Soft Seduction: How to Sell Anything to the Masses

The less you seem to be selling something—including yourself—the better By being too obvious in your pitch, you will raise suspicion; you will also bore your audience, an unforgivable sin. Instead, make your approach soft, seductive, and insidious. Soft: be indirect.

Create news and events for the media to pick up, spreading your name in a way that seems spontaneous, not hard or calculated.

Seductive: keep it entertaining. Your name and image are bathed in positive associations; you are selling pleasure and promise.

Insidious: aim at the unconscious, using images that linger in the mind, placing your message in the visuals. Frame what you are selling as part of a new trend, and it will become one. It is almost impossible to resist the soft seduction.

The Soft Sell

Seduction is the ultimate form of power. Those who give in to it do so willingly and happily. There is rarely any resentment on their part; they forgive you any kind of manipulation because you have brought them pleasure, a rare commodity in the world. With such power at your fingertips, though, why stop at the conquest of a man or woman? A crowd, an electorate, a nation can be brought under your sway simply by applying on a mass level the tactics that work so well on an individual. The only difference is the goal—not sex but influence, a vote, people’s attention— and the degree of tension. When you are after sex, you deliberately create anxiety, a touch of pain, twists, and turns. Seduction on the mass level is more diffuse and soft. Creating a constant titillation, you fascinate the

masses with what you are offering. They pay attention to you because it is pleasant to do so.

Let us say your goal is to sell yourself—as a personality, a trendsetter, a candidate for office. There are two ways to go: the hard sell (the direct approach) and the soft sell (the indirect approach). In the hard sell you state your case strongly and directly, explaining why your talents, your ideas, your political message are superior to anyone else’s. You tout your achievements, quote statistics, bring in expert opinions, even go so far as to induce a bit of fear if the audience ignores your message. The approach is a tad aggressive and might have unwanted consequences: some people will

be offended, resisting your message, even if what you say is true. Others will feel you are manipulating them—who can trust experts and statistics, and why are you trying so hard? You will also grate on people’s nerves, becoming unpleasant to listen to. In a world in which you cannot succeed without selling to large numbers, the direct approach won’t take you far.

The soft sell, on the other hand, has the potential to draw in millions

because it is entertaining, gentle on the ears, and can be repeated without irritating people. The technique was invented by the great charlatans of seventeenth-century Europe. To peddle their elixirs and alchemic concoctions, they would first put on a show—clowns, music, vaudeville-

type routines—that had nothing to do with what they were selling. A crowd would form, and as the audience laughed and relaxed, the charlatan would come onstage and briefly and dramatically discuss the miraculous effects of the elixir. By honing this technique, the charlatans discovered that instead of selling a few dozen bottles of the dubious medicine, they were suddenly selling scores or even hundreds.

In the centuries since, publicists, advertisers, political strategists, and

others have taken this method to new heights, but the rudiments of the soft sell remain the same. First bring pleasure by creating a positive atmosphere around your name or message. Induce a warm, relaxed feeling. Never seem to be selling something—that will look manipulative and suspicious.

Instead, let entertainment value and good feelings take center stage, sneaking the sale through the side door. And in that sale, you do not seem to be selling yourself or a particular idea or candidate; you are selling a life- style, a good mood, a sense of adventure, a feeling of hipness, or a neatly packaged rebellion.

Here are some of the key components of the soft sell.

Appear as news, never as publicity. First impressions are critical. If your

audience first sees you in the context of an advertisement or publicity item, you instantly join the mass of other advertisements screaming for attention

—and everyone knows that advertisements are artful manipulations, a kind of deception. So, for your first appearance in the public eye, manufacture an event, some kind of attention-getting situation that the media will

“inadvertently” pick up as if it were news. People pay more attention to what is broadcast as news—it seems more real. You suddenly stand out from everything else, if only for a moment—but that moment has more credibility than hours of advertising time. The key is to orchestrate the

details thoroughly, creating a story with dramatic impact and movement, tension and resolution. The media will cover it for days. Conceal your real purpose—to sell yourself—at any cost.

Stir basic emotions. Never promote your message through a rational, direct argument. That will take effort on your audience’s part and will not gain its attention. Aim for the heart, not the head. Design your words and images to stir basic emotions—lust, patriotism, family values. It is easier to gain and hold people’s attention once you have made them think of their family, their children, their future. They feel stirred, uplifted. Now you have their attention and the space to insinuate your true message. Days later the

audience will remember your name, and remembering your name is half the game. Similarly, find ways to surround yourself with emotional magnets— war heroes, children, saints, small animals, whatever it takes. Make your

appearance bring these emotionally positive associations to mind, giving you extra presence. Never let these associations be defined or created for you, and never leave them to chance.

Make the medium themessage. Pay more attention to the form of your message than to the content. Images are more seductive than words, and

visuals—soothing colors, appropriate backdrop, the suggestion of speed or

movement—should actually be your real message. The audience may focus superficially on the content or moral you are preaching, but they are really absorbing the visuals, which get under their skin and stay there longer than any words or preachy pronouncements. Your visuals should have a hypnotic effect. They should make people feel happy or sad, depending on what you want to accomplish. And the more they are distracted by visual cues, the harder it will be for them to think straight or see through your manipulations.

Speak the target’s language—be chummy. At all costs, avoid appearing superior to your audience. Any hint of smugness, the use of complicated words or ideas, quoting too many statistics—all that is fatal. Instead, make yourself seem equal to your targets and on intimate terms with them. You

understand them, you share their spirit, their language. If people are cynical about the manipulations of advertisers and politicians, exploit their cynicism for your own purposes. Portray yourself as one of the folk, warts and all. Show that you share your audience’s skepticism by revealing the

tricks of the trade. Make your publicity as down-home and minimal as possible, so that your competitors look sophisticated and snobby in comparison. Your selective honesty and strategic weakness will get people to trust you. You are the audience’s friend, an intimate. Enter their spirit and they will relax and listen to you.

Start a chain reaction—everyone is doing it. People who seem to be desired by others are immediately more seductive to their targets. Apply this to the soft seduction. You need to act as if you have already excited crowds of people; your behavior will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seem to be in the vanguard of a trend or life-style and the public will lap you up for fear of being left behind. Spread your image, with a logo, slogans, posters, so that it appears everywhere. Announce your message as a trend and it will

become one. The goal is to create a kind of viral effect in which more and more people become infected with the desire to have whatever you are offering. This is the easiest and most seductive way to sell.

Tell people who they are. It is always unwise to engage an individual or the public in any kind of argument. They will resist you. Instead of trying to

change people’s ideas, try to change their identity, their perception of reality, and you will have far more control of them in the long run. Tell them who they are, create an image, an identity that they will want to assume. Make them dissatisfied with their current status. Making them unhappy with themselves gives you room to suggest a new life-style, a new identity. Only by listening to you can they find out who they are. At the

same time, you want to change their perception of the world outside them by controlling what they look at. Use as many media as possible to create a kind of total environment for their perceptions. Your image should be seen not as an advertisement but as part of the atmosphere.

Some Soft Seductions

1. Andrew Jackson was a true American hero. In 1814, in the Battle of New Orleans, he led a ragtag band of American soldiers against a superior English army and won. He also conquered Indians in Florida. Jackson’s army loved him for his rough-hewn ways: he fed on acorns when there was nothing else to eat, he slept on a hard bed, he drank hard cider, just like his men. Then, after he lost or was cheated out of the presidential election of 1824 (in fact he won the popular vote, but so narrowly that the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, which chose John Quincy Adams, after much deal making), he retired to his farm in Tennessee, where he lived the simple life, tilling the soil, reading the Bible, staying far from

   the corruptions of Washington. Where Adams had gone to Harvard, played billiards, drunk soda water, and relished European finery, Jackson, like many Americans of the time, had been raised in a log cabin. He was an uneducated man, a man of the earth.

   This, at any rate, was what Americans read in their newspapers in the months after the controversial 1824 election. Spurred on by these articles,

   people in taverns and halls across the country began talking of how the war

   hero Andrew Jackson had been wronged, how an insidious aristocratic elite was conspiring to take over the country. So when Jackson declared that he would run again against Adams in the presidential election of 1828—but

   this time as the leader of a new organization, the Democratic Party—the public was thrilled. Jackson was the first major political figure to have a nickname, Old Hickory, and soon Hickory clubs were sprouting up in America’s towns and cities. Their meetings resembled spiritual revivals. The hot-button issues of the day were discussed (tariffs, the abolition of slavery), and club members felt certain that Jackson was on their side. It was hard to know for sure—he was a little vague on the issues—but this election was about something larger than issues: it was about restoring democracy and restoring basic American values to the White House.

   Soon the Hickory clubs were sponsoring events like town barbecues, the planting of hickory trees, dances around a hickory pole. They organized lavish public feasts, always including large quantities of liquor. In the cities there were parades, and these were stirring events. They often took place at night so that urbanites would witness a procession of Jackson supporters holding torches. Others would carry colorful banners with portraits of Jackson or caricatures of Adams and slogans ridiculing his decadent ways. And everywhere there was hickory—hickory sticks, hickory brooms, hickory canes, hickory leaves in people’s hats. Men on horseback would

   ride through the crowd, spurring people into “huzzahs!” for Jackson. Others would lead the crowd in songs about Old Hickory.

   The Democrats, for the first time in an election, conducted opinion polls, finding out what the common man thought about the candidates. These

   polls were published in the papers, and the overwhelming conclusion was that Jackson was ahead. Yes, a new movement was sweeping the country. It all came to a head when Jackson made a personal appearance in New

   Orleans as part of a celebration commemorating the battle he had fought so bravely there fourteen years earlier. This was unprecedented: no presidential candidate had ever campaigned in person before, and in fact such an

   appearance would have been considered improper. But Jackson was a new kind of politician, a true man of the people. Besides, he insisted that his

   purpose for the visit was patriotism, not politics. The spectacle was unforgettable—Jackson entering New Orleans on a steamboat as the fog lifted, cannon fire ringing out from all sides, grand speeches, endless feasts,

   a kind of mass delirium taking over the city. One man said it was “like a dream. The world has never witnessed so glorious, so wonderful a celebration—never have gratitude and patriotism so happily united.”

   This time the will of the people prevailed. Jackson was elected president.

   And it was not one region that brought him victory: New Englanders, Southerners, Westerners, merchants, farmers, and workers were all infected with the Jackson fever.

   Interpretation. After the debacle of 1824, Jackson and his supporters were determined to do things differently in 1828. America was becoming more diverse, developing populations of immigrants, Westerners, urban laborers, and so on. To win a mandate Jackson would have to overcome new regional and class differences. One of the first and most important steps his

   supporters took was to found newspapers all around the country. While he himself seemed to have retired from public life, these papers promulgated an image of him as the wronged war hero, the victimized man of the people.

   In truth, Jackson was wealthy, as were all of his major backers. He owned one of the largest plantations in Tennessee, and he owned many slaves. He drank more fine liquor than hard cider and slept on a soft bed with European linens. And while he might have been uneducated, he was extremely shrewd, with a shrewdness built on years of army combat.

   The image of the man of the earth disguised all this, and, once it was established, it could be contrasted with the aristocratic image of Adams. In this way Jackson’s strategists covered up his political inexperience and

   made the election turn on questions of character and values. Instead of political issues they raised trivial matters like drinking habits and church attendance. To keep up the enthusiasm they staged spectacles that seemed to be spontaneous celebrations but in fact were carefully choreographed. The support for Jackson seemed to be a movement, as evidenced (and advanced) by the opinion polls. The event in New Orleans—hardly nonpolitical, and

   Louisiana was a swing state—bathed Jackson in an aura of patriotic, quasi- religious grandeur.

   Society has fractured into smaller and smaller units. Communities are

   less cohesive; even individuals feel more inner conflict. To win an election

   or to sell anything in large numbers, you have to paper over these

   differences somehow—you have to unify the masses. The only way to accomplish this is to create an inclusive image, one that attracts and excites people on a basic, almost unconscious level. You are not talking about the truth, or about reality; you are forging a myth.

   Myths create identification. Build a myth about yourself and the common people will identify with your character, your plight, your aspirations, just

   as you identify with theirs. This image should include your flaws, highlight the fact that you are not the best orator, the most educated man, the smoothest politician. Seeming human and down to earth disguises the manufactured quality of your image. To sell this image you need to have the proper vagueness. It is not that you avoid talk of issues and details—that will make you seem insubstantial—but that all your talk of issues is framed within the softer context of character, values, and vision. You want to lower taxes, say, because it will help families—and you are a family person. You must not only be inspiring but also entertaining—that is a popular, friendly touch. This strategy will infuriate your opponents, who will try to unmask you, reveal the truth behind the myth; but that will only make them seem smug, overserious, defensive, and snobbish. That now becomes part of their image, and it will help sink them.

2. On Easter Sunday, March 31, 1929, New York churchgoers began to pour onto Fifth Avenue after the morning service for the annual Easter parade.

   The streets were blocked off, and as had been the custom for years, people were wearing their finest outfits, women in particular showing off the latest in spring fashions. But this year the promenaders on Fifth Avenue noticed something else. Two young women were coming down the steps of Saint Thomas’s Church. At the bottom they reached into their purses, took out cigarettes—Lucky Strikes—and lit up. Then they walked down the avenue with their escorts, laughing and puffing away. A buzz went through the crowd. Women had only recently begun smoking cigarettes, and it was considered improper for a lady to be seen smoking in the street. Only a certain kind of woman would do that. These two, however, were elegant and fashionable. People watched them intently, and were further astounded

   several minutes later when they reached the next church along the avenue. Here two more young ladies—equally elegant and well bred—left the church, approached the two holding cigarettes, and, as if suddenly inspired to join them, pulled out Lucky Strikes of their own and asked for a light.

   Now the four women were marching together down the avenue. They were steadily joined by more, and soon ten young women were holding cigarettes in public, as if nothing were more natural. Photographers

   appeared and took pictures of this novel sight. Usually at the Easter parade, people would have been whispering about a new hat style or the new spring color. This year everyone was talking about the daring young women and their cigarettes. The next day, photographs and articles appeared in the

   papers about them. A United Press dispatch read, “Just as Miss Federica Freylinghusen, conspicuous in a tailored outfit of dark grey, pushed her way thru the jam in front of St. Patrick‘s, Miss Bertha Hunt and six colleagues struck another blow in behalf of the liberty of women. Down Fifth Avenue they strolled, puffing at cigarettes. Miss Hunt issued the following

   communique from the smoke-clouded battlefield: ‘I hope that we have started something and that these torches of freedom, with no particular brand favored, will smash the discriminatory taboo on cigarettes for women and that our sex will go on breaking down all discriminations.’ ”

   The story was picked up by newspapers around the country, and soon women in other cities began to light up in the streets. The controversy raged for weeks, some papers decrying this new habit, others coming to the women’s defense. A few months later, though, public smoking by women had become a socially acceptable practice. Few people bothered to protest it anymore.

   Interpretation. In January 1929, several New York debutantes received the same telegram from a Miss Bertha Hunt: “In the interests of equality of the sexes … I and other young women will light another torch of freedom by smoking cigarettes while strolling on Fifth Avenue Easter Sunday.” The

   debutantes who ended up participating met beforehand in the office where Hunt worked as a secretary. They planned what churches to appear at, how

   to link up with each other, all the details. Hunt handed out packs of Lucky Strikes. Everything worked to perfection on the appointed day.

   Little did the debutantes know, though, that the whole affair had been masterminded by a man—Miss Hunt’s boss, Edward Bernays, a public relations adviser to the American Tobacco Company, makers of Lucky Strike. American Tobacco had been luring women into smoking with all kinds of clever ads, but the consumption was limited by the fact that smoking in the street was considered unladylike. The head of American

   Tobacco had asked Bernays for his help and Mr. Bernays had obliged him by applying a technique that was to become his trademark: gain public attention by creating an event that the media would cover as news.

   Orchestrate every detail but make them seem spontaneous. As more people heard of this “event,” it would spark imitative behavior—in this case more women smoking in the streets.

   Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud and perhaps the greatest public

   relations genius of the twentieth century, understood a fundamental law of any kind of sell. The moment the targets know you are after something—a vote, a sale—they become resistant. But disguise your sales pitch as a news event and not only will you bypass their resistance, you can also create a social trend that does the selling for you. To make this work, the event you set up must stand out from all the other events that are covered by the media, yet it cannot stand out too far or it will seem contrived. In the case of the Easter parade, Bernays (through Bertha Hunt) chose women who would seem elegant and proper even with their cigarettes in their hands. Yet in breaking a social taboo, and doing so as a group, such women would

   create an image so dramatic and startling that the media would be unable to pass it up. An event that is picked up by the news has the imprimatur of reality.

   It is important to give this manufactured event positive associations, as Bernays did in creating a feeling of rebellion, of women banding together. Associations that are patriotic, say, or subtly sexual, or spiritual—anything pleasant and seductive—take on a life of their own. Who can resist? People essentially persuade themselves to join the crowd without even realizing that a sale has taken place. The feeling of active participation is vital to seduction. No one wants to feel left out of a growing movement.

3. In the presidential campaign of 1984, President Ronald Reagan, running for reelection, told the public, “It’s morning again in America.” His presidency, he claimed, had restored American pride. The recent, successful Olympics in Los Angeles were symbolic of the country’s return to strength and confidence. Who could possibly want to turn the clock back to 1980, which Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter, had termed a time of malaise?

   Reagan’s Democratic challenger, Walter Mondale, thought Americans had had enough of the Reagan soft touch. They were ready for honesty, and that would be Mondale’s appeal. Before a nationwide television audience, Mondale declared, “Let’s tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.” He repeated this straightforward approach on numerous occasions. By October his poll numbers had plunged to all-time lows.

   The CBS News reporter Lesley Stahl had been covering the campaign, and as Election Day neared, she had an uneasy feeling. It wasn’t so much that Reagan had focused on emotions and moods rather than hard issues. It was more that the media was giving him a free ride; he and his election team, she felt, were playing the press like a fiddle. They always managed to get him photographed in the perfect setting, looking strong and presidential. They fed the press snappy headlines along with dramatic footage of Reagan in action. They were putting on a great show.

   Stahl decided to assemble a news piece that would show the public how Reagan used television to cover up the negative effects of his policies. The piece began with a montage of images that his team had orchestrated over the years: Reagan relaxing on his ranch in jeans; standing tall at the Normandy invasion tribute in France; throwing a football with his Secret

   Service bodyguards; sitting in an inner-city classroom. Over these images

   Stahl asked, “How does Ronald Reagan use television? Brilliantly. He’s been criticized as the rich man’s president, but the TV pictures say it isn’t so. At seventy-three, Mr. Reagan could have an age problem. But the TV

   pictures say it isn’t so. Americans want to feel proud of their country again, and of their president. And the TV pictures say you can. The orchestration of television coverage absorbs the White House. Their goal? To emphasize

   the president’s greatest asset, which, his aides say, is his personality. They provide pictures of him looking like a leader. Confident, with his Marlboro man walk.”

   Over images of Reagan shaking hands with handicapped athletes in wheelchairs and cutting the ribbon at a new facility for seniors, Stahl continued, “They also aim to erase the negatives. Mr. Reagan tried to

   counter the memory of an unpopular issue with a carefully chosen backdrop that actually contradicts the president’s policy. Look at the handicapped Olympics, or the opening ceremony of an old-age home. No hint that he tried to cut the budgets for the disabled and for federally subsidized housing for the elderly.” On and on went the piece, showing the gap between the feel-good images that played on the screen and the reality of Reagan’s actions. “President Reagan,” Stahl concluded, “is accused of running a campaign in which he highlights the images and hides from the issues. But there’s no evidence that the charges will hurt him because when people see the president on television, he makes them feel good, about America, about themselves, and about him.”

   Stahl depended on the good will of the Reagan people in covering the

   White House, but her piece was strongly negative, so she braced herself for trouble. Yet a senior White House official telephoned her that evening: “Great piece,” he said. “What?” asked a stunned Stahl. “Great piece,” he repeated. “Did you listen to what I said?” she asked. “Lesley, when you’re showing four and a half minutes of great pictures of Ronald Reagan, no one listens to what you say. Don’t you know that the pictures are overriding your message because they conflict with your message? The public sees

   those pictures and they block your message. They didn’t even hear what you said. So, in our minds, it was a four-and-a-half-minute free ad for the Ronald Reagan campaign for reelection.”

   Interpretation. Most of the men who worked on communications for Reagan had a background in marketing. They knew the importance of telling a story crisply, sharply, and with good visuals. Each morning they went over what the headline of the day should be, and how they could shape this into a short visual piece, getting the president into a video opportunity.

   They paid detailed attention to the backdrop behind the president in the Oval Office, to the way the camera framed him when he was with other world leaders, and to having him filmed in motion, with his confident walk. The visuals carried the message better than any words could do. As one Reagan official said, “What are you going to believe, the facts or your

   eyes?”

   Free yourself from the need to communicate in the normal direct manner and you will present yourself with greater opportunities for the soft sell.

   Make the words you say unobtrusive, vague, alluring. And pay much greater attention to your style, the visuals, the story they tell. Convey a

   sense of movement and progress by showing yourself in motion. Express confidence not through facts and figures but through colors and positive imagery, appealing to the infant in everyone. Let the media cover you

   unguided and you are at their mercy. So turn the dynamic around—the press needs drama and visuals? Provide them. It is fine to discuss issues or

   “truth” as long as you package it entertainingly Remember: images linger in the mind long after words are forgotten. Do not preach to the public—that never works. Learn to express your message through visuals that insinuate positive emotions and happy feelings.

4. In 1919, the movie press agent Harry Reichenbach was asked to do

advance publicity for a picture called The Virgin of Stamboul. It was the usual romantic potboiler in an exotic locale, and normally a publicist would mount a campaign with alluring posters and advertisements. But Harry never operated the usual way. He had begun his career as a carnival barker, and there the only way to get the public into your tent was to stand out from the other barkers. So Harry dug up eight scruffy Turks whom he found living in Manhattan, dressed them up in costumes (flowing sea-green trousers, gold-crescented turbans) provided by the movie studio, rehearsed them in every line and gesture, and checked them into an expensive hotel.

Word quickly spread to the newspapers (with a little help from Harry) that a delegation of Turks had arrived in New York on a secret diplomatic mission.

Reporters converged on the hotel. Since his appearance in New York was clearly no longer a secret, the head of the mission, “Sheikh Ali Ben

Mohammed,” invited them up to his suite. The newspapermen were impressed by the Turks’ colorful outfits, salaams, and rituals. The sheikh then explained why he had come to New York. A beautiful young woman named Sari, known as the Virgin of Stamboul, had been betrothed to the sheikh’s brother. An American soldier passing through had fallen in love with her and had managed to steal her from her home and take her to America. Her mother had died from grief. The sheikh had found out she was in New York, and had come to bring her back.

Mesmerized by the sheikh’s colorful language and by the romantic tale

he told, the reporters filled the papers with stories of the Virgin of Stamboul for the next several days. The sheikh was filmed in Central Park and feted by the cream of New York society. Finally “Sari” was found, and the press reported the reunion between the sheikh and the hysterical girl (an actress with an exotic look). Soon after, The Virgin of Stamboul opened in New York. Its story was much like the “real” events reported in the papers. Was

this a coincidence? A quickly made film version of the true story? No one seemed to know, but the public was too curious to care, and The Virgin of Stamboul broke box office records.

A year later Harry was asked to publicize a film called The Forbidden Woman. It was one of the worst movies he had ever seen. Theater owners had no interest in showing it. Harry went to work. For eighteen days straight he ran an ad in all of the major New York newspapers: WATCH THE SKY ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 21ST! IF IT IS GREEN—

GO THE CAPITOL IF IT IS RED—GO THE RIVOLI IF IT IS PINK—GO TO THE STRAND IF IT IS BLUE—GO TO THE RIALTO FOR ON

FEBRUARY 21ST THE SKY WILL TELL YOU WHERE

THE BEST SHOW IN TOWN CAN BE SEEN! (The Capitol, the Rivoli, the Strand, and the Rialto were the four big first-run movie houses on Broadway.) Almost everyone saw the ad and wondered what this fabulous

show was. The owner of the Capitol asked Harry if he knew anything about it, and Harry let him in on the secret: it was all a publicity stunt for an un- booked picture. The owner asked to see a screening of The Forbidden Woman; through most of the film, Harry yakked about the publicity campaign, distracting the man from the dullness onscreen. The theater

owner decided to show the film for a week, and so, on the evening of February 21, as a heavy snowstorm blanketed the city and all eyes turned to the sky, giant rays of light poured out from the tallest buildings—a brilliant show of green. An enormous crowd flocked to the Capitol theater. Those who did not get in kept coming back. Somehow, with a packed house and an excited crowd, the film did not seem quite so bad.

The following year Harry was asked to publicize a gangster picture called Outside the Law. On highways across the country he set up billboards that read, in giant letters, IF YOU DANCE ON SUNDAY, YOU ARE OUTSIDE THE LAW. On other billboards the word “dance” was replaced by “play golf” or “play pool” and so on. On a top corner of the billboards

was a shield bearing the initials “PD.” The public assumed this meant “police department” (actually, it stood for Priscilla Dean, the star of the movie) and that the police, backed by religious organizations, were

prepared to enforce decades-old blue laws prohibiting “sinful” activities on a Sunday. Suddenly a controversy was sparked. Theater owners, golfing associations, and dance organizations led a countercampaign against the

blue laws; they put up their own billboards, exclaiming that if you did those things on Sunday, you were not “OUTSIDE THE LAW” and issuing a call for Americans to have some fun in their lives. For weeks the words

“Outside the Law” were everywhere seen and everywhere on people’s lips.

In the midst of this the film opened—on a Sunday—in four New York

theaters simultaneously, something that had never happened before. And it ran for months throughout the country, also on Sundays. It was one of the big hits of the year.

Interpretation. Harry Reichenbach, perhaps the greatest press agent in movie history, never forgot the lessons he had learned as a barker. The carnival is full of bright lights, color, noise, and the ebb and flow of the

crowd. Such environments have profound effects on people. A clearheaded person could probably tell that the magic shows are fake, the fierce animals trained, the dangerous stunts relatively safe. But people want to be entertained; it is one of their greatest needs. Surrounded by color and excitement, they suspend their disbelief for a while and imagine that the

magic and danger are real. They are fascinated by what seems to be both fake and real at the same time. Harry’s publicity stunts merely re-created

the carnival on a larger scale. He pulled people in with the lure of colorful costumes, a great story, irresistible spectacle. He held their attention with mystery, controversy, whatever it took. Catching a kind of fever, as they would at the carnival, they flocked without thinking to the films he publicized.

The lines between fiction and reality, news and entertainment are even more blurred today than in Harry Reichenbach’s time. What opportunities that presents for soft seduction! The media is desperate for events with entertainment value, inherent drama. Feed that need. The public has a

weakness for what seems both realistic and slightly fantastical—for real

events with a cinematic edge. Play to that weakness. Stage events the way Bernays did, events the media can pick up as news. But here you are not starting a social trend, you are after something more short term: to win people’s attention, to create a momentary stir, to lure them into your tent. Make your events and publicity stunts plausible and somewhat realistic, but make their colors a little brighter than usual, the characters larger than life, the drama higher. Provide an edge of sex and danger. You are creating a

confluence of real life and fiction—the essence of any seduction.

It is not enough, however, to win people’s attention: you need to hold it long enough to hook them. This can always be done by sparking controversy, the way Harry liked to stir up debates about morals. While the media argues about the effect you are having on people’s values, it is broadcasting your name everywhere and inadvertently bestowing upon you the edge that will make you so attractive to the public.