The Hype Handbook: 12 Indispensable Success Secrets From the World’s Greatest Propagandists, Self-Promoters, Cult Leaders, Mischief Makers, and Boundary Breakers

HYPE STRATEGY #3

PERFECT YOUR PACKAGING

The essence of propaganda is a well-designed package.

—ELLIOT ARONSON AND ANTHONY PRATKANIS

In the years immediately following World War I, a young German playwright decided communism was his thing. His name was Bertolt Brecht, and despite his attraction to radical equality, it was incredibly important to him that his name appear in lights. He realized, however, that his biting dramatic critiques of capitalism would lose all legitimacy the moment anyone discovered the real story of his upbringing.

Brecht came from a long line of businessmen, landowners, and white-collar professionals. Furthermore, the bookish young man had never done any of the sort of manual labor championed by the movement that had ...