There are four phases of a hype campaign, each consisting of 12 Laws of Hype.
Phase 1: Build a base. This consist of Laws #1-12.
Law #1: Fool Yourself to Fool Others: You must first delude yourself before you try and fool other people.
Law #2: Choose an Industry with a Large Total Addressable Market: It is paramount you choose a hype-vehicle that has limited (or no) current revenue and has an unproven business model, but has seemingly large revenue potential.
Law #3: Stand for an Ideal: Pick a fight seemingly based on moral terms, creating a false "us versus them" dynamic.
Law #4: Tell a Really Big Lie: Simplify your story down to one lie and keep repeating it ad nauseum until it is the prevailing consensus mythology and most everyone accepts it as fact.
Law #5: Emphasize Meaningless Metrics: Condition investors to focus on metrics that are unrelated to value creation or true fundamentals like cash flow.
Law #6: Obscure Data: Maintain flexibility to shuffle things around between segments when things turn ugly, only use selective transparency when the metrics are in your favor.
Law #7: Give Un-falsifiable Forecasts: Increase the dependence of your investment thesis on "unfalsifiable" beliefs through vague, far-off forecasts.
Law #8: Paint a Rosy Picture: Pretend it is all positive, regardless of the actual outcomes you should eternally forecast rainbows and puppy dogs.
Law #9: Blitzkrieg News Cycle: In the early stages of your hype campaign, increase the frequency of your press releases.
Law #10: Spoon Feed the Sell Side: Take advantage of the sell side's feeble minds and spoon feed them whatever talking points you want parroted to the broader investment community.
Law #11: Simplify Your Narrative: Weave such a simple narrative that every idiot can regurgitate it and force them to unknowingly disregard any empirical evidence; he who tells the simplest story wins the hype.
Law #12: Downplay Competitors: Downplay all legitimate competition or avoid
mentioning it...ever.
Phase 2: Escalate the Hype. Laws #13-24
Law #13: Blame Unverifiable Exogenous Factors: Utilize exogenous macro forces or unnamed third parties as foolproof and unverifiable scapegoats for your own idiosyncratic operating performance weakness.
Law #14: Minimize Disclosure: Do not disclose terms of partnerships, M&A deals, or even operational results.
Law #15: Give Non-answer Answers: Do not answer tough questions directly, instead ramble on about unrelated issues, or answer the question that you wished you were asked.
Law #16: All that is Old is New Again: Take key phrases from other cult leaders and hype masters verbatim and make them your own.
Law #17: Maximize Use of Superlatives and Exciting Exaggerations: Fill your speech with superlatives, exaggerations, rhetorical devices, and poetical excitement.
Law #18: Maintain a Sense of Momentum: Keep hyping something new that is always just beyond the point of visibility.
Law #19: Befriend the Bankers: Maximize the number of investment banks covering your stock.
Law #20: Conquer the Conference Circuit: Attend as many Wall Street sponsored conferences as possible, if you are not a good public speaker or are uncomfortable lying in person, send a surrogate.
Law #21: Compare Apples to Oranges: Make bogus comparisons between your company and your product to extremely successful outliers.
Law #22: Bedeck the Banal: Embellish descriptions and phrasing of even the most mundane of products, services and metrics you discuss.
Law #23: Create Pseudo-Events: Plant news stories with a primary purpose of being reported on.
Law #24: Send False Signals: Make a small token purchase of your company's shares as a psychological gesture that gives the lemmings fodder for more blind purchases.
Phase 3: Laws #24-36
Law #25: Always Take Credit: Take credit for good things you don't cause. Put out a well-timed press release that can be generally vague about anything that can be perceived as a positive business development right around the time your stock price is surging from a short squeeze.
Law #26: Let Their Imaginations Run Wild: Tease your following with something distant and abstract, yet positive sounding.
Law #27: When the Spell Breaks, Go Nuclear: If people start to snap out of their hypnotic trance and your power to control the stock begins to fade you must Go Nuclear.