According to professor Yuval Noah Harari, the law and public relations are modern day magic; lawyers and judges, academicians, and marketers are modern-day, secular, wizards; and Edward Bernays may very well be Dumbledore (while Joseph Goebbels is obviously Voldemort).
I was just listening to Israeli historian and a tenured professor Yuval Noah Harari interviewed by Russell Brand on episode 48 of the Under the Skin podcast, (Yuval) Noah’s Arc – What Is The Future For Sapiens? According to the podcast, reality isn’t real, it’s merely and simply a very fragile, consensual, group fiction.
From my early days playing D&D as a tween to ordering Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from the UK not long after it was released, I’ve resented being a Muggle. Guess what! We marketers and public relations practitioners are as close to being witches, warlocks, and wizards as you’re going to find outside of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Diagon Alley.
According to Oxford-educated Dr. Noah Harari, cultural realities like money and even global brands like Peugeot are fictions that don’t really exist outside of our collective spellboundedness. They can easily be hacked through spellcraft, which is to say here, the spelling of letters into words and words into messaging and into writing and through publishing and judgments and laws.
Apparently, we’re very extremely easily persuaded—both hearts and minds, both individually and (especially) en masse. What’s really cool is that just about everyone considers themselves invulnerable to our secular hoodoo voodoo that when the “Jes Grew” hits us all, we just dance, dance, and dance without knowing why.
Over time, words, language, arguments, and persuasion results directly into these evolving fictions that we commonly call dollars, cultures, communities, laws, leaders, reputations, corporations, prestige, Daimler and America.
While both laws and violence can very quickly rewrite fictions–marketing, advertising, public relations, publicity, public affairs, and even domestic and international propaganda is much less jarring. They act more like external braces or a plaster cast that slowly realigns one fiction into another over time—often permanently and without detection!
Et voilà! A rabbit out of a hat? (ceci n’est pas un lapin; ceci n’est pas un chapeau)
If I may be honest and much more orthodox to Noah Harari’s interview and text, strictly-speaking, lawyers, judges, historians, and philosophers are the high-priests of this world of secular muggle magic. However, the real practitioners for hearts and minds, day-to-day, down here in the streets away from all the ivory towers are us in marketing, public affairs, reputation management, crisis management, and publicity. And no, magicians don’t count!
We’re the working mages, we’re the practical wizards, we’re much more Order of the Phoenix than Ministry of Magic: all fisticuffs and piss and vinegar! Be sure to tell all your prospects and clients that Google AdWords and Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads are not anointed with the magic inheritance of we PR professionals, we marketing mavens, we government propagandists (respect!).
That when they hire us, we who do crisis management, we who do SEO and actually get your good name onto Google and your bad name off of it, we who do long-tail micro-influencer marketing and social media outreach, we’re not mortal, we’re not normal, we’re not what we look like. We are actually bonafide witches, warlocks, wizards, and sorcerers. When you retain us, we sidle up to our securlar crystal balls and caudrons and influence, and through our mastery of both spell and magical intent, create the collective fiction of your village, your town, your city, your region, your nation, and even the world!
Now that you know our arcane secret, don’t you think we, and all of our amazingly-powerful and irresistibly magical powers, known as our PR and marketing practices, are cheap at twice the price! Come over and check out the next best thing to Hogwarts, Gerris Corp, and consider self-scheduling a magical call with me, Chris Abraham, for 15-minutes or 30-minutes—unlike those awful magicians, conjurors, illusionists, prestidigitators mentalists, and mind readers, I’m for real.
Feel free to own the yacht but hire a crew if you’re not yet seaworthy. If you get my drift and want to adopt the yachting lifestyle yourself but either don’t have the mad sailing skills yourself, don’t yet posses a world-class crew, and don’t know yet where to go, then you should give me a call or reach out me by email — so I can help you pilot your vessel now, in the tranquil blue-green shallows of the Caribbean, as well as in the roughest seas and into — as well as out of — the storm.
If you’d like to chat more, call me at +1 (202) 869-3210 Ext 0001 email me, or feel free to self-schedule a 15-minute call, a 30-minute call, or a 60-minute call with me.
