How to Build a Marketing Message Around Existing Desire
Use vivid scenes, identity, and emotion to connect what you sell with a future your audience already wants.
By Nick Verge · Article published October 27, 2026
Full transcript
Download transcript (.md)Transcribed from the video audio. Automatic transcription may contain recognition errors.
Original video: how profitable propaganda works
Every morning, millions of Americans wake up, scroll social media, brush their teeth with fluoride, and thank God that they live in a free country. They dress themselves in clothes made by children in Bangladesh, drive cars intentionally designed to break down after a certain amount of miles, and spend their days working jobs they hate to buy things they don't need, all while believing it was their choice. Welcome to the machine of profitable propaganda. The average business owner believes they're in the business of selling products or services, and this is their first and most fatal mistake. What they're actually engaged in is the business of channeling desire, engineering consent, and shaping reality itself.
This isn't hyperbole, it's the fundamental truth that separates market leaders from market participants. Like gardeners planting seeds that will later bloom, the architects of profitable propaganda understand that the greatest power lies not in forcing people to act, but in creating the conditions where the consumer believes the thought was their thought. This is the secret behind our thriving economy. Profitable propaganda is the underlying silent current that truly moves markets. Every president from Bush Sr. to Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump uses profitable propaganda.
Every major corporation from Amazon to Apple, from Walmart to the World Economic Forum, all of them use profitable propaganda. And yet the genius of profitable propaganda is that it doesn't announce itself. It whispers. It doesn't strut across the stage shouting its name. It operates behind the curtain, tweaking the lights, setting the stage, handing the players their lines. The audience, the consumers, the voters, the free citizens of the world, they sit enthralled, blissfully unaware that the drama unfolding before them was scripted in a boardroom long before they even thought about buying their tickets.
Take a closer look at your favorite choices. everything from the shoes you choose to the coffee you buy to the brand of toothpaste you use you bought these products because their branding showed you a version of yourself you want to be a cleaner healthier more attractive version of yourself you didn't pick that politician because of their policies you picked them because their slogan resonated with your tribal wiring hope MAGA build back better these phrases aren't ideas they're keys turning the lock on the part of your brain that says, yes, that's who I am, and that's what I believe. The brilliance of this mechanism
lies in its ability to occupy every layer of reality, from the mundane to the spiritual, from the clothes you put on your back to the religion you choose to uphold. Every headline you read, every trend you follow, every meme you share is part of its ecosystem, a self-perpetuating loop of manufactured meaning through ideas that we call our own. It's easy to look at us profitable propagandists and think we're all evil. Yet we justify our work as necessary, even noble. If we don't do it, someone else will, is what we tell ourselves. In other words,
program or be programmed. In even simpler terms, the world needs direction and we're the ones smart enough to provide it. And maybe they're right. After all, what is reality if not a collective hallucination? What is the truth if not the story we all agree to believe? The propagandists simply understand this better than anyone else. They don't fight the currents of perception, they channel them. Let's not get too sanctimonious here. This isn't a morality tale. There's both good and evil here at play. They're both only players in a game as old as language itself. The question isn't whether profitable propaganda exists. It does, and it
always will. The question is whether you'll wield it or let it wield you. With great power comes great responsibility, and with great responsibility comes the choice to either illuminate or manipulate. The tools of profitable propaganda are inherently neutral. They're neither sword nor shield until wielded with intention. How does this work? Well, I already told you, but the high frequency of words and images meant to deliberately overwhelm you were designed to take you off track and make you forget. It's really that simple. Here's how profitable propaganda actually works.
We first channel desires that already exist. We then manufacture consent, and from there, we shape reality for the viewer. The government mastered these skills long before Madison Avenue ever dreamed of selling soap. They've been running the longest-running propaganda campaign in human history, American democracy itself. Profitable propaganda plants a movie in your mind, a visceral, emotional experience that plays on repeat in your consciousness until the gap between your current reality and the one you've been shown becomes unbearable.
Every word that we choose, every image we select, every video we craft must serve as a director's tool in this psychological cinema. Imagine has become our most powerful word, because when you get them to imagine, you've hijacked their brain's projection room. We're not pushing, we're pulling them into a reality of our design. When Nike shows you an average person running at dawn, they're not selling shoes. They're planting a scene in your mind where you are that runner, strong, dedicated, unstoppable.
And suddenly their slogan, just do it, isn't a command. It's the voice in your own head urging you toward this new reality. This is why perfume commercials seem absurd on the surface. Beautiful people running through Paris, diving into oceans, dancing in rain. They're not selling scented water. They're planting movies of romance, adventure, and sex into your mind. Logic is what makes people think. Emotion is what makes people act. When you show someone their desired reality so vividly that they can taste it, feel it, and live it in their mind,
logic becomes irrelevant, price becomes secondary, need becomes urgent. This is the true power of profitable propaganda. Get them to run your movie in their head long enough, and their current reality starts to feel like a boring rerun. The gap between what is and what could be becomes intolerable. Your product or service transforms from a want into a need, not because you convinced them, but because they've convinced themselves. Master this and you too can craft profitable propaganda.
Thank you.
The starting point of the argument in this video is that selling is about more than describing products and services. It is about channeling desire and shaping the way someone sees a possible future.
I call this profitable propaganda. The mechanism begins with desires that already exist, builds agreement around a message, and gives the viewer a picture of a different reality.
Build your marketing message around existing desire
Look at the choices people make and the version of themselves those choices represent. A brand can suggest being cleaner, healthier, more attractive, more capable, or part of a group the buyer identifies with.
The desire comes before the product. Your message connects the two.
In the video, I point to political slogans as examples of language that works through identity and feeling. A few words can carry associations much larger than their literal meaning. The same principle applies when a brand presents an identity the customer wants to inhabit.
Turn the desired outcome into a scene
Do not leave the future as an abstract benefit. Give the person something they can imagine themselves experiencing.
The example I use is a running brand showing an ordinary person running at dawn. The scene is more than a shoe demonstration. It gives the viewer a picture of themselves as strong, dedicated, and consistent.
Perfume advertising uses a similar approach. The images of Paris, rain, romance, or adventure are not explanations of scented water. They give the product a place inside an experience the viewer wants.
Ask what your audience would be doing, seeing, or feeling if the desired outcome were already part of their life. That is the scene your words and visuals need to develop.
Make the words and images serve the same idea
I describe this as planting a movie in the viewer's mind. Every word, image, and video choice becomes part of directing that movie.
“Imagine” is useful because it invites participation. Instead of watching a distant explanation of someone else's life, the viewer can begin putting themselves inside the scene.
The message needs to hold together. A slogan, a visual, and a product can reinforce the same emotional experience so the viewer supplies part of the argument themselves.
Show the distance between now and what could be
Once the desired scene feels vivid, the contrast with the present becomes more noticeable. That gap gives the offer its significance.
The product is no longer just an isolated object. It has become connected to a change the person wants to experience. This is why an emotionally meaningful presentation can do something a purely descriptive explanation does not.
The sequence in the video is to channel existing desire, develop agreement, and shape the viewer's picture of what is possible. Start with what matters to the audience and make that future concrete enough for them to picture it.
Be deliberate about what you are directing
The video also raises the choice between illuminating and manipulating. The tools gain their meaning from the intention behind their use.
When you plan a message, understand that you are directing attention and association. Choose the desire, the scene, and the relationship to the offer deliberately. The more clearly you understand the experience you are creating in the viewer's mind, the more deliberately you can write and produce the message.