Tease your following with something distant and abstract yet positive sounding.
If you’ve played your cards right up to this point, due to the sheer force of your social proof (e.g. bubbly market cap, bought Twitter followers, etc.) the masses are already ascribing all kinds of positive character traits onto you, such as saying you are a great showman and salesman, despite the fact that you sound like an incoherent bumbling fool every time you open your mouth. Due to this positive halo effect, everyone will give you the benefit of the doubt for just about anything you say. Now you need to milk this and give your worshippers fodder for even more wild speculation and drive up your stock’s lottery premium. Throw fuel onto the fiery frenzy of speculation.
Drop vague hints about future end markets you can enter that have a large TAM, or promise some future product attributes (that you see all your competition already has), or drop clues about solving some hated world problem (e.g eliminating traffic with underground transportation...like subway systems). For your supporters, like any totalitarian cult, it is all about the future, never the present. Keep the focus on the future…that is when real life begins…promise merry go-rounds and pomegranate flavored Greek yogurt for your underpaid minions at your factory. What you are trying to do is simultaneously fulfill people’s persistent compulsion to gamble and allow them to fantasize about a better future.
Take Messiah Musk’s brilliant use of this law when he tweeted that he would reveal his “D”…and something else! A terrific use of sexual innuendo (not even innuendo, just blatant, really) was a cherry on top and it drove the masses wild.
It didn’t even matter that Elon’s D was a let down and nothing to write home about. It was simply another version of Tesla’s dated, failure prone sedan. Delivering or meeting the fantasized expectations of what is hinted at is not necessary, just a vague promise or premonition will do the trick. Like most Laws of Hype this one is more about entertaining your following than it is laying out an actual coherent business opportunity. You don’t have to suck in everyone for these methods to serve their purpose, just the credulous idiots will do.
Need more examples? When describing the Model 3, Musk stated, “it will be unlike any car you’ve seen before” and “it will be like driving a spaceship.” Ooooo, a spaceship, think of the possibilities! To many industry observers, the Model 3 is indistinguishable from a 2013 Mazda 3 and the interior is on par with Fisher Price's Power Wheels, but people's imaginations have been running wild for months and the hype has reached levels of hysteria not seen since the Tesla Battery Swap demo event.
There is a genius depiction of this persistent psychological vulnerability that you are trying to take advantage of in a scene from Family Guy. Peter has won a prize and can choose between a boat and a “mystery box.”
“A boats a boat, but the Mystery Box…it could be anything Louis…it could even be a boat!”
The later you are in a bull market cycle, the more “lottery premium” your stock will bake in with this technique. Investors always and forever will fall over themselves to bid up your stock for the chance of a large payoff, no matter infinitesimally remote it may be.
To prey on man’s strong faculty of imagination…tease your following with something distant, and abstract yet positive sounding…sell them a piece of blue sky…then step back and let their imaginations to run wild!
To prey on man’s strong faculty of imagination…tease your following with something distant, and abstract yet positive sounding…sell them a piece of blue sky…then step back and let their imaginations to run wild!
RSS Feed
