Hype

Here is a toy car with serious marketing thrown at it.

Hype can be a wonderful marketing tool.  It can energize the crowd and get everyone involved in the action.  See how the gathered crowd is focused on the Alfa Romeo 4C concept pictured above?  That takes skill.  I’ve also seen hype used to great effect at auctions when bidders pay 7 figures for a car worth 5.  As a matter of fact, that is a revenue stream we have long ignored, but should investigate.  We could supply our clients’ vehicles—after track testing of course—to auction houses.  The proceeds would be more than enough to purchase a replacement vehicle and still have enough to make it worth the trouble.

Hype can boost the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and cause an average person or product to reach legendary status.  Look at what hype did for Paul Revere’s image, not in Britain though.  Paul’s claim to fame originated from a couple of late night rides through town during which he yelled the same thing repeatedly.  Now he’s made out to be some kind of hero.  He would be considered a lunatic if he did that today.

As with all things in life, some tools are dangerous if you don’t know how to use them.  Overdoing it or using it wrong can cause a detour from reality and can put organizations and individuals into jeopardy.  I’m not talking about the game show, but the real thing that has real consequences, like losing your operating license due to numerous FTC violations.

The most insidious aspect to this mini-drama is that most of the time people don’t even realize when they are falling under the spell of their own hype.  Hype is its own siren beckoning you to crash against the rocks trying to reach it.  The pull is quite powerful, just ask Odysseus or about that.

Marketing departments across the world function on hype.  That’s how most of them stay operational because no rational businessperson would pay large sums of money to have people make up stuff about their companies and products otherwise.  The difficult alternative is to make products so good that owners do the marketing themselves.  That’s what AcMo strives for with each new product release.  We have yet to achieve it fully, but we are getting so close.

AcMo’s marketing department is 90% fictional and 10% fabricated.  The work the department performs is persuasive.  I’ve fallen under their spell on more than one occasion when I started to believe our own hype.

This is such a dangerous situation that countermeasures need to exist to prevent us from crashing out of business by following our own hype.  The best option I could create was the propaganda department.

The propaganda department is tasked with creating anti-marketing campaigns to keep us grounded and prevent anyone from falling under the thrall of our hype.  As you can imagine, having these two departments in direct conflict is stressful for everyone.

We have to be very careful to keep the propaganda department’s work product confidential and under AcMo’s control at all times.  One leak could destroy our reputation for creating high quality, expensive, and desirable products and services.

I have been deliberating on the best uses for the propaganda department outside of AcMo because many of the staff have become restless and would like to be allowed to see the sun on a more regular basis.  My most recent thought was that I could spin off the propaganda department by relabeling them as a marketing department and then sending them out to craft campaigns for our competitors.  By the time anyone figured out they were propaganda masters, it would be too late.  Such a blow might destabilize enough of our competitors to give us opportunities to expand our revenue streams through strategic takeovers.

This is a difficult plan because the propaganda department would need a marketing department to balance out their hype levels and keep them working for the cause.  Rebranding propaganda, as marketing would leave the propaganda side unbalanced and could cause severe hype fallout.  That kind of fallout leads to complete civilization decay and all around morale crushing attitudes.  Who wants to live without basic creature comforts like Segways and drone operated tennis rackets?  I get goose bumps just imagining that horrible scenario becoming a reality.

This is still a fluid plan and nothing has been decided.  It would be nice to put capable and loyal AcMo members into important positions with our competitors, but the spy game is a complex one.  AcMo might have a viable supplemental revenue stream if I could get some of our personnel embedded into our competitors with golden parachutes.  Then they would be getting rewarded for providing unprecedented levels of professional incompetence.

All of the plans are theoretical at this point because our top priority has to be making it to the first race of the season with the revolutionary Scuderia AcMo F-One car.  This team, car, and driver combination can win races in its first season and championships thereafter.  The application of big data along with our technical expertise is an unbeatable combination.

The team will be a trailblazer ushering in a new era of affordable vehicle construction techniques.  Our proven processes (via computer simulation) will revolutionize the automotive industry.  Expect AcMo to become a supplier of key automotive components to every major player in the industry.  That’s what we’ll be doing to start.  The rest of the plan is out of this world.  I’ve said too much too soon.  The next stages need to stay private for now, but I am confident the history books I write will look upon this time as a pivotal moment in the history of automobile racing and human evolution—provided you believe in that.

I find it is best to remember words spoken from someone far more experienced in this arena when in doubt:  “Don’t believe the hype”.  This is to be exercised when hearing information from sources other than AcMo since AcMo is a voice you can trust.