Currently watching a documentary about Edward Bernays, the guy who turned psychology into marketing. This is the guy who figured out a way to sell cigarettes to women. One of the commentators said that what he did is not to sell to the intellect, but to the emotions. He did not care about the information or did not state facts until someone would just say hey this is too obvious to turn down. What he essentially did was that hey you might not need another T-shirt, but if you have it, you will feel good. So he’s selling emotions. He’s selling feelings. He selling that hey you will feel good. If you figure out how you can convince people that they are going to feel good because of XYZ, they will do it. They will agree to it. They will want it.
All people wanna do is feel good. That’s why maybe even if you are selling garbage, but if you’re running offer on it, people are going to feel good. Thats how i see those infomercial and half of dropshipping stores running. Not because of the product, but because hey, I got an offer and product. If people are feeling like they’re cheating the system like they’re doing something, they’re sticking up the middle finger. They’re going to do it because they’re going to feel good about it. So you can engineer everything in such a way that people feel good about participating in it and completing the ritual.
Thus, whatever you are trying to convince people of should have the end result of them feeling good. It is not about morality, utility, or status. Those are downstream consequences. The first principle is feeling good. People would hire a hooker against all morality to feel good. A woman would buy cigarettes against all social norms to feel good. That feeling might come from rebellion, breaking rules, the nicotine, or whatever, but it is to feel good. Even a guy hiring a dominatrix to feel the pain is doing it to feel good. A guy voting for a politician may be for the reasons of corruption or for the reasons of moral policy. He will be doing it to feel good, either from the monetary gain or the supposed good they contributed to the society.
Thus, your product is not the primary thing you are selling. It is a means to an end, and the end is selling the feeling that people are going to feel good because of your product and you and your brand. Like, literally after we created a standardized template for a t-shirt, why would different brands exist? Because using one or another gives you a different level of feeling good and different context.
- A cheap brand that provides you quality material will feel good when you’re broke.
- A brand that provides exclusive t-shirts will make you feel good because your social status.
The t-shirt is just a means to an end, and the end is to feel good and different contexts allow us to feel good in different situations.People can feel good because of their ability to:
- Get value in frugality
- Survive another day
- Elevate above others in society
- Nurture their relationships
Your product is a reinforcement of that ability. The transaction is the validation, and that makes them feel good. Your product, your brand, your presence was never about you or your functionality or utility; it was about them. It was never about what your product can do; it’s about what they are able to do and feel because of that product. Your product was never the method, it is the people.
That’s why you can sell literal bad product/harmful shit. But if they are making people feel good, they will buy it. You can look at drugs, you can look at luxury clothing that comes torn and dirty, or even certain types of expensive food that just looks disgusting, but people buy it to show off their access to it. The good and the bad of the product or the idea or the concept you are selling or trying to influence people to join hands for is irrelevant. What it is supposed to do is make the people feel good, and if it does, people will support it. Of course, it is in competition with other things that might make them feel good. That’s another thing. That’s the nuance of this whole thing. You are in competition with making others feel good better than others. It can be because you are reaching out to more people while others cannot. It can be because you are reaching out to people better than others. Whatever!
You cannot educate people into taking actions. You can only convince them about the good feeling that awaits if they do something, if they buy it, if they support it, if they talk about it, or if they share it. Thus, if you want to do some good in the world, you better talk about how good it will feel for them. The good might arise from the good itself or the bad they avoid. But that is the only way you can do it. You cannot just keep stating facts until they are convinced. Maybe sometimes those facts might have an effect of convincing them that something is good, but that’s not the same thing.
And the vice versa of this is that if you are trying to convince someone for useless or bad things, as long as you can convince them it’s going to feel good, they are going to opt for it, they are going to pay for it, they are going to subscribe to it, they’re going to talk about it and share it.
The ability to manufacture this promise of feeling good is a really good skill to have, and I believe reactive communication is one way you can do it. You are sharing experiences so viscerally that it activates someone’s limbic system and makes them feel the emotions and experiences that they already had in a channeled manner that it goes in the direction you want.
In conclusion, business ,politics, or any other game of persuasion, is trying to identify a set of masses, and try to convince them that you are going to make them feel good. The nuances along this are what type of good you are promising, what is the medium of it (product, policy, story, etc), how you can do it better than others, and how do you reach to them and communicate with them? Success in this game will be independent of whether the idea or product you have is good or bad morally or utility wise. All it hinges on is the ability to convince someone that they will feel good. Of course, as an honest person, you have to make your product good. But never forget to optimize the ability to convince someone that your offer can make them feel good. Everything is downstream of this. Everything else is derivative of it. Taking forms of different ideas, metrics or whatever.
promise feeling-good, deliver feeling-good, repeat.
From Claude
Manufacturing the Feeling-Good Promise
Here’s the formula you’ve identified:
- Mirror their pain (activate emotional recognition)
- Name their enemy (externalize the problem so they’re not broken, the system/others are)
- Offer relief (your product/idea/movement is the bridge from pain to good feeling)
- Make the action easy (remove friction so the limbic system doesn’t hand control back to the prefrontal cortex)
Examples of this in action:
MLM schemes:
- Mirror: “You’re working for someone else, making them rich while you’re stuck”
- Enemy: “The 9-to-5 system”
- Relief: “Be your own boss, financial freedom”
- Easy action: “Just $99 starter kit”