2394 - Narratives That Shape Perception with The Bureau of Propaganda Intelligence's Jared T. Ross

0:03Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15 minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means as a listener, you're going to get the good stuff. In fact, we created podverified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages, like this one. That includes your free PodVerified score, free PodVerified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting.

0:46Visit podverify.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Jared T. Ross, a fellow Orlandian. Jared, you are the chief propaganda officer for the Bureau of Propaganda Intelligence. Your website is thepropagandabureau.com. Jared, it's great to have you. Thanks for having me, Josh. I look forward to it. A topic that I'm quite fascinated with. If anyone knows my background as a consumer skills educator, I've been in the media a couple thousand times on, you know, basically helping consumers decipher marketing and be more empowered. And as a side, you know, hobby, I'm really, really into cults and propaganda.

1:37And so anyway, we'll get into it. It's going to be a fun conversation. Before we do, I always love kind of finding out what high-level business leaders are into when they're not at work. And I understand you have kind of an interesting passion. What is it? Yes. I don't know where this came from, but one day back in 2020, I just got really into airships. Think about the big airship, the Hindenburg, that crash and it was a whole big deal. I just have a really fascination with airships for some reason. And interestingly enough, over the past few years, there's been a bit of revival of airships, both for commercial reasons and for passenger trips, and then for more like cargo.

2:25So there's a couple companies around the world that are working on reintroducing airships to the world as a reliable means of transportation. And not only that, but also a lot greener of a way to travel the world. Yeah, no kidding. So tell me, before we continue on to your professional work, what are some use cases where airships, aka, I call them blimps, but is that, why do we not say blimps? Well, blimps are usually much smaller, and they're not really designed for carrying passengers or cargo. Nowadays, these blimps are usually just for advertisements. That's typically what they're used for.

3:06But the more traditional sense of the concept of an airship, they are carrying passengers and or cargo. And so one of the biggest use cases is getting into remote locations that are really hard to land in by helicopter or plane. So disaster relief is one of the big areas where airships could prove incredibly helpful, both for getting people out of situations and getting supplies into situations that are really difficult to get to. Yeah. So, I mean, a decent sized airship probably has quite a bit of cargo capacity. You would think because of their massive size, but most of that size is actually filled up with a helium or some other gas that is inflating it.

3:51The cargo space is, you know, a lot smaller than you would think looking at it. But it depends on the company who's building these things out and what the core purpose is. But typically, yes, they are very efficient as far as the cost of getting supplies in there. The downside is the speed. They are much, much slower. But depending on what you're shipping, sometimes it's not always as important to get the speed if you can get more in. Fascinating. Now, I know that helium is kind of a fixed commodity, so I don't know if you get into the gas component, if that's a concern, like, we don't want to use a volatile helium because we only have so much.

4:34Yeah, and they have different – some organizations are steering away from helium and opting for something else. But, yeah, it just depends on the company. All right. So, Jared, a fascinating topic. Thank you so much. which really hadn't been on my radar. Airships have not been on my radar for a little bit lately. But let's talk about propaganda. And, you know, first off, can you just define what it is? Because I think it's a loaded term, and I think a lot of people can kind of fill in the blanks with what they think that we're talking about. But I'll have you do a little bit of table setting. Absolutely.

5:12Propaganda is a term that in recent years has started to gain a little bit more momentum. Especially in the last year, I've started to see some of these big name guys starting to use the word propaganda in their advertisements or in their programs offers. And it's interesting because most people are using it as a buzzword. They're using it to ruffle feathers, to gain attention, to sound different. I'm one of the only people on the planet who actually means something different than marketing when I say the word propaganda. And for Americans especially, propaganda is a bit of a dirty word. It has a very negative connotation because of propaganda used on the word propaganda.

5:49But in a lot of other countries, propaganda just means advertising. But when you trace the history of this word, even in the United States, what you find is that it's very, very similar to marketing, but there is a very clear distinction. Marketing is the organized effort to sell a product or service. Propaganda is the organized effort to sell an idea, a narrative, or belief system, which is why we often think of it in political context because in politics it's usually just an idea or an opinion that's being sold to the public. Now, in a business context, propaganda is still exactly what I said, the organized effort to sell a narrative, an idea, or a belief system, which ultimately leads back to your product or service.

6:36all right i get it i get it that's a good delineation thank you so so propaganda is it necessarily nefarious not at all just like marketers can lie and deceive and they do all the time propagandists can absolutely do that too these are both neutral tools and it's up to the user on how they're going to use it because you can absolutely use propaganda to propagate ideas that are incredibly beneficial to society. There are anti-smoking campaigns, right? They might not even be selling a product necessarily, but they're trying to sell the idea that, hey, maybe don't smoke so much. So what would be, I mean, in your experience, what would be examples of propaganda?

7:22I mean, you used maybe an anti-smoking campaign, which I think I've seen in some other countries work to some really great effect. But what are the elements that you generally think of when you think of a really effective propaganda campaign to change thinking? It all comes down to answering a singular question for your business or your cause. And that one question is, what is the one thing that your ideal customer must believe before they desperately want what you have to offer? Now, importantly, right, you asked what marks a really good campaign. This one thing that your ideal customer must believe has to stand completely separate from your brand name and face.

8:09It should be able to stand on its own and be completely valid without being associated with you. And I'll give you an example. For me, my business is centered around propaganda. So the one thing that I have to convince my customers of is that propaganda is a viable and necessary business strategy. Notice I don't say my name, I don't say my business name. It has nothing to do with me. It can stand on its own two feet and be brandless. And my competitors can also talk about that same core idea and promote it. So these other guys who are now using the word propaganda, even though they're using it incorrectly, they are inadvertently helping me.

8:48And so when you get into a propaganda campaign for your business, you're gonna come to the realization that a rising tide is going to raise all boats. So yes, you may be helping your competitors, but in the process, you're the one in control of that campaign, which puts you in the position of power within your industry if you're the one pushing the dominant narrative within your industry. I love that. As someone who has done a lot of media training and consulting, I usually love to get my clients, what is your one big idea? What are you known for? Like, what's the one thing that you're saying that nobody else is saying?

9:28And you're right. Like, if you can, you know, address a general topic. Right. So, you know, in my case, you know, I would say, you know, for what we did before, you know, a lot of lead gen has just been ruined. Like it's no longer effective for you to go out and send spam to either clients or podcasters or whoever you're trying to connect with. So I could just leave it there, you know, and, and just say, so you must go relationship oriented and that could be its own conversation. And I, I find that I don't get a lot of, it's interesting, right? Because if we're thinking about an idea, I feel like people are maybe less resistant to that idea.

10:13You know, even if you go, and by the way, here's what I do. You know, and again, it's like, well, now he's selling his thing. So, you know, guard kind of goes up. I think that I'm kind of maybe pointing out some of the art of what you do. Absolutely. And it brings up a good example. I had a meeting with a potential client a couple months ago, and they run a hyperbaric chamber facility. And for the audience who might not know what a hyperbaric chamber is, there's these medical devices that is like a tube. You often see them in like sci-fi films, but you go inside of this tube for healing. And so you go inside, it's a pressurized environment, and you breathe 100 % oxygen in this hyperbaric chamber.

10:54Athletes use it for healing their body. People with chronic illnesses can use it for healing their body. And sometimes it's just used for training for high altitudes or deep sea diving. But the whole principle here is you're breathing 100 % oxygen to facilitate the body's natural healing ability. So this company brought me in this facility to see their chambers, number one. And then the owner said, how can you help us market our services, our chambers? And I said, well, first of all, we're going to stop talking about your chambers at all. And instead, we're going to create a documentary called the Oxygen Deficit Crisis.

11:29crisis where we're going to sell the world on the idea, which is backed by data. Number one, that people are living longer, but getting sicker. And number two, that we have declining levels of oxygen in our atmosphere. If we can create this documentary, and I wanted to call it the oxygen deficit crisis, where we sell the world that, hey, the big reason why a lot of people are ill right now is because they're not getting enough oxygen. We're only breathing 20 to 30 % in our atmosphere. And if we can sell the world on that, that they just need some more oxygen because it's a sort of miracle molecule for them, then once they buy into that, they'll come knocking on your door for your hyperbaric chambers because where else are they going to be able to find a medical way to breathe 100 % oxygen to increase their uptake?

12:14Wow. So I would imagine then the business owner is like, okay, cool. We'll focus on changing the idea. But how do I make sure then that people want to come and do business with me? By controlling the narrative, you get to decide exactly how once you've sold them on that narrative, how are you going to get them in your door? And again, depending on who's watching it, this facility is based in Florida. So someone in California may be watching this. They're probably not going to come all the way over here. They'll probably go to somebody who has a hyperbaric chamber facility in California. So again, we come to that same conclusion that a rising tide is indeed going to raise all boats.

12:53But if you're the one controlling the tide, you have a lot more power in this situation. I want to give our friend that's listening right now an assignment. And it sounds like you probably just have a couple of simple questions I think that they could ask that they could start researching this and then, you know, ultimately kind of come to some conclusions that maybe they want to grab some time with you. But what would that if you were to give them or let's say you're speaking to an audience like here's if you do nothing else, here's what I want you to take back to your teams. And here's what I want you to get to.

13:28And again, I think, again, it's kind of getting to that big idea that you could change the thinking to ripen your audience so that, of course, then if they believe that, they want to then work with your solution. But how do you help them get to that? But we always start with that one question. Like that's the one thing I want the person listening to this to walk away with is you need to go back to you and your team and find out what is the one thing that my ideal customer must believe before they desperately want what I have to offer. And again, it has to be separate from your name, face, and brand.

14:07It should be an idea, a concept that can stand on its own, but will inevitably make you a contender for that person's money. You know, staying in that zone too, I think it just, you know, again, I'm thinking from a, you know, from a speaking or from a media perspective or from a, you know, what you can get away with. Like if you just stay on the top, like I feel like you just have so much more clearance because you're not pitching or selling your stuff. Right. Exactly right. You know, again, you're just, you're, you're, you're, you're working for the benefit of mankind really is kind of how it feels.

14:40You know, if you're truly say, listen, you know, whether or not you work with me, I just need you to da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, right. You have to pay attention to this, right? And it really, it almost makes you feel like, you know, it's like, ah, Jared's looking out for me. He's advocating for me. So love it. Jared, how do you work with your clients? Like, what does that typically look like? It depends on where they're at with your business. I have two main modes that I work with people. Number one is I come on as your chief propaganda officer and I'm in charge of actually building out your entire propaganda campaign for you.

15:13And yes, there is a marketing side of that included. But I have a four-phase system, and the marketing side alone is in phase three. The first two phases are primarily building out what your propaganda is going to look like, building crystal clarity on who your ideal client is, and then figuring out what is their current world experience, what are they having issues with. Yes, a lot of basic market research goes into this, but there's a deeper psychological level that we go into where we bring in the propaganda side of things. We figure out, okay, what are things that are already trending in this person's world?

15:48And how can we latch on to narratives that are already gaining momentum? I'll give you an example. In the 1920s, and this was the story that really got me into propaganda, women smoking cigarettes in public, completely unacceptable. And the tobacco companies obviously didn't like that very much because women felt shame if they were found smoking in public in the United States. So one company hired a man to come in and change that. Now, traditional marketing would say, okay, let's run more ads in the newspapers. Let's do product placement with female celebrities. But the bigger issue was their cultural attitude around women smoking.

16:22And so they needed to change that. So what this guy did that they hired, his name was Edward Bernays. He hired a group of women's rights activists, which was a growing movement at the time. It already had the momentum. He hired a group of these women to stage a protest in the country's biggest parade. Again, country's biggest parade already had momentum. And in this protest, what he would have these women do was storm the parade and light up cigarettes in full view of everybody. And he told the press exactly where this was going to happen. So they were there to take photos of it and capture the moment.

16:54And he told the ladies to tell the press, these aren't cigarettes. These are torches of freedom. And so that connected the idea of women's rights to women smoking in public. So now cigarettes became a symbol of women taking back the power from the man of having sovereignty over themselves. And it was interesting because it was done by a specific tobacco company. They didn't mention their name. It was cigarettes, the product category as a whole. That's what they had to figure out how to change. And when you remove the branding from your marketing material, it, like you said, it lowers consumers resistance because they don't see logos screaming at them to come by.

17:36They see an idea that's inviting them into a worldview. And when they adopt that worldview, inevitably, it's going to lead to you at least becoming a contender for their money. Because there's going to be some other competitors who benefit from the propagation of your narratives. But again, if you're the one in control of that narrative, that rising tide, you're in a much better position. So that's one way I work with my clients is building out their entire campaign myself. And all they have to do is say, hey, looks good. Let's run it. And then we launch. And then the other way is I coach you through it.

18:08So I do it with you. I hook you up with your own custom AI that walks you through my process. I'm reviewing all of your materials and we launch that together. Very cool. And that is, so your website, thepropagandabureau.com. What do you recommend, you know, for someone that's been listening to our conversation, where do they go from here? What would you recommend they do? The first thing they should do is go to that website, thepropagandabureau.com. and there is a white paper that explains my entire philosophy on propaganda. If nothing else, take that, download it. If you're using AI, give it to your AI and ask it to help you apply the principles explained there to your business.

18:46That alone is going to help you figure out that answer to the question, what is the one thing your ideal customer must believe before they desperately want what you have to offer? If nothing else, do that and take the value that you can get from it. If that makes sense, if what you get out of reading that is like, this is exactly what I need, then you can book a call with me and we can figure out how I can help you, how propaganda applies to your exact business needs. But I'll tell you this, there's no such thing as a complete marketing strategy without a propaganda strategy. And I was shocked when I came to this realization a few years ago, because so many people, they just go right to marketing.

19:24And that's why so many people have marketing issues. They can't get their messaging just right, because there's a layer deeper that people have just shielded their eyes from because it has a negative connotation. I'm here to set the record straight and make sure people actually understand that propaganda is a neutral tool that is up to the user to use ethically. You know, it's kind of like a salesperson that's just push, push, push, push, push, and doesn't do any discovery or, you know, try to get to the root of, you know, finding out what their client's needs may be. Like it just, it's, it's uncomfortable.

19:59It's awkward. And it's obviously a waste of money. Jared T. Ross, again, a fellow friend here in Orlando. Your website, thepropagandabureau.com. Click on white paper. And it even has a link to an eight minute long video that I started watching so folks can see you. Jared, great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh.

20:26Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit podverified.com.

21:02You can start for free with your Podverified score along with free podcast guest training and a free media kit builder. These tools are built to help you get booked on better shows, deliver stronger interviews, and convert audience trust into revenue. No more desperate sales. You truly can enjoy all the business you like by generously sharing your wisdom. Everything we offer is built by podcasters for guests with a focus on trust, organic growth, and long-term business success. Thanks again for spending your time with us. I'll see you next time. We'll be right back.