The Psychology of “Propaganda” Influence That Every Marketer Needs to Know | #Marketing - Ep. 46

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This is the Russell Brunson Show. This is a first edition copy of the book called Propaganda by Edward Bernays. I spent $12,500 for this copy because it's a first edition and it's got the original slipcover, which dramatically increases the value. And it's the first book ever written on like mass persuasion for marketers and for salespeople, and it is amazing. I bought this because there's a documentary on Netflix called Propaganda telling the story about Edward Bernays. And then there's also another documentary on Netflix called Century of Self. And I watched both of those and I was so fascinated about the story of the author and then what he actually did, how he developed propaganda and how he used it to sway wars, use it to like shift and move markets. It's just, I wanted to learn from the guy who actually did. And obviously you can go buy the book on Amazon for probably $10. But I don't know, something different when you spend a lot of money for a book, you value it differently and you're more likely to read it, at least for me. The story behind this book and why it's still relevant today, if you go back in time, it was actually a lot of you guys know who Sigmund Freud is, and Sigmund Freud was the psychologist who discovered our subconscious mind, or he called it unconscious mind. And he was the one who first was like using these concepts in psychology to help people and to change lives, right? No one ever thought to use this stuff for business or for marketing. And then his nephew, his name's Edward Bernays, Edward's sitting there and he's listening to Freud talk about all this stuff, and Freud's using it from like a psychology Here's how you help patients and you know how to fix their, the things that are holding them back in life. And he was like, I could use these things to create mass movements, to get people in mass to move and to change everything. So he took all of Freud's concepts he was teaching and then he came to America and he started using them. And it was funny because Freud was actually super mad about it. Like, he's like, you shouldn't be using these things for marketing and sales. But Bernays, like, he saw the vision. And so the first campaign he actually used was World War I. Nobody wanted to be in the war. And normally people, when they would sell concept, they would sell like, here's the features and the benefits, right? Here's the features of the war. Like, it's going to be really good. We're gonna win this, you know, like logically they try to sell things. And Bernays like, no, people don't choose things logically, they do emotionally. And so he started creating stories to emotionally get people to buy into the war. And within a year or so, he had everybody, like America as a whole was like bought into the war. They believed in it. It was all because he influenced their feelings. Prior to this, especially look at America back, you know, a long time ago when they would buy products, people bought what they needed, right? I need to go get a new shovel, my toilet broke, I'm gonna buy that thing. And what he came in saying, no, if we play off people's desires, we can create wants and then get people to buy what they actually want. Putting these desires in people's hearts So they wanted something and then he could get them to move to buy things or to whatever the thing might be. And so it's super applicable today because if you look at like when I'm selling from stage or at a webinar or during a challenge, I am not going off of what people need. Like they don't need a funnel, they don't need whatever, right? And I create that desire and then that desire is the thing that actually sells 'em, right? It's tapping into their subconscious beliefs and desires and that's how you get people to move. Like we have a whole event, the whole premise of the event is called Subconscious Selling and it's all based on these same principles that Bernays figured out and how to use them. Again, Freud used them for clinical psychology. Bernays used them for mass control to get people to, to move, and we're using now for challenges, events, webinars, video sales letters, all the stuff we do in online marketing today. One of the principles that Bernays teaches in this book talks about people normally trying to sell products. He's like, people don't necessarily going to buy products, they buy identity. You take a product over here and then you're going to attach it to identity, and that's the key. So a practical example, when we built ClickFunnels— ClickFunnels is the product, right? It's software. People aren't passionate about software typically, right? And so I was like, okay, I can't just sell a product, I need to attach it to identity. So I was like, what's the identity of the person who will be using this software? Right? So we started thinking about that. And so for us it was like, okay, we're gonna create an identity called the Funnel Hacker. And this is what funnel hackers do and what they believe and how they show up and how they serve. And these aren't people who are trying to get rich quick. These people are trying to change the world, right? And we create this identity and then we attach the identity to the product, right? Bernays has a really cool case study in propaganda where he did the same thing in the smoking industry. He said that it was after the war happened and then, I can't remember who it was, whatever the smoking company at the time was, they hired him to like, we saw what you did getting everyone excited about World War I. Can you do that for smoking? And he said, right now men smoke, but women do not smoke. It's not a thing that they do. And so he went back to Freud, like, hey, what would Freud do over here? And he developed a campaign. And what he did is he took the product, a cigarette, right? And he had to create a new identity. And so he figured for the female audience who weren't smoking, what's the identity? What does that look like? And he crafted this whole campaign for women. And then he organized like this dramatic demonstration where news cameras and TV and everything happening. And he had all these beautiful women come out, all smoking cigarettes. They said it was like this torch of for women to show like they were independent and all this kind of thing. And it used the identity of that is what got people to move, not the cigarette, right? Because they couldn't get women to smoke. They tried changing the colors, they tried everything, they couldn't get them. And then when they— he created an identity that other women would want and he attached it to the smoking, then people moved in the masses. Attaching identity product, just one, like, such a simple, such a powerful concept. It's been huge for us inside the ClickFunnels world. And that initial concept came from Bernays. I had a chance to speak at Grant Cardone's 10X event, and there were 9,000 people in the room. Most of them never heard of me before. Like, I was not the famous guy in the room. I was the guy coming in to sell. And so I got on stage, first 10 minutes of my presentation, I was like, I have I have to create something like that. And so I did this whole thing at the very beginning. In fact, we handed out to everybody in the audience, all 9,000 people, we had this packet in the audience and it had a big sticker that said, "Don't open till Russell Brunson comes on stage." So I came on stage and I grabbed the packet, opened it up, and they pulled out, and there was a pen and an order form and some notes and stuff like that. But there was a sticker that said Funnel Hacker on it. And then I explained to everyone what a Funnel Hacker was. I'm like, "This is what a Funnel Hacker is, this is how it works." I basically told them what it was. I was like, "How many guys does it sound like you? Does it sound like you?" And they're all like, "Yes, yes, yes." I'm like, "Hey, you guys are all officially now Funnel Hackers. Welcome to our community. We're so glad to have you." We had this like literally like like a sticker they could put on their laptop or on their, their iPhone case, whatever, that showed that they were funnel hackers. There's the speaker on the stage and there's the rest of the audience, right? And you're trying to build rapport very, very quickly. But not only am I trying to build rapport, I'm trying to create an identity they can attach to very, very quickly. And so I did it by showing case studies of other funnel hackers who they related to, who they wanted to be. They saw those people in themselves. And then I'm like, okay, how many of you guys want to be a funnel hacker? Here's like the identity, like here's the sticker. If you look what we've done in the ClickFunnels community, when somebody comes in, we give them a funnel hacker t-shirt. Man, we've been giving out t-shirts for 10 years that say funnel hacker. I've seen them all around the world. People wearing them. I remember showing this to Kaylin Polen, and she did the same thing for the Lady Boss movement. She gave people shirts that say, I'm a Lady Boss. But what was fascinating, she said when people put it on, she's like, it's like putting on their superhero cape. And when they said that, I was like, oh my gosh, it's like, it's like taking this identity of like, I'm a Lady Boss, I'm a Funnel Hacker, and they're putting on this, this superhero cape where all of a sudden like they become something different. They have a new identity. They're no longer Russell Brunson, like the guy on the street. Like, I'm Russell Brunson, I'm a Funnel Hacker. Like, they identify with this thing which brings them together. And so that's just like One simple way to do that from a stage presentation, but also as you're building a movement of people, is like giving them an identity and literally having them wear their new identity on their shirt like a superhero cape. The more you start studying these different principles, the more you start using them. Like for me, I initially would use them, you know, again, in an audience, but then they become part of your language and you start using them in all parts of your life. Another principle that Bernays talks about, it's fascinating because he wrote the book called Propaganda, but then over time, like just that name propaganda started getting a bad rep because everyone's like, You know, oh, this is propaganda. Like it became negative. And so he's like, well, how do I change this? I don't want this to be a negative thing. So he literally changed the, the concept of what he was doing and like what he was creating. He changed it from propaganda to public relations. Like he created, he literally invented PR and all PR is, is just propaganda. Like, like it's literally the same playbook. And so it's funny cuz like he took something that's, that's, um, by one name and then just changed the name and all of a sudden it's like, it's a different thing. You know, like I remember there's a, I can't remember if it was a cartoon or joke about someone's like, can you pick up these, these dandelions? Like they're so ugly out of the yard. And it's like, Like if you just gave it a pretty name instead of dandelion, like people would actually like it, right? Oh, these grass flowers are beautiful. Or if you had a different name, it would change things, right? And so for me, a lot of times I look at stuff like that where if I can reframe the message, like somebody is saying something that's negative, it's like, hey, how do we, I hate saying spin it because that's what someone would do in propaganda, but that's what it is, right? How do you spin that thing to be a benefit versus like a negative thing, right? Joe Sugarman in his book Triggers talked about this. He got hired by this advertising company and they were selling these, an air filter. On top of the air filter had this really ugly, like gray furry thing. And everyone's like, oh, that gray furry thing's ugly. So everyone tried to hide and they couldn't sell it because people would buy it and they'd refund it and it just wasn't working. And what Sugarman did, he's like, I have to change, I gotta change perception. So he changed the headline for the ad to like get the air filter thing with, I can't remember the headline was, but something about the fuzzy thing on top of it. And he changed it from this thing that everyone's like, oh, this is horrible. It's like that became the benefit. Like people are like, you just changed the name of it. All of a sudden people are like, oh, check it out. And this great thing right here, this is the thing that makes the whole thing work. And it shifted the conversation by making it a benefit versus letting people take the message the way it was, right? You hear the word propaganda, most people have a negative connotation when they hear that word initially. Initially, and just like, oh, well, let's just call it public relations. Now it's, now it's beautiful. So in advertising, it's, it's looking at that, like, what are the negative things people are saying about you, your business, your brand, whatever, and how do you spin that? How do you change it? See, it's a lot in cancel culture. Someone gets canceled, it's like really quickly, okay, well, how do we, how do we reframe this message? How do we shift it in a way where it looks different? I mean, over the last 4 or 5 years, you look at the people who've got canceled and those who've come back from it. The ones that have are the ones that are masters at reframing the message and shifting. The ones that haven't don't understand this principle. There's so many ways you can use this. I use with my kids sometimes where we want them to eat healthy food, but healthy food, you call it healthy food, guess what? They will not eat it, right? So when we come back, instead, like, we try to reframe the message. Like, these are the blah blah blahs that actually give you six-pack abs.

Like, what?

Like, yeah, you eat that, you get six-pack abs. Because they don't want healthy food, but they want abs, right? They want the— like, that's the thing that they want. And so it's like, how to reframe this message so that you're delivering what people need, but you're doing it in a way that, that gives them what they actually want. I had one quote I wanted to read. All right, so Bernays said, chapter 1, like the second paragraph, he says, we are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas are suggested largely by men we have never heard of. Which is interesting. So a lot think like, oh yeah, I have my own ideas, I have my own— like, I believe these things. Like, what, you know, like everyone thinks that they are their own person, but the reality, like you said here, is that our minds are molded, our tastes are formed, our ideas are suggested largely by men we have never heard of. These are people who are on the back who are creating these propaganda or these PR campaigns, whatever you want to call them, right? So you look at that, it's like, if you look at any area of your life, like this stuff is happening, right? Propaganda, again, was brand new in the early 1900s when this book was first written, but it's the same Bible that people are using today. You look at political movements, right? Like recently we had an election, and you look at this, like both sides, left and right, are using this at deep, deep psychological levels. They're not just like hoping they're going to win. Like, they are looking at this playbook and they're figuring out all the different things, like all of the different principles that Bernays was influencing and doing, the things he learned from Freud initially. They're using them in politics, for positive or for negative. They're using them on not just politics as a whole, but every single policy. You'll get any policy that's heated, that there's a charge behind it, the reason why is because there are people on both sides fighting back and forth using propaganda. Whenever you see something that's charged or heated, it's because both sides taking the same issue and they're using propaganda against it. And you see this religious religiously a lot, right? You think the base of religion is all about love, right? Like almost every religion, like that is the key foundational thing. Yet there's so much fighting and wars between it. And why? It's because people have these things that they believe in, right? These ideologies, these whatever. And then they use internal propaganda to try to prove that they're right and that someone else is wrong. They say that the word war, W-A-R, stands for we are right. It's like two people fighting over both thinking that they're right, and they're both coming in, they're using propaganda, they're using the same principles to try to, to try to persuade people to to their side of the table. And so it's important to understand because number one is you are being persuaded literally every day. And most people don't think they are. Like, do you look at the paragraph two of the propaganda book? Like, your life is being dictated, your mind, just like all these things are happening by men you're not even aware of, right? There are people behind the scenes who are creating the advertisements, the YouTube videos. They're creating like music, the culture, like all these kinds of things are being like, we think that they're just like, oh, this is just how the world is. It's like these things are very much thought through. People are engineering and they're puppet mastering this. And so So it's becoming aware of it on your first, on your side, so you can protect yourself so you can actually make good decisions. The number 2 is after you understand it, like this is how you influence people, right? If you want to have influence on people, if you want to change people's lives, you want to help people get from one spot to the other, especially when maybe they don't, they don't want to, like you have to learn how to do these things because this is how you're able to move people, change their lives. And when you really understand all of the principles behind mastering propaganda or PR. Okay. So I'm going to switch to pitch Russell for a second. Now, if you want, I have all my notes and outlines from all the stuff I pull from propaganda. I even have a full doodle of kind of framework that I built that I can use over and over again as I'm kind of going through these campaigns with the marketing and the advertising I'm doing. If you want that, I'll have a link in the description, get a free copy of it. And number 2 is during the election, actually made a really cool video showing the 2 different sides, their funnels, what they were doing, what worked, what didn't work. This is before the election results happened. So you get my kind of my opinion based on their marketing, who was going to win. If you want to watch that video, there's a link right here to check it out. Other than that, I hope you enjoyed this video on propaganda. Again, this is one of the most powerful things you can learn and master if you want to persuade people. People, move them, and change their lives.