HYPE STRATEGY #6

Even the more reprehensible magicians have generally shown a truer understanding of what constitutes human happiness than most rulers and conquerors.

—E. M. BUTLER

Three thousand years ago, the land we now call Iran was ruled by a people called the Medes. The Medes organized themselves into six tribes, each of which was responsible for a different societal function. The first five are largely forgotten. The members of the sixth were called the magi.

The magi were the priests of the ancient Median civilization. Historians aren’t certain about how they came to occupy the role, but what is clear from the archaeological record is the extent to which the Median kings depended on them.

Whenever a king was faced with a vital decision—such as whether or not to go to war—he would summon one of the magi for guidance. When called, the magus in question would—swathed in robes embroidered with strange symbols and bedecked in amulets and medallions—make his appearance. In exalted tones he would ask the king about the issue at hand.

Once this phase of the consultation was complete, the magus would withdraw. He would study the stars. He would draw up charts. He would recite incantations. He would confer with the gods.

After he had completed this extensive ritual, the magus would appear again before the king. With great ceremony, he would unveil a series of proclamations. The king would listen intently. Only then would he act.

This arrangement worked well for many years. Until it didn’t. At some point, one of the long-subjugated groups of the Median Empire, the Persians, defeated their masters in battle and ended their reign. The Persian leader, Darius, declared himself king and embarked on the slaughter and enslavement of the vanquished ruling class, as was customary at the time.

Now you might think this would have been the end of the magi. Not only were they a powerful part of the Median aristocracy, but their forecast about the outcome of the most important battle in Iranian history up to that time was completely wrong.

But rather than getting themselves thrown into history’s mass grave, the magi would somehow go on to maintain—and even increase—their influence as advisors under their new Persian rulers. Without so much as a battalion, they managed to conquer what would become one of the greatest military powers of all time.

In her 1947 book The Myth of the Magus, Cambridge professor Eliza Marian Butler held up the Median magi as the first known example of a type of figure that has amassed great power in virtually every civilization. This is the magician—a word that, in fact, takes its name from the magi of ancient Iran.

What is it, asked Butler, that has set the magician apart from other kinds of leaders and power brokers in a society? Her conclusion was that in order to cope with a world full of uncertainty, human beings have evolved a deep need for guidance from people they perceive as having access to the realm of the miraculous. Magicians, whatever they happen to call themselves in a particular era, satisfy this need.

But the question remains: How do human beings assess what experiences and phenomena are, in fact, miraculous?

Experimental psychologists Michael R. Ransom and Mark D. Alicke conducted a series of experiments in the year 2000 to determine the answer to precisely this question. The pair gave participants a string of scenarios describing improbable events—ranging from winning the lottery to recovering from a serious disease—but with slight variations in the specific details. Then the experimenters asked the subjects to indicate which of the scenarios were miracles and which were merely chance occurrences.

Of all the factors Ransom and Alicke observed, there were two that determined whether a subject saw a certain scenario as a miracle. One was the degree of surprise. For example, if the character in the scenario had found the winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk on a route they had never before taken to work, subjects tended to consider that more miraculous than someone who simply bought a ticket in a nearby deli.

The other main factor was “worthiness.” In other words, if a child recovered from a terminal disease and then grew up to become a hero who saved a bunch of orphans from a burning building, subjects were more likely to see this as a miracle than if the child grew up to be an average Joe.

Ransom and Alicke called these signifiers “miracle heuristics.” Despite what we might admit to ourselves, we have a deep need to believe in miracles as a way to find certainty and meaning. At the same time, we don’t actually know how to distinguish miracles from that which is simply random and improbable. To resolve this tension, we subconsciously scan the landscape for easy-to-digest codes that tell us we’re in the presence of the miraculous. Great hype artists understand this, and they use it. They deploy miracle heuristics to exploit the deep human attraction to magic in all its forms.

What follows are some specific ways true masters of hype manufacture miracle heuristics to attract attention, build fervent followings, and achieve outrageous objectives. Follow their lead, and you’ll be able to do the same.

THE POWER OF MIRACULOUS FEATS

In 1987 Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Records, received a call from a stranger named Per Lindstrand. It had occurred to Lindstrand, after having observed the exploits of the risk-taking entrepreneur in the press, that Branson would make an ideal partner in a venture Lindstrand had been planning for much of his adult life.

Lindstrand explained to Branson that no one had ever crossed the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon. There was a good reason for this. The kind of hot-air balloon that could withstand a journey of this duration would have to be massive, something that, as Branson would later describe it, “could swallow the Royal Albert Hall without showing a bulge.” Because of the size required, however, the farthest anyone had ever flown one of these contraptions was 600 miles.

Unfortunately, to cross the Atlantic Ocean they would have to fly 3,000 miles. And if that weren’t enough, the balloon would have to surf along violent wind currents as its main method of propulsion. The two of them would be all by themselves, with nothing but shark-infested waters below them and with no real method of backup if something should go wrong. Oh, and five people had already died trying to make the crossing.

Branson’s reply was, “When do we start?”

Branson (along with Lindstrand) ended up traversing the 3,000 miles. Not only was this the most anyone had every traveled by that method, but it was the longest anyone had ever spent in a hot-air balloon. Before that the record was 27 hours, and he spent three times that amount of time in the air. He was almost killed on multiple occasions by tangled cables, dropped fueled tanks, and near drowning. At one point, his partner was lost at sea for a full hour.

Ultimately, however, Richard Branson, with Per Lindstrand, became the first person to ever cross the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon.

The reason I know about this story in such detail is because Richard Branson made sure of it. It was relentlessly covered in the media when it happened. He dedicated many pages to it in his bestselling autobiography Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way. And the description of how he undertook this perilous journey—and actually succeeded in making the crossing for the first time ever—has been told and retold countless times in retrospectives and “heroes-of-business” TV specials.

Still, there’s one question I’ve never heard asked in any real way by any of the newscasters, cowriters, and television producers who have recounted this now legendary tale.

Why did Branson do it?

It’s not as if Richard Branson had a lot of free time on his hands. Not only was he running a major record label; he was also in the midst of launching a new airline. It also wasn’t as if he had a long deep-seated interest in hot-air ballooning. Until Lindstrand contacted him, he had never given it any thought at all. It is clear that Branson got a lot of publicity for the undertaking, but how did he know in advance it would be the right kind of publicity—the kind that would help Virgin make more money?

The real reason the entrepreneur-mogul sank so much time and effort into this perilous, impressive, and useless feat is that he is a master magician. The most successful magicians have always known that to deeply influence people it is not enough to simply point out miracles or even to make miracles—they have to be miracles. They understand that to get people to gravitate to them, they need to come across as the kid who grows up to become an uncommon hero rather than an average Joe.

It was with this understanding that the Theosophist guru Madame Helena Blavatsky actively spread rumors of her time between when she left Russia and came to America as one in which she had toured Serbia as a concert pianist and performed in a circus as a bareback horse rider. It was why “King” Benjamin Franklin Purnell, the founder of a turn-of-the-century religious cult called the House of David, led a baseball team that would regularly outscore its opponents by 25 to 30 runs. It was also why, closer to our own time, Kim Jong Il made sure that every time he played golf, the North Korean press reported that he hit 18 holes-in-one. And it’s why Tim Ferriss’s followers all know he takes baths full of ice, speaks 12 languages, and became a national kickboxing champion with record speed.

By crafting the persona of someone who has the ability to perform amazing feats, you tap into one of the two key miracle heuristics that Ransom and Alicke pinpointed—worthiness. And by choosing a feat that most people don’t encounter every day, you tap into the other—surprise.

But the question still remains: If you don’t have the stomach for death-defying stunts (or blatant lying), how can you tap into the power of miraculous feats?

HOW TO MAKE YOUR FEATS MIRACULOUS

Even if you aren’t Richard Branson, you’ve had at least a few accomplishments over the course of your life. How do I know this about you? Because I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t. You may think of them as no big deal or not much to talk about, but if you’re a human being, you’ve got at least a handful of wins somewhere in your life story.

Despite what they’d have you believe, the number one difference between magicians like Branson and the rest of us is not the size and scope of their accomplishments. It’s that they think and talk differently about those accomplishments. They have learned to present an easy-to-digest version of reality—one with a simple story arc in which they are protagonists using their powers to overcome clear-cut obstacles to achieve a worthy goal.

In interviews, when asked about her background, Ayn Rand would always give the same backstory. She fled to the United States from Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. She came with no money. She had no connections. Yet through the force of her intellect and will, she was able to climb to the top of her field—first as a screenwriter and then as a bestselling novelist.

Of course, the full story was far more complicated. When Rand arrived in America, she was greeted by a large extended family that gave her a free place to stay and took great pains to make her feel comfortable. They also gave her loans, which allowed her to go to Hollywood and make her way in the screen trade. But Rand’s glossing over all these nuances in her tale was no accident. The help her family provided simply didn’t fit the persona of the ultimate free market capitalist on which she built her career, and for which she is still known today.

In telling your own story, whether it’s in an interview, on a YouTube video, or at a dinner table full of important connections, don’t leave the filter through which you present your accomplishments (no matter how minor they might seem to you) up to chance. Always start by asking yourself: “What’s my persona?” and “What’s my narrative arc?” If there’s a detail that doesn’t fit into one of these two buckets, think twice before bringing it up.

At the same time, there’s a fine line between learning to tell your story in the most persuasive way possible and being a braggadocious liar. The latter will ultimately work against you because, despite appearances to the contrary, most people are surprisingly good at spotting truly blatant bunk.

To stay on the right side of this line, think of the various elements of your narrative as faders on a music studio mixing board. When recording engineers mix a track, they could theoretically place every instrument—bass, guitar, drums, vocals, and keyboards—at the same level. But this would make the result an ugly blob of noise, no matter how good the underlying song actually is. Instead, they raise and lower different instruments in the mix. None of the instruments disappear entirely, but some come to the fore while others recede into the background.

Just as working the faders is the best way to get across the artist’s vision, turning up the volume on the elements of your story that showcase your accomplishments and lowering the volume on those that don’t will give you the best shot at realizing yours. In some instances, however, the underlying track may still need some additional work first.

In the modern Christmas classic Elf, Will Ferrell plays a man named Buddy who accidentally stowed away in Santa’s toy bag when he was an infant. When the movie begins, he is living as an elf in Santa’s workshop without any knowledge that he is actually a human. As a result of being a human, he is the slowest, most inept toymaker in the North Pole, which causes him unceasing anguish. He eventually becomes so distressed by his subpar elfishness that, upon discovering his human heritage, he makes his way to New York City to find his birth father.

As he makes his way around New York City, he takes part in an epic snowball fight, designs a blockbuster department store display, and builds toys out of disassembled furniture. His proficiency at each of these tasks astounds everyone he encounters, none of whom understand how he is able to do what he does. What they don’t realize is that the only difference between Buddy and themselves is that they weren’t raised by elves at the North Pole.

Follow Buddy’s example. Pinpoint a social or professional circle where you want to make a splash. Then identify a skill of yours that you take for granted. For example, maybe you’re really good at making people feel comfortable socially. That’s a natural talent that wouldn’t attract much notice in a circle of party planners but that would come in handy if you were trying to crack a circle of tax accountants. Or perhaps you’re awesome at fixing technical gizmos. Not a big deal in a circle of IT professionals, but if you need to get in good with a crowd of literary agents, becoming known as the resident tech whiz who is always willing to lend a hand could go a long way.

In short, figure out if your talent is in short supply among members of the new crowd you’re looking to become part of, and if it doesn’t cost you much to give a little of it away, do so, especially if it would appear particularly magical to those who don’t possess it. Not only can leading with these sorts of abilities gain you entrée into circles that might otherwise be closed to you; it is often the first step in getting the people who matter most to the achievement of your goals to view you as miraculous.

UNEARTH THE GEM BURIED IN THE DIRT

While learning how to reframe the strengths we already have is one part of becoming a master hype artist, it is typically not enough. In fact, master hype artists mix in elements of precisely the opposite approach. When they manage to get the balance right, the result is pure magic.

Thomas Edison is known as the man who invented recorded sound, the light bulb, and motion pictures and in doing so single-handedly created the modern technological age. As usual, the story is far more complicated than the standard telling would have us believe. The reality is that Edison bumbled into his discovery of the principles that made the phonograph work while trying to improve the telegraph and then failed to recognize its importance for a decade. A number of people developed sources of electric light before he did, and even after his lab perfected the design of the light bulb, he couldn’t figure out how to make it work on a large scale. As for the movie camera, he wasn’t even in town when that was invented. One of his assistants conceived of it and built it while Edison was away trying to create a new kind of mining equipment.

When reporters of Edison’s day dubbed him the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” they were describing what they saw as the magic of his technological inventiveness. But Edison’s real feat as a magician was that someone like him was able to become the foremost celebrity of his era.

Not only was Thomas Edison a far less accomplished inventor than his legend would suggest; he was also a thoroughly uncharismatic human being. He had a great deal of difficulty engaging in social pleasantries, which made relationships tough to build and maintain. When anyone dropped by to see him, including investors and business partners, he would find any reason he could to avoid emerging from his lab to spend time with them.

For many entrepreneurs, having the kind of personality that regularly alienated your most vital financial backers and professional connections would be a career-ending flaw. But Edison overcame this by reframing his greatest weakness as his most notable strength.

For example, when Edison’s company was nothing more than a fledgling producer of small improvements to telegraph equipment, he worked with a publicity agent to spread a story about an associate who found him asleep at his desk at midnight to discover, upon his waking, that the inventor had gotten married earlier that day. The same publicist regularly “confided” to reporters about his employer’s habit of working for days straight without stopping to eat or sleep. Later in his career, he installed a punch clock so that any members of the press who dropped by could see how long he had worked that week without stopping.

Before Edison, the dominant image of a “man of science” was that of a gentleman scholar like Charles Darwin, who spent a mere four hours a day working on his groundbreaking theory of natural selection. The archetype of the endlessly toiling genius in the lab was perhaps Edison’s greatest invention. It was what allowed him to reframe his reclusiveness as a superhuman quality. It was what made him surprising and worthy in the eyes of the public—which, combined, turned him into a modern miracle that people couldn’t get enough of.

Hype artists recognize what many of us do not—that what we see as extraordinary qualities are often inverted weaknesses. The magus finds the gem buried in the dirt of his greatest weakness and broadcasts it as such.

From an early age, Andy Warhol had plenty of artistic talent. But that was about all. He was scrawny, awkward, and effeminate in an age of World War II heroes and brawny leading men. He was shy to an almost pathological degree. He had a pallid complexion and a head of hair that had begun thinning when he was barely out of his teens.

But Warhol realized his weaknesses were good soil for growing his myth. He accentuated his small scrawny frame with the striped shirts, leather jackets, and tight-fitting pants that made him stand out in every crowd and would make him a fashion icon. He took advantage of his natural shyness to fashion a laconic communication style that would become legendary. Even his thinning hair and pallid complexion served as the canvas for his silver wig and otherworldly presence.

The approach that Edison and Warhol used requires a great deal of courage. The society we live in trains us from an early age to reject or correct what it collectively sees as flaws. When we do sense there’s a certain aspect of our character that doesn’t fit the commonly accepted mold of strength or competence, we typically respond by suppressing that part of ourselves. While this may help us fit in, it also causes us to lose whatever magic we might once have naturally possessed.

To regain your power, you need to begin by severing the mental connections between society’s judgments and your inherent attributes. It’s hard to do but worth it. If you only focus on promoting those parts of yourself that everyone else agrees are strengths, you severely limit your ability to stand out and transfix people with your uniqueness. Instead, go out of your way to face those parts of yourself that the general consensus says are not worthwhile or normal.

Do you have a certain trait you’ve long been self-conscious about? Do you have an eccentricity you’ve taken pains to hide? Pieces of yourself that other people think are weird or useless? Think back to your childhood. Can you remember being made fun of because of a certain aspect of your personality and then vowing not to act that way anymore? Were there places you went to in your daydreams that the world convinced you were unacceptable? List them all. Don’t hold back.

Next, for each of these traits, think of a way to reframe it into a positive. Nestled into every one of the quirky elements that you have long suspected makes you a bit of a misfit is a golden nugget from which you can refashion yourself as a magus.

From all of these, choose the one that seems the most intriguing. The more sharply it stands out from the tenor of your time, the more likely it is that it contains the magic you are looking for. This is the foundation upon which you should begin building your persona. Once you’ve decided upon your magical power, weave it into every element of how you present yourself. Embody it whenever you communicate with the world—whether in a talk that could decide the course of your career or in a one-on-one conversation with a member of your extended social circle.

To make yourself appear miraculous, you must establish yourself as an unusually worthy character who never fails to generate surprises. If you’re one of the few Richard Bransons of the world who has the stomach for death-defying transatlantic crossings and the like, by all means go for it. But if you’re more like the rest of us, learn how to work your faders to emphasize your worthiest parts while at the same time surprising us by turning your so-called weaknesses inside out. More often than not, you’ll find this is where the most attractive and magnetic parts of yourself reside.

Putting It into Practice