How to Use the Secrets of Secret Societies to Promote Your Work
I love Andy Warhol, not only because of his art, but also because of how he promoted his work. He was a true genius when it came to creating a hype. I have been studying his work, his methods of attracting eyeballs, and how he created an exclusive secret circle that everyone during the 1960s wanted to penetrate. How can I do that for my work? I wondered.
Earlier this year, I did an experiment to reach a wider audience, and got nominated for The Webby Award (Best Humor Website category,) for my blog, The Unapologetic Traveler.
But now that I have a new project, Kleios with Kameras, where I’m creating a series of portraits of people who have inspired me, I decided do a new experiment to promote my work.
As I only post these portraits on my Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/hello.alexhuda/ and because I don’t have any followers, no one likes my posts lol, which also means no one ever sees them. Then how do I expose my work to a bigger audience? I thought. Getting a large number of followers on Instagram was a complete mystery to me, I didn’t understand their algorithms, or how things worked. I was a complete noob.
So I wondered what if Andy Warhol was alive today, and didn’t have any followers on Instagram, what would he do?
During my research, I came across an interesting episode on The Unmistakable Creative Podcast, where the host, Srini Rao interviewed Michael Schein, the author of The Hype Handbook, to uncover the strategies deployed by secret societies, propagandists, cult leaders and self-promoters, that we could use for our own advantage.
When Michael mentioned that those strategies were the same ones that Andy Warhol used during his time, I knew I had found what I was looking for. During the episode, Michael said (and I am paraphrasing here:)
“We think that when you go to a secret society’s meeting, like Freemasons, the reason they are staying secretive is that they are doing something really really interesting and sinister. They are controlling the world’s order. What they are protecting must be so important, and so sinister, and so manipulative, or so world-changing that that’s why they are a secret. But people have actually penetrated these groups, and what they have found out is that the purpose of the secrecy is the secrecy itself.”
So why are people so attracted to this?
It’s the exclusivity, the fact that you have to qualify to get in, you have to keep these oaths, take part in these rituals, so people get very attached. Everyone wants to get involved. Movies are written about this stuff.
Michael Schein wrote in his book, The Hype Handbook:
“What hype artists know is that secret cabals of powerful people who are helping each other out in the shadows really do exist. It was how Edward Bernays got America to eat bacon, how Andy Warhol got people to accept soup cans as art, and how Dr. Oz gets people to accept strawberries as teeth whitener. And no matter where you come from, how much money you have, or who you know when you start out, it’s a method available to you.”
The idea of the secret society is what the best hype artists do. They make it seem like their growth is very grassroots, but under the surface they are generating really strategic connections that accelerate their progress. So I started thinking, how can I use this stuff for my own work. The portraits I was creating were literally getting two to three likes. What would Andy Warhol do? I thought, how would he generate a strategic connection?
That’s when I got a brilliant idea. I went on Instagram and looked up all the people that I admired, people who inspired me and were still alive. Among them was Stefan Sagmeister, an Austrian graphic designer, storyteller, and typographer who have designed album covers for legends like Jay-Z and The Rolling Stones, to name a few. And the best part was that he had over half a million followers on Instagram. If he can talk about my work, I thought, I will definitely get exposure, and reach a wider audience.
So I created a portrait of Stefan Sagmeister, tagged him in my Instagram post, and then went for my daily walk.
When I returned home after an hour or so, I couldn’t believe what I saw.
GOT FEATURED!
Stefan Sagmeister reposted the portrait I made of him, and it attracted a lot of eyeballs. In addition, I received many messages from artists around the world that loved my work, and asked me to share my creative process with them.
At the time of writing this blog post, the portrait was liked by over 1200 people, including renowned creatives, magazines, and publishers that follow him on Instagram. I wonder what will come next.
Andy Warhol would have been proud of me, I smiled, turned on my laptop, and started working on the next portrait.
