive or inspirational messages they are there to convey with doses of doom. The world is changing faster than ever before, and only a few of us will be able to keep up. Look at yourself in the mirror if you want to understand the source of your problems. Technology will make millions of jobs obsolete. If you don’t do what I say, one of them will be yours. All these sentiments serve to make you squirm before relieving the tension. If it is hard for you to develop this habit, reframe the concept. Remember that inflicting this kind of pain is something your customers, clients, and prospects want you to do, even if they don’t know it. CASTING AND DIRECTING We each see ourselves as the protagonist in our own drama. Whether we realize it or not, we go through life picturing ourselves
overcoming obstacles to reach our goals, battling adversaries, and aligning ourselves with great causes. And we do all of this in the eyes of some unseen audience that judges our action on how it plays out in the grand scheme of things. If you think getting people to buy your products and services is difficult, imagine what it takes to get thousands (or millions) of people to willingly sacrifice their lives for an abstract cause. Yet that is what certain charismatic political leaders have been able to do throughout much of history. To get to the bottom of this phenomenon, Eric Hoffer studied the radio speeches Winston Churchill made during World War II. As Hoffer describes it, “The people of London acted heroically under a hail of bombs because Churchill cast them in the role of heroes. They played their heroic role before a vast audience—ancestors, contemporaries, and posterity—and on a stage lighted by a burning world city and to the music of barking guns and screaming bombs.” Instead of crafting logical arguments, hype artists unfurl great tableaus of conflict, heroism, courage, belonging, and meaning. And while the lights and bombast and framing of theater are sure to help, the best among them can make it happen with words alone. According to Steve Jobs, being a Mac owner wasn’t just about having a better computer—it was about choosing a life of creative artistry in opposition to the gray hordes of consumer culture. In Gary Vaynerchuk’s view, entrepreneurship isn’t just about finding a way to make a living and controlling your time; it is a quest to prove wrong all the teachers and bosses who are constantly trying to make you settle for a life of mediocrity. And of course, Amway isn’t about selling detergent and breath freshener to friends and neighbors. It is about becoming part of a grand drama in the cause of self-sufficiency. Identify your own grand cause, your own great drama. If one doesn’t already exist, invent it. This is the essence of theater. It is
also the essence of hype. Putting It into Practice • Build anticipation whenever circumstances allow. Rather than blurt an answer out when people ask you a question, refrain for a few brief moments. Not only will this help you come up with better answers; it will lend you an air of mystery that will attract people to you. • Pay attention to staging. Whether you are speaking to an audience of hundreds, hosting a virtual meeting, or meeting with a new connection for lunch, plan your setting and choose your props. • Make your prospects, customers, followers, or fans a bit uncomfortable. In the midst of all you do to make them happy, inject a few “hard truths” they “need to hear.”