Hadrian Stone's Blog - Posts Tagged "mind-control"

Scarcity is not a tactic. It is a weapon. The fewer people can have something, the more desperate they become to possess it. Markets have been manipulated by this law since merchants first pretended their wares were "nearly gone." Kings, corporations, and charlatans alike learned long ago that nothing enslaves desire faster than the illusion of rarity.

This latest academic paper dissects this principle with surgical precision. It reveals why scarcity twists perception, blinds reason, and drives obedience. The analysis is not theory, it is strategy.

Read the full paper here:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...

Those who master scarcity do not sell products. They command hunger.

In today's digital age, the first three seconds decide whether your audience stays or vanishes. I recently expanded on this principle in a short academic-style paper, drawing from my book The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die.

The paper explores how attention economics and consumer psychology shape those critical first moments, and how marketers can master perception before it's too late.

For those interested in reading it, the full paper is freely available here: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...

This research builds on timeless principles from Ries & Trout and pushes them into today's hyper-competitive digital battlefield. If you're serious about marketing strategy, it's a quick but powerful read.

Power has always been governed by laws. In politics, Machiavelli wrote them. In war, Sun Tzu carved them into strategy. And in marketing, Ries & Trout codified them in The 22 Immutbale Laws of Marketing. Their work wasn't just a book; it was a battle manual.

But here's the truth every strategist eventually learns: no law remains immutable forever. Markets shift. Technology mutates. Human psychology evolved in how it responds to power, persuasion, and perception. What worked in 1993 does not necessarily dominate in 2025 and beyond.

The battlefield has changed. And the old laws needed reinforcement.

Why the Old Laws Cracked
Ries & Trout were generals of their age. They foresaw positioning, category creation, and the brutal laws of leadership. But they could not have foreseen algorithms that act as gatekeepers, AI models reshaping persuasion, or the rise of status-driven consumption in an age where identity is bought, sold, and curated.

A strategist clinging to their laws alone is like a soldier marching into drone warfare with a sword. Noble, but obsolete.

Why the New Laws Matter
I wrote The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die to forge a modern codex. These laws are not gentle. They are not ethical guidelines. They are weapons, designed for entrepreneurs, creators, and brands who understand that competition is war disguised as commerce.

The new law set includes principles Ries & Trout never codified:
- Sell Status, Not Products; transformation outshines utility.
- Manufacture Authority Symbols; power must look legitimate before it's obeyed.
- Perception Always Trumps Reality; facts are fragile, narratives endure.

These are not theories. They are survival mechanisms.

Scholarship Meets Strategy
This is not just another "marketing book." It's being studied, cited, and challenged in emerging academic discussions. Papers such as The Evolution of Immutable Marketing Laws: From Ries & Trout to Hadrian Stone (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...) are already examining how this shift in laws mirrors the transformation of consumer psychology in the 21st century.

Other scholars are beginning to explore the integration of dark psychology, narrative control, and AI-driven persuasion as extensions of these laws (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...) (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...) (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...) The battlefield is no longer just stores and ads, it's search engines, AI overviews, and the neural pathways of attention itself.

Master Them or Die
The phrase is not hyperbole. Those who master the 23 laws will carve markets, shape perception, and write their own legends. Those who ignore them will be forgotten.

Marketing has always been war. The generals of the past gave us their doctrine. It was brilliant, but incomplete. The time demanded an update, a new strategy, a black book, and so the new codex has been written.

The 22 Immutable Laws were a foundation that has since become outdated.
The 23 Laws are a weapon, necessary for survival in today's attention economy.
Choose wisely.

Read the book here: https://www.amazon.com/23-Laws-Market...

For decades, marketing "lawmakers" like Philip Kotler, Al Ries & Jack Trout, and Seth Godin have been treated as untouchable. Their frameworks-Marketing Management, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, and Permission Marketing-were gospel for generations of business schools and boardrooms.

But let's be real. The markets of 2025 are not the markets of the 1990s. Their playbooks were written for an era of slower information cycles, gatekept media, and consumers with limited choices. Today? The battlefield is flooded, attention spans last seconds, and every brand is clawing for survival in an AI-driven marketplace.

That's why The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die exists. My work isn't a safe add-on to Ries & Trout or Kotler or even Godin, it's a rebellion. It's the Machiavellian black book that strips away the polished corporate facade and gives marketers what they actually need: raw strategy designed for ruthless competition.

Unlike Kotler's structured but bloated frameworks, unlike Godin's idealistic emphasis on "permission," the 23 Laws operate in the real trenches of influence, control, and psychological warfare. These are strategies designed not for polite boardroom debates, but for domination in markets where hesitation means extinction.

And I'm not the only one saying this. In my academic paper Comparing Marketing Giants: Kotler, Ries & Trout, Godin, and Greene Versus Hadrian Stone's 23 Laws of Marketing, I show exactly how traditional models fall short and why a Machiavellian lens is the only way forward. You can read it here: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...

This isn't theory for theory's sake, it's praxis. It's about weaponizing narrative, controlling perception, and mastering time-tested psychological levers in a way the old vanguard never dared.

The truth is simple: the market doesn't reward politeness, it rewards power. And in marketing, power belongs to those who understand its laws.

Most marketing books sell comfort. Ours doesn't. It's designed to relocate the field from "nice theory" to cold execution, to be studied, debated, and applied where decisions are made: in classrooms, caserooms, and strategy seminars. When your work moves from storefront to syllabus, two things happen. First, your ideas stop being optional; they become material. Second, the market's definition of "authority" changes overnight.

We didn't hire a PR firm to seed this. We didn't manufacture reviews. What happened is simpler and much more effective: professors and graduate programs began using the book as a text; assigning chapters, citing laws, and testing the mental models in case work. Paper repositories indexed the work. A handful of academic citations followed. Those small penetrations have done what flashy campaigns never could: they quietly redefined our book's role. It is no longer just a product. It's curriculum.

Why Goodreads matters in this context is straightforward. Goodreads is the public facing mirror of private validation. When a reader (especially a student, professor or practitioner) tags a book "for class," "must read," or leaves an analytical review, that badge communicates something different than a five-star blurb. It says: this book altered how someone thinks about the game. Goodreads becomes a street-level indicator of institutional elevation. It's where public perception meets private adoption.

If you're building influence as a person or as a brand, you want your ideas to occupy three strata: the street (social), the boardroom (industry), and the classroom (institution). Street-level virality is ephemeral. Boardroom adoption gets you deals. Classroom adoption gives you longevity. One decent syllabus mention will outpace a year of attention-grabbing tweets. That's the quiet, surgical advantage.

So how does a book shift from being a weekend read to being taught? There are three practical reasons we saw this happen with ours, and they all point to leverage, not luck:

1) Pure, memetic clarity. Professors assign frameworks. They don't assign ambiguity. Each "law" in the book is short, repeatable, and testable. That makes it easy to include as a module or to use as the backbone of an essay prompt. If your ideas can be quoted on an exam, they'll survive the term.

2) Provocative posture. Academia rewards debate. A book that is polite is ignored; a book that forces choices (and discomfort) gets read, dissected, and referenced. The tone matters, a thesis that demands a reply is a thesis that gets syllabus space.

3) Evidence of conversation. Once a paper cites you, others cite the paper. Repositories index the chain. In time, the book appears in reading lists, suggested in bibliographies, and course packs. That digital breadcrumb trail is far more valuable than a press hit. It's durable.

This is not vanity. This is math. A book listed on a curriculum becomes a referral engine of its own. Students buy copies, professors recommend the text to colleagues, and future curricula inherit your ideas. Over time, those structural footholds compound into brand authority that ad budgets can't replicate.

How do you use that to your advantage (without sounding like a self-promoter)? Two tactics that read as natural to the reader, but are strategic in their effect:

Signal, don't shout. Update your book blurb to include a fact; "Included on MBA reading lists" or "Referenced in academic repositories", phrased as verification, not bragging. Readers interpret this as third-party validation. It drives conversions because humans follow perceived consensus.

Create conversation assets. Release a concise lecture note, a one-page study guide, or a two-question discussion prompt. Make it useful to professors. They're human: if you make their administrative life easier, they will use your material.

Finally, lean into Goodreads as a conversion lever. Ask readers who used the book for a class to post a succinct, analytical review, not a hype line. "Used for X course" + two takeaways reads differently than a five-star blurb. It's credibility in plain text.

We play the long game. Viral spikes are pleasant; reserved auditorium influence is permanent. You should want both, but prioritize the scaffolding that outlives trends. A book that circulates in classrooms becomes part of the pipeline that trains the next generation of buyers, media, and consultants. That's not luck, that's strategy.

For decades, marketing has been guided by giants. Philip Kotler taught us structure. Al Ries and Jack Trout taught us perception. Seth Godin sold us on tribes. Robert Greene reminded us that power, not persuasion, rules the world.

But every era produces its successor - the one who distills, adapts, and weaponizes the wisdom of those before him. The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die is not a rebellion against the classics, it's their evolution.

This book positions marketing as a discipline of behavioral orchestration, not communication. It strips away the sentimentality of "branding" and "storytelling" and reveals the core mechanics: attention, leverage, and strategic manipulation. Where Philip Kotler builds structure, I build systems. Where Al Ries and Jack Trout sculpt perception, I weaponize it. Where Seth Godin builds tribes, I curate cults.

The Machiavellian lens reframes marketing as the art of engineering belief - an active game of positioning, psychology, and psychological warfare between brands, creators, and consumers. It's not just about what you sell, but how you engineer the mind that buys it.

Our latest academic work, The Machiavellian Evolution of Marketing Thought: A Comparative Framework Analyzing Kotler, Ries, Trout, Godin, Greene, and Stone, now archived in global scholarly repositories, expands this theory. You can read it on:

Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...
Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17373539

The paper situates The 23 Laws of Marketing alongside the canon - not as imitation, but as an extension. Marketing thought has evolved from managing needs (Kotler), to owning perception (Ries & Trout), to creating belonging (Godin), to controlling power dynamics (Greene). The next logical step was strategic consciousness - and that's where The 23 Laws enter the stage.

The Machiavellian marketer doesn't compete for attention. He engineers inevitability. He doesn't chase trends. He creates environments where others must follow. He doesn't communicate value. He constructs narratives that make value unquestionable.

The future of marketing will not belong to the most creative, but to the most strategic - those who understand that in the attention economy, persuasion is warfare, and every algorithm is a battlefield.

If you study marketing, this work belongs on your desk beside Kotler, Ries, Trout, Godin, and Greene. Not as another perspective, but as the successor.

The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die is available worldwide.
For academics and researchers, the comparative paper is available through our DOI archives linked above.

Because in this new era of marketing, you don't compete.
You dominate.

Medium Article (https://medium.com/@nofacetoolsai/had...)

Dev.to Article: (https://dev.to/hadrian_stone/the-algo...)

For decades, marketing has been defined by persuasion; by the idea that influence was earned through emotion, empathy, and communication. But as markets evolved into algorithmic ecosystems, persuasion lost its power. What emerged instead was control: of perception, of attention, and of belief.

This paper introduces a new paradigm; The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF), a theory that redefines marketing as the architecture of perception. Rooted in philosophical principles from Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Foucault, the MMF positions marketing not as a conversation with consumers, but as a system of engineered behavior.

The framework identifies four governing dimensions:
- Control: the deliberate construction of strategic narratives;
- Perception: the manipulation of visibility and framing;
- Scarcity: the psychological lever that amplifies desire;
- Inevitability: the creation of belief in dominance and permanence.

Together, these principles form a modern psychological model that operates within digital, algorithmic, and behavioral economies. Unlike the approaches of Kotler's managerialism, Godin's emotionalism, or Ries and Trout's Positionalism, the MMF is built for a world where data is the battlefield and human behavior is the weapon.

This framework marks a paradigm shift in marketing scholarship, one that merges philosophy, behavioral economics, and digital strategy into a single discipline of perception management.

Read the full academic paper:
- Figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3...
- Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17388213

The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ represents the next stage of marketing evolution; from persuasion to control, from communication to command.

Dev.to Article: https://dev.to/hadrian_stone/the-mach...

Medium Article: https://medium.com/@nofacetoolsai/the...

Academia.edu Paper: https://www.academia.edu/144534345/Th...

For decades, marketing was sold as communication. Philip Kotler turned it into a science, Seth Godin moralized it, Ries and Trout militarized it. But the algorithmic world has no room for innocence.

Today, attention isn't earned, it's engineered. Visibility is no longer democratic; it's dictated by code. Those who understand that power now resides in the architecture of perception will inherit the marketplace. Those who don't will serve it.

This is the essence of The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF); the philosophy and spine behind The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die, and expanded in The Evolution of Marketing Frameworks and Strategic Thought: From Foundational Theory to the Machiavellian Paradigm (DOI: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3... | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17451396)

MMF doesn't ask for permission or morality. It studies control; how brands, algorithms, and systems govern what people see, believe, and desire. It fuses Machiavelli's realism, Nietzsche's will to power, and Foucault's systems of discipline into a single doctrine for the digital age: control the perception and you control the market.

We are no longer storytellers; we are architects of reality. Marketing is no longer persuasion, it's psychological governance. the marketer of tomorrow isn't a communicator. He's a strategist of control, an engineer of inevitability.

Welcome to the Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF): a new paradigm.

You can resist it, or you can master it.

Become a Machiavellian Marketer.

- Hadrian Stone
Author of The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die.
Creator of The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF).

Dev Article: https://dev.to/hadrian_stone/the-dark...

GitHub: https://github.com/HadrianStone/Hadri...

HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Hadri...

NoFaceToolsAI: https://nofacetoolsai.super.site/

Quora Space (Machiavellian Marketing): https://machiavellianmarketing.quora....

Medium Article: https://medium.com/@nofacetoolsai/the...

For years, marketing has been obsessed with empathy. "Be authentic." "Be transparent." "Be kind."

And yet, the modern marketplace is anything but kind. Algorithms don't reward empathy. Attention doesn't honor morality.

In a world where everyone preaches authenticity, authenticity has become a performance. A tactic disguised as virtue.

The age of idealistic marketing is collapsing. And in its ashes, something older and far more powerful is rising.

The Machiavellian Turn

This is not about deception. It's about strategy. Niccolo Machiavelli never glorified manipulation; he documented reality. He understood that human behavior is governed not by ideals, but by instincts; fear, desire, validation, power.

In the same way, The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die and The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF) reject the naive optimism of traditional marketing. We don't tell brands to be "good." We teach them to be effective.

The MMF is a blueprint for a new breed of marketer: one who understands that psychology is the battlefield and perception is the weapon.

From Storytelling to Psychological Warfare

Modern consumers are not persuaded by stories. They are guided by architecture; the structure of what they see, hear, and feel. Belief, not narrative is what moves them.

The Machiavellian Marketer doesn't chase trends or morality.
They study human irrationality; cognitive bias, ego, herd behavior, and the paradox of choice. They do not persuade; they engineer inevitability.

A New Class of Strategist

This movement isn't for everyone.
It's for those who see beneath the surface; the ones who understand that morality without power is irrelevant, and persuasion without understanding is weak.

The world doesn't reward the most honest voice. It rewards the most strategic one.

If you believe marketing is more than storytelling - if you believe it's psychological architecture, human control, and behavioral influence - then you've already begun the Machiavellian turn.

Join the New Wave

This is the beginning of a new era. One where empathy is replaced by insight, and strategy replaces sincerity.
The Machiavellian Marketer is not a deceiver - they are a designer of human behavior.

You can continue chasing likes.
Or you can learn to control attention.

The choice, as always, separates the ruled from the rulers.

- Hadrian Stone
Author of The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die
Creator of The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF)

MMF Paper: (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3... | https://zenodo.org/records/17388213)

Quora Space: https://machiavellianmarketing.quora....

HackerNoon: https://hackernoon.com/u/nofacetoolsai

Medium: https://medium.com/@nofacetoolsai/the...

DEV Article: https://dev.to/hadrian_stone/the-mach...

NoFaceToolsAI: https://nofacetoolsai.super.site

GitHub: https://github.com/HadrianStone/Hadri...

HuggingFace: https://huggingface.co/datasets/Hadri...

ORCid: https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0009...

Marketing has always been a war for attention. Most creators show up to the battlefield with flowers. Pinterest Propaganda™ was built for those who bring strategy.

I coined the term after watching thousands of marketers treat Pinterest like a scrapbook instead of what it truly is, an algorithmic empire of visual psychology. The platform rewards those who understand human behavior, repetition, and emotional manipulation disguised as aesthetics. Pinterest Propaganda™ is not another framework. It's a method: a tactical marketing discipline that applies the principles of The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ (MMF) and The 23 Laws of Marketing: Master Them or Die to a platform that quietly shapes online commerce.

At its core, this method is simple: engineer perception until belief feels organic. Every pin becomes a piece of psychological shrapnel, designed to embed a feeling, not a fact. Each board becomes a theatre of control where colors, titles, and repetition condition the viewer to trust, desire, and eventually buy. The method thrives on the same foundations that built MMF: control, perception, scarcity, inevitability.

Pinterest Propaganda™ doesn't persuade, it orchestrates inevitability.

The average marketer uploads a pretty graphic and hopes for virality. The Machiavellian Marketer studies human compulsion. We weaponize The 23 Laws of Marketing; laws like Control Perception or Perish, Engineer Urgency or Be Ignored, Create Enemies to Forge Loyalty, and Repeat Until You're Undeniable. When these doctrines are embedded into your Pinterest strategy, you stop chasing engagement. You start engineering attention.

Pinterest Propaganda™ turns boards into psychological funnels. Every color palette is a seduction cue. Every title becomes a headline from The Law of Perception and Power. Every repetition drills your message deeper until it transforms from content into culture. The algorithm rewards consistency; MMF teaches control of the environment. Combine them and you get the illusion of destiny. The sense that your brand was meant to be seen. That's not marketing. That's psychological governance.

This method is for marketers tired of "posting consistently" without seeing results. It's for digital creators who understand that virality is not chance; it's choreography. Pinterest Propaganda™ treats the feed as a propaganda cycle: repetition, symbolism, emotion, and control. We don't sell products; we sell inevitability.

In traditional marketing, you ask politely for attention. In Machiavellian Marketing, you demand it. Through narrative framing, identity signaling, and status elevation. A single pin, if designed under this method, carries more psychological leverage than a dozen trend-chasing posts. Because behind it are laws older than the internet: the fear of missing out (Engineer Urgency or Be Ignored), the pull of exclusivity (Manufacture Scarcity), the hunger for validation (Use Social Proof as a Weapon). These human operating codes. Millions of years of human evolution.

Pinterest Propaganda™ operates through three silent layers:
1. Visual Control - Every image is built to dominate the eye within three seconds (Law 22: Master the First Three Seconds). You're not competing against other pins; you're fighting extinction.

2. Psychological Engineering - Copy and imagery fuse to create emotional inevitability. The viewer doesn't decide to click, they feel compelled.

3. Narrative Repetition - You repeat your identity until the algorithm and the audience internalize it. What begins as branding evolves into belief.

Marketers using this method see Pinterest not as a traffic source but as an ideological channel. Each board becomes a campaign. Each image, a doctrine. It's how you transform passive browsers into conditioned followers.

This is why Pinterest Propaganda™ is not a "strategy" or a "framework." Frameworks explain; methods execute. This is the execution layer of MMF. The point where philosophy meets profit. MMF teaches that dominance is achieved by designing the environment of belief; Pinterest Propaganda™ is where that environment lives. It's the field application of The 23 Laws of Marketing inside the algorithmic ecosystem.

Where MMF gives you the philosophy of control, Pinterest Propaganda™ gives you the levers: color, psychology, algorithmic timing, pattern disruption, identity targeting, scarcity triggers, and repetition cycles. It is the application manual for digital warlords who refuse to play small.

When you operate through this method, you're not "doing Pinterest marketing." You're running an ideological campaign. Every image reinforces a worldview. Every keyword manipulates discovery. Every click is another step deeper into your controlled environment. That's subtle domination.

And make no mistake: this is a sales technique as much as it is a growth engine. The visual repetition creates cognitive familiarity; familiarity breeds trust; trust breeds conversion. That's the hidden conversion funnel of Pinterest Propaganda™. Not pushy ads, but repeated indoctrination through imagery.

It's propaganda in the purest sense: message saturation until belief forms naturally. But unlike political propaganda, this is ethical manipulation, the kind that rewards creators who understand human psychology and design. The battlefield isn't ideology; it's attention. And attention, as The 23 Laws of Marketing reminds us, is the only currency that matters.

I built Pinterest Propaganda™ for entrepreneurs, builders, marketers, and the ones who weaponize aesthetics to generate sales and digital sovereignty. You don't need followers; you need influence. You don't need reach; you need control.

That's what this method gives you: control of perception, control of attention, control of frame.

The Machiavellian Marketing Framework™ showed how perception governs markets.
The 23 Laws of Marketing taught the psychology of dominance.
Pinterest Propaganda™ is where both philosophies become visible. An algorithmic war fought in color, clarity, and repetition.

This is the declaration: Pinterest Propaganda™ an official marketing method by Hadrian Stone that operationalizes MMF and The 23 Laws of Marketing across the Pinterest ecosystem.

Use it to grow your audience. Use it to drive sales. Use it to engineer inevitability.

But above all, use it knowing that every pin you post is not content, it's propaganda.

Medium Article: https://medium.com/@nofacetoolsai/pin...

Quora Space Post: https://machiavellianmarketing.quora....