Some interviews are clean, compact, and easy to wrap in a neat little bow.

This is not one of those interviews.

My conversation with Tony Torres, author of Dark Marketing: How Brands, Politicians, and Corporations Use Psychological Manipulation to Control, Influence and Persuade, unfolded over multiple in-person interview appointments in various locations across the Los Angeles area. What began as a profile on the book quickly became a much larger conversation about persuasion, branding, politics, comedy, persona, nostalgia, ethics, audience behavior, and the strange emotional machinery behind the things people buy, believe, defend, and repeat.

Tony describes himself as an artist, author, journalist, and observer of “the little psychological traps people mistake for free will.” It is a fitting introduction for someone whose work lives somewhere between cultural criticism, dark comedy, marketing analysis, and public autopsy of the stories people agree to live inside.

Dark Marketing is not simply a book about advertising. It is about the machinery underneath the pitch. It is about the fear, identity, status anxiety, nostalgia, belonging, urgency, and emotional pressure that often arrive before the product ever does.

For creative entrepreneurs, artists, consultants, and service-based sellers, that makes this conversation especially useful. Because whether someone is selling a book, a design package, a consulting offer, a painting, a performance, a service, or a point of view, they are never only selling the thing itself. They are also communicating trust, identity, confidence, transformation, and meaning.

This full interview is being published as the foundation for a larger series. Over the next several pieces, I will be pulling out specific ideas from this conversation and exploring them in more depth, especially for artists, consultants, creators, and service-based sellers trying to market their work without sanding off everything that makes it worth noticing.

Editor’s Note: This interview will also serve as the starting point for an ongoing Vibe Check series on Dark Marketing, creative entrepreneurship, branding, persona, ethical persuasion, and the psychology of audience attention. Some of Tony’s answers will be revisited in future articles as standalone topics for artists, consultants, creators, and service-based sellers.

Consider this the source text. The full conversation follows.

Introduction

Becky O’Shea: For readers who are meeting you for the first time, how do you want to be introduced in this piece?

Tony Torres: Introduce me as Tony Torres: artist, author, journalist, and observer of the little psychological traps people mistake for free will.

I write about power, persuasion, performance, branding, media, and the strange little rituals people follow because someone with a budget told them to. My work lives somewhere between cultural criticism, dark comedy, marketing analysis, and a guy at the end of the bar pointing out that the magic trick only works because everybody agreed to stare at the wrong hand.

The clean version is that I’m an author and creative strategist. The more honest version is that I study how people are influenced, how stories get weaponized, and how brands, politicians, media figures, and institutions get the public to participate in their own manipulation.

That sounds darker than it is, but only slightly.

Becky O’Shea: You’ve been described as an artist, author, journalist, and “Your Favorite Consultant’s Favorite Consultant.” What does that phrase mean to you?

Tony Torres: “Your Favorite Consultant’s Favorite Consultant” means I’m usually the person people call when the polished answer stopped working.

A lot of consulting is theater. It is decks, jargon, frameworks, and people saying “brand ecosystem” with a straight face while everyone in the room pretends that means something. I’m more interested in the thing underneath all of that. What are you actually trying to say? Who are you trying to reach? What do they already believe? What are they afraid to admit they want? What story are they already telling themselves before you enter the room?

That phrase is also a little joke at the expense of the consulting class, which is always healthy. Consultants love to make simple things sound impossible so they can sell you the map back to your own front door. I prefer to cut through the fog and get to the pressure point.

To me, it means I’m the person behind the person behind the person. The one who looks at the messaging, the audience, the positioning, the psychology, and says, “Here is what is really happening, and here is why nobody wants to say it out loud.”

Becky O’Shea: Before we get into the book, what should people understand about your background and how it shaped the way you look at marketing, persuasion, and public behavior?

Tony Torres: My background is a weird mix of performance, writing, business, media, and watching people lie to themselves in public.

Comedy was a huge part of it. I graduated from both Second City and iO West before their respective brand collapses, which means I get to take all of the glory of having trained there with none of the shame now associated with the brands. That is called timing, and frankly, they should have given me an extra certificate for it.

But the training itself mattered. When you study improv, stand-up, and sketch, you learn very quickly that human beings are predictable in fascinating ways. A room will tell you what it wants before it knows it wants

it. People laugh before they understand why. They resist an idea, then reward it five seconds later if you frame it correctly. Comedy teaches timing, tension, status, misdirection, and emotional permission. That is also marketing. That is also politics. That is also most of public life.

Journalism shaped it too, because journalism teaches you to look past the official version of the story. The press release is never the story. The quote is never just the quote. The omission usually tells you more than the statement. Once you learn how institutions package reality for public consumption, you start seeing the seams everywhere.

Then there is the business side. I have been around enough entrepreneurs, consultants, sellers, service providers, and self-appointed visionaries to know that most people are not selling products. They are selling relief. Status. Certainty. Belonging. Escape. Revenge. Identity. Sometimes they are selling water. Sometimes they are selling a book. Sometimes they are selling a political movement. The object changes. The emotional engine is usually the same.

That is the foundation for Dark Marketing. I am interested in the gap between what people say persuaded them and what actually moved them. Most people want to believe they made a rational decision. Usually, they made an emotional decision and hired logic afterward as a defense attorney.

Once you understand that, the world gets a lot easier to read and a lot harder to trust.

The Origin of Dark Marketing

Becky O’Shea: Where did the idea for Dark Marketing begin?

Tony Torres: The idea for Dark Marketing started with the suspicion that most people are being sold to long before anyone shows them a product.

The product is usually the last step. By the time someone sees the ad, clicks the link, votes for the candidate, joins the movement, buys the course, defends the brand, or repeats the slogan, a lot of the real work has already been done. The fear has been planted. The identity has been flattered. The enemy has been named. The nostalgia has been activated. The status anxiety has been poked. The person has already been moved into position.

I kept seeing the same emotional machinery show up in different places. Fast food, politics, entertainment, luxury branding, self-help, tech, wellness, religion-adjacent influencer culture, corporate apology videos, all of it. Different body, same engine.

At some point, I realized I was less interested in whether the marketing was good and more interested in what part of the human animal it was reaching for. That became the book.

Becky O’Shea: Was there a specific moment when you realized marketing was often less about products and more about psychology, pressure, identity, fear, nostalgia, and belonging?

Tony Torres: I don’t think there was one lightning bolt moment. It was more like watching the same crime happen in different outfits.

Comedy helped me see it first. When you perform, you learn that people do not respond only to information. They respond to pressure, rhythm, status, relief, surprise, recognition, and permission. You can say the same sentence two different ways and get silence one time and an explosion the next. That teaches you very quickly that the content is only part of the transaction.

Then I started seeing the same thing everywhere else. A brand is rarely just selling a thing. It is selling the version of yourself you get to pretend you are after you buy it. A politician is rarely just selling policy. They are selling permission to feel something in public. A corporation is rarely just apologizing. It is trying to survive the emotional weather until the public gets tired.

The moment you understand that, you stop asking, “What are they selling?” and you start asking, “What are they trying to make me feel before I decide?”

That is where the real marketing lives.

Becky O’Shea: Why did this book need to exist now?

Tony Torres: Because we are living in a time when everyone thinks they are too smart to be manipulated, which is exactly when manipulation works best.

People know ads are ads now. They know “influencers” are selling (Quotation marks are around “influencers” because Tony did air quotes with his fingers any time he mentioned “influencers”). They know politicians are performing. They know corporations are lying through their teeth with a diversity statement in one hand and a legal department in the other. But knowing that does not make anyone immune. It just forces the manipulation to become more intimate, more ideological, more identity-based, and more emotionally efficient.

The old sales pitch said, “Buy this.” The new sales pitch says, “This is who you are. This is who hates you. This is what you deserve. This is what they took from you. This is what kind of person you’ll be if you agree with us.” That is much more dangerous.

Dark Marketing needed to exist now because the public is drowning in persuasion and still calling it content. We are surrounded by brands pretending to be friends, politicians pretending to be folk heroes, corporations pretending to be moral leaders, and “influencers” pretending their sales funnel is a personal journey.

I’m not trying to make people paranoid. I’m trying to make them literate.

Becky O’Shea: Who did you write Dark Marketing for?

Tony Torres: I wrote it for people who feel like something is off but have not had the language for it yet. It’s for readers who can sense when a brand is trying too hard to become a lifestyle. It is for people who watch political messaging and know they are being emotionally handled. It is for artists, entrepreneurs, students, writers, marketers, journalists, creators, and anyone who wants to understand the machinery behind the pitch.

I also wrote it for people who work in marketing but still have a soul, assuming that endangered species has not gone fully extinct.

The book is useful for professionals, but I did not want it to feel like a business textbook that was assembled in a conference room by people who say “thought leadership” without shame. I wanted it to feel sharp, readable, uncomfortable, funny in the right places, and honest about how persuasion actually works.

Really, I wrote it for anyone who wants to stop being the easiest person in the room to manipulate.

Becky O’Shea: What do you hope readers start noticing after they finish the book?

Tony Torres: I hope they start noticing the emotional invoice attached to everything being sold to them.

I want them to see when nostalgia is being used as a leash. I want them to notice when fear is being dressed up as urgency. I want them to recognize when identity is being used as a pressure point. I want them to hear the difference between a message that informs them and a message that corners them.

After reading Dark Marketing, I hope people pause before they react. That pause is powerful. That pause is where the spell breaks.

Because most manipulation depends on speed. It wants you emotional, flattered, angry, afraid, nostalgic, embarrassed, or desperate before you have time to think. The second you can say, “I see what this is doing to me,” the whole machine loses power.

That is the goal. Not cynicism. Recognition.

Cynicism says everything is fake. Recognition says, “I know what game is being played, and I get to decide whether I want to play.”

Defining Dark Marketing

Becky O’Shea: How do you define dark marketing in plain language?

Tony Torres: Dark marketing is persuasion that reaches for the part of you that reacts before the part of you that thinks. In plain language, it is marketing that uses fear, shame, status anxiety, nostalgia, identity, belonging, urgency, insecurity, or resentment to move people toward a decision. Sometimes that decision is buying something. Sometimes it is voting for someone. Sometimes it is defending a brand that would step over your body to protect the quarterly report.

The darkness comes from the emotional pressure. It is the difference between saying, “Here is what this product does,” and saying, “Here is who you are afraid of becoming if you do not buy it.”

That is where things get interesting, and ugly.

Becky O’Shea: What separates dark marketing from ordinary advertising or branding?

Tony Torres: Ordinary advertising tries to get your attention. Dark marketing tries to get inside your self-image.

A normal ad says, “This tastes good,” “This car is fast,” or “This service saves time.” Dark marketing goes deeper. It says, “People like you need this.” “People unlike you are laughing at you.” “You are falling behind.” “You are missing out.” “You used to be happier.” “You deserve to be angry.” “This purchase proves something about you.”

Branding becomes dark when the product stops being the product and the emotional wound becomes the product.

That is why so many modern brands want to be identities, communities, movements, and moral positions. They do not just want customers. Customers leave. They want believers. Believers defend the brand for free.

Becky O’Shea: Is all marketing manipulative, or is there a line where persuasion turns into exploitation?

Tony Torres: All marketing is persuasive. That does not automatically make it corrupt. Persuasion is part of human communication. A movie trailer persuades you to watch a movie. A book cover persuades you to pick up the book. A restaurant sign persuades you that maybe tacos are the answer to your spiritual problems, and sometimes they are.

The line gets crossed when persuasion starts depending on confusion, humiliation, panic, false urgency, manufactured inadequacy, or emotional dependency.

There is a difference between presenting value and engineering vulnerability. If you are helping someone understand why something may be useful, that is persuasion. If you are trying to make them feel stupid, unsafe, unloved, socially dead, or morally defective until they comply, that is exploitation.

A lot of marketers pretend that line is blurry because blurry lines are easier to invoice.

Becky O’Shea: Can dark marketing be used ethically, or is the darkness the point?

Tony Torres: Dark marketing can be studied ethically. It can be understood ethically. It can even be used defensively.

The problem is that once you understand these tools, there is always a temptation to use them like a crowbar. Fear works. Shame works. Belonging works. Nostalgia works. Identity works. Anyone who says those things do not work is either lying, inexperienced, or selling a course about authenticity.

The ethical question is whether you are waking people up or pushing them further into the trance.

You can use an understanding of dark marketing to help people recognize scams, resist propaganda, build stronger messages, protect audiences, or communicate with emotional honesty. But when you use those same tools to trap people in insecurity, dependency, or manufactured panic, the dark side has taken over.

So yes, the knowledge can be used ethically. The technique needs supervision. Preferably from someone with a conscience and no access to a whiteboard marker.

Becky O’Shea: What is one everyday example of dark marketing that most people would immediately recognize once it is pointed out to them?

Tony Torres: Fake scarcity is one of the easiest examples.

You go to buy something online and suddenly the website tells you, “Only two left,” “Twelve people are viewing this,” “Sale ends in nine minutes,” or “Someone in Denver just bought this item.” Maybe some of that is true. Maybe it is theater with a countdown clock.

Either way, the goal is the same. It is trying to move you out of thought and into panic. The product has barely changed, but now your nervous system thinks there is a stampede forming behind you.

That is dark marketing in miniature. It takes a normal decision and turns it into a survival drill. The message is no longer, “Do you want this?” The message becomes, “Can you afford to lose it?”

Brands, Politics, and Cultural Influence

Becky O’Shea: Your work looks at brands, politicians, corporations, nostalgia, media, and public figures. Why do you think those worlds overlap so much?

Tony Torres: Because they are all in the same business: behavior.

A brand wants you to buy. A politician wants you to vote. A corporation wants you to trust it, forgive it, ignore it, or keep feeding it money while pretending it has values. A public figure wants your attention. A media company wants your outrage, your loyalty, your fear, your boredom, and preferably your subscription.

The surface changes. The machinery is almost identical.

All of these worlds are competing for emotional real estate inside the public mind. They want to become familiar. They want to become trusted. They want to become part of your identity before you notice the lease agreement.

That is why a fast food chain starts acting like a best friend on social media. It is why politicians become lifestyle brands. It is why celebrities become product lines. It is why corporations talk like activists until the quarterly report comes due.

They overlap because attention became the market, identity became the product, and emotion became the currency.

Becky O’Shea: What do political campaigns understand about audience psychology that small businesses and creative entrepreneurs often miss?

Tony Torres: Political campaigns understand that people move in groups.

A lot of small businesses and creative entrepreneurs think marketing is about explaining the product better. Political campaigns understand that people want to know what joining the product says about them. They want to know who else is with them, who is against them, what side they are on, and what emotional permission they receive by participating.

Politics also understands repetition better than almost any industry. Campaigns do not say something once and hope the audience appreciates the nuance. They hammer the same emotional frame until it feels like common sense.

Small businesses often get bored with their own message right when the audience is starting to recognize it. That is a huge mistake. The public is busy, distracted, overstimulated, and barely listening. You are sick of your message because you live with it. They are hearing it for the first time on a Tuesday while scrolling between a dog video and a disaster headline.

Political campaigns understand enemies, symbols, slogans, belonging, urgency, and repetition. A lot of business owners are still trying to win by describing features.

Features explain. Identity moves.

Becky O’Shea: Why do nostalgic brands have such a strong hold on people?

Tony Torres: Nostalgia is one of the most powerful drugs in marketing because people mistake it for memory.

A nostalgic brand is rarely just reminding you of a product. It is reminding you of a version of yourself that felt safer, younger, simpler, happier, or more innocent. The cereal box is the portal. The toy is the receipt. The logo is the little shrine to a time you cannot get back.

That is why nostalgia can be so effective and so dangerous. It lets a brand borrow emotional credit from your own life.

The brand did not raise you. It did not love you. It did not protect you. It was simply present during a time your brain has edited into something softer than it probably was. But because it was there, it gets to stand near the memory and collect the applause.

Nostalgia tells people, “You can go home again.” Marketing quietly adds, “For $19.99.”

Becky O’Shea: In your case studies, you have looked at products and brands like Tupperware, Chia Pets, Kool-Aid, and Reader’s Digest. What makes something a good dark marketing case study?

Tony Torres: A good dark marketing case study has to look simple on the surface and get stranger the longer you stare at it.

Tupperware is not just plastic containers. It is domestic performance, women’s social networks, economic aspiration, and the sales party as theater. Chia Pets are not just novelty planters. They are repetition, absurdity, holiday ritual, and the power of becoming unavoidable. Kool-Aid is not just a drink mix. It is childhood, color, affordability, cartoon energy, and the emotional architecture of the American pantry. Reader’s Digest is not just a magazine. It is trust, compression, middlebrow authority, and the packaging of the world into something safe enough for the living room.

That is what makes a good case study. The object has to be ordinary enough that people recognize it, but loaded enough that it reveals something bigger.

I like products and brands that people underestimate. The things sitting in the cabinet, on the shelf, in the waiting room, in the junk drawer, in the holiday commercial break. That is where some of the best marketing lives, because nobody is guarding against it.

The more harmless something looks, the more interesting it becomes.

Becky O’Shea: What is one brand, product, or cultural figure that people underestimate as a powerful marketing machine?

Tony Torres: Santa Claus.
Santa is one of the most successful marketing machines in human history, and he does not even need a direct deposit.

He is a surveillance figure, a moral authority, a gift economy mascot, a labor myth, a nostalgia engine, a childhood behavior modification tool, and a seasonal licensing platform dressed like a jolly old man who breaks into your house, eats your cookies and drinks your milk, and leave you presents. That is incredible branding.

Every year, he comes back with total market penetration. Children understand the rules. Parents enforce the mythology. Retailers build entire quarters around him. Songs, movies, packaging, malls, parades, cookies, pajamas, ornaments, photos, wish lists, shipping deadlines, all of it orbits the same character.

People think Santa sells Christmas. More accurately, Christmas sells through Santa. He is the perfect example of how a symbol can become so emotionally useful that nobody wants to interrogate it too closely.

Becky O’Shea: What is one marketing tactic you think people encounter constantly but rarely question? Tony Torres: The forced community.

Everything wants to be a community now. Buy this and join the community. Subscribe and join the community. Download the app and join the community. Wear the shirt and join the community. Drink the canned beverage and somehow enter a movement.

Most of the time, it is not a community. It is a customer base with better lighting.

A real community has mutual obligation. It has memory. It has care. It has consequence. A brand community usually has a hashtag, a discount code, and an intern pretending to be excited in the comments.

But the tactic works because people are lonely. They want belonging. They want to feel like their choices connect them to something bigger. So marketers take an ordinary transaction and wrap it in the emotional language of friendship, identity, and tribe.

That is the part people rarely question. They ask, “Do I like this brand?” They should also ask, “Why is this brand trying to make me feel less alone?”

That question makes a lot of modern marketing look much creepier.

Lessons for Creative Entrepreneurs

Becky O’Shea: Some of my past articles have focused on creative entrepreneurs, artists, consultants, and service-based sellers. What can that audience learn from Dark Marketing?

Tony Torres: Creative entrepreneurs can learn that marketing is never just about visibility. Visibility is easy to misunderstand. A lighthouse is visible. So is a car accident. Being seen and being understood are two very different things.

Dark Marketing gives artists, consultants, and service-based sellers a way to think about what their audience is actually responding to. People are not only buying the painting, the coaching, the design package, the consulting call, or the photography session. They are buying confidence.

They are buying relief. They are buying identity. They are buying the feeling that someone finally understands the problem behind the problem.

That does not mean you have to manipulate people. It means you need to stop pretending your work exists in an emotional vacuum.

The creative seller who understands psychology has an advantage over the one who is just shouting, “Look at my work.” The better question is, “What does my work help someone believe, feel, solve, express, avoid, become, or finally say out loud?”

That is where the real message begins.

Becky O’Shea: What do creative entrepreneurs often misunderstand about marketing themselves?

Tony Torres: They think marketing themselves means performing likability.

That is where a lot of creative people get trapped. They try to become warmer, softer, broader, more palatable, more universally acceptable. They sand down every edge until there is nothing left for the audience to hold onto.

The market does not reward vagueness for very long. It rewards clarity. It rewards tension. It rewards a strong point of view. It rewards the feeling that this person sees something other people are missing.

Creative entrepreneurs also confuse humility with invisibility. They think that because the work is personal, selling it aggressively somehow cheapens it. But if you do not define the value of your work, the market will define it for you, usually at a discount.

You do not have to turn into a carnival barker. But you do have to make the case. You have to tell people why this matters, why you matter, and why now is the moment to pay attention.

Becky O’Shea: Where do artists, consultants, and service providers accidentally weaken their own message?

Tony Torres: They weaken their message by trying to explain everything at once.

A lot of creative people are terrified of being misunderstood, so they over-explain. They give the audience the whole backstory, the whole process, the whole menu, the whole philosophy, the whole trauma-informed origin myth, the whole “I’ve always been passionate about creativity” paragraph that should have been taken out back and given the old yeller treatment.

The audience does not need everything. The audience needs the handle.

A strong message gives people something they can repeat. A weak message makes people do homework. Artists and consultants weaken themselves when they make the audience assemble the meaning on their behalf.

They also weaken themselves by hiding the transformation. A designer is not just selling design. A consultant is not just selling advice. A photographer is not just selling images. A coach is not just selling sessions. They are selling a before and after. They are selling the distance between confusion and clarity, amateur and professional, invisible and unmistakable, stuck and moving.

If your message does not make that transformation obvious, you are making the audience guess. Guessing is bad marketing.

Becky O’Shea: How can someone become more persuasive without becoming dishonest?

Tony Torres: Tell the truth with better aim.

That is really what ethical persuasion is. You are not inventing value. You are identifying it, sharpening it, and putting it where the audience can actually see it.

Dishonest marketing creates pressure around something false. Honest persuasion creates clarity around something real. If your service helps people save time, say that. If your art helps people feel seen, say that. If your consulting helps people avoid expensive mistakes, say that. If your writing cuts through noise, say that. Do not hide the emotional value just because you are afraid of sounding too confident.

The danger begins when you start manufacturing wounds so you can sell the bandage.

You can name a problem without humiliating the person who has it. You can create urgency without lying. You can use emotion without faking intimacy. You can show authority without pretending to be a prophet in a blazer.

The goal is to make the truth easier to recognize, not to make the lie easier to swallow.

Becky O’Shea: What is the difference between having a brand and having a point of view?

Tony Torres: A brand is what people recognize. A point of view is what people remember.

A brand can be colors, fonts, photos, tone, logo, website, packaging, and the general vibe people associate with you. That matters. Presentation matters. Anybody who says presentation does not matter is usually dressed like a hostage in their own LinkedIn photo.

But a point of view is deeper. A point of view tells the audience how you see the world. It tells them what you value, what you reject, what you notice, what you refuse to pretend, and why your work exists beyond simply wanting to be paid.

A lot of people have branding with no point of view. They have the beige website, the nice head-shots, the three-word tagline, the Canva polish, the soft-focus sincerity. But there is no argument underneath it. No edge. No philosophy. No reason for anyone to care beyond availability and price.

A point of view gives the brand a spine. Without it, you are decorating a commodity.

Becky O’Shea: How should a solo creator or small business owner think about persona, positioning, and authority?

Tony Torres: Persona is the version of you that can survive public interpretation.
That does not mean it is fake. It means it is edited. Everyone is edited in public. The question is whether you are editing yourself with intention or letting the market do it badly.

A solo creator has to understand that people need a clear way to place you in their mind. That is positioning. You are giving the audience a mental shortcut: this is what I do, this is who I do it for, this is why I am different, this is the kind of problem I understand better than most people.

Authority comes from consistency. You do not build authority by declaring yourself an expert one time. You build it by showing up with the same worldview, the same standards, the same clarity, and the same kind of usefulness until people start associating you with that territory.

The mistake is thinking authority means pretending to know everything. Real authority is more specific. It says, “Here is the thing I see clearly. Here is the problem I know how to solve. Here is the conversation I belong in.”

That is enough. In fact, it is stronger than trying to sound like the mayor of every topic.

Becky O’Shea: What role does confidence play in marketing, especially for people selling their own ideas, services, or creative work?

Tony Torres: Confidence is the frame that tells people how seriously to take the work.
That is uncomfortable for a lot of creative people because they want the work to speak for itself. The work does speak, but it does not always introduce itself properly. Confidence is the introduction.

When you sell your own ideas, services, or creative work, hesitation becomes part of the message. If you present your work like you are apologizing for its existence, people will often accept the apology. If you act like your price is a confession, they will treat it like evidence.

Confidence does not mean arrogance. Arrogance is usually insecurity with a microphone. Confidence means you understand the value of what you offer and you are done asking permission to say it clearly.

For solo creators and service providers, confidence is especially important because you are often the product, the salesperson, the proof, and the delivery mechanism all at once. That is a lot of pressure. But it is also the advantage.

People are not only buying the service. They are buying your judgment. Your taste. Your eye. Your standards. Your ability to see the thing they cannot see yet. If you do not trust that, why should they?

Persona, Performance, and Authority

Becky O’Shea: Your background includes writing, comedy, performance, consulting, and public speaking. How has performance shaped the way you understand marketing?

Tony Torres: Performance taught me that the audience is always part of the message.

A lot of people think marketing is something you say at people. Performance teaches you that the real transaction happens between what you say, how they hear it, what they expect, what they resist, and what they secretly want permission to feel.

When you are on stage, you learn very quickly that the audience is not a passive blob. They are a living organism with moods, rhythms, fears, status games, and attention limits. You can feel when they are with you. You can feel when they are pulling away. You can feel when they want you to go further and when they want you to save them from the tension.

That is marketing. That is branding. That is public persuasion.

A good performer knows the words are only part of the act. The frame matters. The timing matters. The silence matters. The expectation matters. The release matters. The audience has to be led, but they also have to feel like they arrived there themselves.

That is the trick.

Becky O’Shea: How much of public identity is performance?

Tony Torres: Almost all of it.

That does not mean it is fake. People hear “performance” and assume dishonesty, but performance is just behavior under observation. The second you know you are being watched, you edit. Everyone does it. Politicians, artists, executives, pastors, “influencers”, teachers, parents at school pickup, guys pretending not to check if anyone noticed their car.

Public identity is the edited version of the self that can survive being interpreted by strangers.

The mistake is pretending you do not have a public performance. You do. The only question is whether you are directing it or letting other people cast you in a role you did not choose.

That is why persona matters. Persona gives shape to the chaos. It tells people how to understand you. It gives the audience a door into the work.

Without that, the public will still make a story out of you. It just may be a stupid one.

Becky O’Shea: Where does the Tony Torres persona begin and end?

Tony Torres: The Tony Torres persona begins where observation becomes performance.

The opinions are mine. The worldview is mine. The curiosity is mine. The suspicion of clean corporate language, moral theater, fake authority, and public manipulation is absolutely mine. But the persona lets me turn the volume up to 11. It gives the work a sharper silhouette.

The persona is not a costume in the sense that it is false. It is more like stage lighting. Same person, stronger contrast. Volume turened up to 11.

There is the private person who has to buy groceries, deal with software updates, and act like modern life is not a series of small humiliations rituals stacked inside a password manager thats asking for a two factor code. Then there is Tony Torres, the public-facing version who can take those observations and make them useful, funny, pointed, and a little more dangerous.

So where does it end? Probably wherever the bit stops serving the truth.

The persona is there to reveal things, not hide behind them.

Becky O’Shea: Why does humor work so well as a delivery system for uncomfortable truths?

Tony Torres: Because humor lowers their shield without lowering your blade.

People are defensive when they feel accused. They are much more open when they feel like they are in on the joke. Humor creates permission. It lets you say the thing directly without making the audience feel like they are being dragged into a disciplinary hearing.

A good joke can smuggle a hard truth past the ego.

That is why powerful people are often terrified of being laughed at. Anger can be managed. Criticism can be re-framed. Outrage can be monetized. But ridicule punctures the costume. It makes the serious person look silly, and once the audience sees the zipper on the monster suit, the whole illusion gets weaker.

Humor also tells the audience, “I see the absurdity too.” That matters. People are tired of being lectured by people who sound like they were assembled by a nonprofit grant committee. Humor gives the truth a pulse.

Becky O’Shea: What have comedy and performance taught you about audience control, timing, and attention?

Tony Torres: Comedy taught me that attention has to be earned every few seconds.
Audiences are generous, but they are not loyal by default. They will follow you if you keep giving them a reason. They will drift the second you start pleasing yourself more than serving the room.

Timing is really about tension. You build it, hold it, release it, redirect it, or let it curdle. That applies to a joke, a speech, a sales page, a political slogan, a product launch, a headline, all of it.

Audience control is not domination. It is leadership. You are making a promise with every sentence: stay with me, this is going somewhere.

That is where a lot of marketing fails. It opens too weak, explains too much, waits too long to matter, or assumes the audience cares because the creator cares. That is a fatal assumption.

Comedy teaches you humility fast. The audience does not owe you attention. You have to take responsibility for earning it.

Becky O’Shea: How should entrepreneurs think about becoming memorable without becoming artificial?

Tony Torres: They should stop confusing authenticity with lack of editing. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Being memorable requires shape. It requires choices. It requires emphasis. That does not make it artificial. It makes it legible.

A lot of entrepreneurs are afraid to become too defined because they think definition will limit them. But the market cannot remember a fog machine. It remembers a silhouette. It remembers a phrase, a stance, a style, a promise, a strong point of view.

The goal is not to invent a fake character. The goal is to find the most useful, recognizable, repeatable version of what is already true.

That means deciding what you want to be known for. It means repeating yourself more than feels comfortable. It means developing a voice people can recognize without seeing your logo. It means letting some people dislike you because the alternative is being so neutral that nobody notices you at all.

Artificial is when you perform something you do not believe. Memorable is when you finally give your truth a shape people can recognize.

Ethics and Awareness

Becky O’Shea: When does persuasion become exploitation?

Tony Torres: Persuasion becomes exploitation when the marketer stops trying to help someone make a decision and starts trying to make them afraid of not obeying. That is the line.

Persuasion says, “Here is the value. Here is why it matters. Here is why this may be right for you.” Exploitation says, “You are unsafe, behind, ugly, unloved, irrelevant, stupid, poor, morally broken, socially doomed, or about to miss your only chance unless you do what I want right now.”

The difference is pressure.

If you are clarifying a real problem, that is persuasion. If you are manufacturing panic around a problem you exaggerated, distorted, or invented, that is exploitation. If you are helping someone see value, that is persuasion. If you are trying to make them feel defective until they comply, that is exploitation.

A lot of modern marketing lives right on that border because fear converts. Shame converts. Urgency converts. Insecurity converts. The fact that something works does not make it clean. A crowbar works too. That does not make every locked door yours.

Becky O’Shea: Do audiences have a responsibility to understand how they are being marketed to?

Tony Torres: Yes. Absolutely.

That does not mean the audience is at fault when they are manipulated. The people designing the manipulation are still responsible for what they are doing. But audiences cannot afford to walk around pretending they are innocent little woodland creatures who just happened to wander into a big dark sales funnel.

We live inside persuasion now. It is in the phone, the feed, the headline, the campaign, the apology video, the influencer confession, the “limited time” offer, the rebrand, the outrage cycle, the nostalgic reboot, the political slogan, the wellness trend, and the corporate statement that sounds like it was written by a hostage negotiator with a Canva subscription.

So yes, audiences have a responsibility to become harder to manipulate.

Media literacy is self-defense. Marketing literacy is self-defense. Emotional literacy is self- defense. You do not need to become paranoid, but you do need to become aware.

The goal is not to reject everything. The goal is to stop being an easy mark.

Becky O’Shea: Are people more media-literate today, or are they easier to manipulate because the tools have become more sophisticated?

Tony Torres: Same game, different pieces.

People are more aware of the obvious tricks. They know when something is sponsored. They know “influencers” are selling. They know politicians are staging moments. They know brands are trying to sound human online. The public has gotten better at spotting the old costume.

The problem is that the tools have gotten better at changing costumes.

Manipulation does not show up wearing a villain cape anymore. It shows up as relatability. It shows up as vulnerability. It shows up as “just asking questions.” It shows up as nostalgia. It shows up as identity. It shows up as a creator sitting in a car pretending this thought just occurred to them naturally while the caption, lighting, cut points, affiliate link, and emotional arc were all planned in advance.

The prey has evolved, but so has the predator.

So I do not think people are simply smarter or dumber than before. I think the battlefield changed. The old game was persuasion through interruption. The new game is persuasion through intimacy.

That is harder to defend against because people do not feel marketed to when they feel understood.

Becky O’Shea: What is the most dangerous kind of marketing people overlook?

Tony Torres: Aspirational marketing.

People usually think the most dangerous marketing is fear-based, and fear is obviously powerful. But aspiration can be even more dangerous because it feels positive. It does not feel like pressure. It feels like becoming.

Aspirational marketing does not say, “Be afraid.” It says, “This is the better version of you.” Healthier you. Wealthier you. Cleaner you. More disciplined you. More desirable you. More enlightened you. More successful you. More morally correct you. More independent you. More admired you.

That can be healthy when it is honest. The problem begins when the aspiration becomes a treadmill. The finish line keeps moving. The product, course, diet, platform, supplement, wardrobe, investment strategy, aesthetic, or ideology is always presented as the next step toward the person you are supposed to become.

That is how people get trapped chasing a self that someone else designed for them.

Fear tells you something bad will happen if you do not act. Aspiration tells you something better will never happen unless you keep buying, posting, proving, upgrading, optimizing, and performing.

That is a very elegant cage.

Becky O’Shea: What should people watch for in politics, media, and branding over the next few years?

Tony Torres: Watch for the continued collapse of the boundary between identity and transaction.

Politics will keep acting more like entertainment. Entertainment will keep acting more like politics. Brands will keep trying to become moral communities. Media figures will keep becoming lifestyle products. Corporations will keep borrowing the language of activism, therapy, rebellion, patriotism, wellness, and personal growth whenever it helps them move inventory or survive public anger.

People should watch for language that tries to make disagreement feel like betrayal. That is going to become more common and more dangerous. When a brand, party, creator, or movement tells you that leaving, questioning, or hesitating means you are no longer one of the good people, you are no longer dealing with simple persuasion. You are dealing with emotional containment.

Also watch for artificial intimacy. The next phase of marketing is going to feel even more personal, more customized, more emotionally fluent, and more difficult to separate from real connection. The pitch will know your mood. The content will know your wounds. The brand will know how to flatter your identity before you have even finished forming the thought.

That is where people need to be careful. The future of dark marketing is not louder. It is closer.

The question will not be, “Why is this ad following me?” The question will be, “Why does this thing seem to know exactly which version of me to speak to?”

The Author Behind the Argument

Becky O’Shea: Did writing Dark Marketing change the way you look at your own work?

Tony Torres: No. If anything, Dark Marketing was my version of shouting from the rooftops with a little bit of “I told you so” mixed in for seasoning.

I was not writing the book because I suddenly discovered that marketing, branding, politics, media, and public persuasion were full of manipulation. It was part of the reason I studied marketing at DePaul University. I have been seeing it for decades after that. The book was the formal argument. It was me taking all of those observations, patterns, case studies, suspicions, and little cultural red flags and putting them into one place.

Writing it did not make me more suspicious. I came in suspicious. It just gave the suspicion structure.

That is the funny thing about writing a book like this. People may assume it was some grand intellectual journey where I uncovered the darkness layer by layer. In reality, it was closer to walking into a room, turning on the lights, and saying, “Yep, exactly. Look at all this.”

Becky O’Shea: Was there a chapter, case study, or idea that surprised you while writing the book?

Tony Torres: Reader’s Digest surprised me more than I expected.

At first glance, Reader’s Digest seems almost too wholesome to be interesting. It feels like something that lived on a coffee table, in a doctor’s office, or next to a bowl of hard candy in a grandparent’s house. But the longer you look at it, the stranger and more powerful it becomes.

Reader’s Digest was not just summarizing stories. It was packaging the world. It took complexity, danger, politics, health, culture, morality, fear, optimism, and American identity and compressed them into something that felt safe, familiar, and trustworthy. That is an incredible form of influence.

There is real power in being the publication people do not think to question because it feels like it has always been there.

That is what made it interesting as a dark marketing case study. It did not look aggressive. It did not look manipulative. It looked reasonable. It looked helpful. It looked like the adult in the room. And sometimes that is where influence becomes most effective, because people lower their guard around things that feel familiar, respectable, and harmless.

The obvious villains are easy. The polite ones are more interesting.

Becky O’Shea: What was the hardest part of writing about manipulation, influence, and persuasion without turning the book into a lecture?

Tony Torres: That was one of the main goals of the book, and honestly, my background helped make it easier.

I did not want Dark Marketing to read like a textbook assembled by a committee of people allergic to rhythm. I wanted it to be sharp, readable, funny where it needed to be funny, and uncomfortable where it needed to be uncomfortable. The subject matter is serious, but that does not mean the writing has to wear a lab coat and punish the reader.

Comedy, performance, journalism, and consulting all helped with that. Comedy teaches timing. Journalism teaches structure. Performance teaches attention. Consulting teaches you how quickly people mentally leave the room when you start talking like a brochure with a pulse.

The challenge was explaining manipulation without sounding like I was scolding the reader for being human.

Because that is the truth. We are all vulnerable to this stuff. I am not standing outside the system pretending I am immune. Nobody is immune. The point is to make the machinery visible enough that people can recognize when it is working on them.

I wanted the book to feel less like a lecture and more like someone sitting next to you saying, “Look at that. See what they just did there?”

Becky O’Shea: What reaction do you want readers to have while reading the book?

Tony Torres: I want readers to start questioning the “relationships” they think they have with brands,

politicians, media figures, “influencers”, corporations, and public personalities.

Because a lot of those relationships are not relationships. They are parasocial emotional arrangements designed by people who know exactly what they are doing.

A brand is not your friend because it posted something funny. A politician is not your family because they use the language of belonging. A corporation is not moral because it discovered the correct social position six minutes after the market research came back. An influencer is not necessarily being vulnerable just because the camera is close to their face and the lighting looks like a confession booth.

I want readers to feel that little click in their head when they recognize the trick. Not paranoia. Recognition.

I want them to read the book and start seeing how often they are being invited into one-sided intimacy. How often they are being flattered, provoked, frightened, softened, divided, or made nostalgic before they are asked to make a decision.

That is the reaction I want: “Oh. I see what this is now.”

Once you see it, you cannot fully unsee it.

Becky O’Shea: What do you hope they do differently afterward?

Tony Torres: I hope they pause.

That sounds simple, but the pause is where the whole machine starts to lose power. Dark marketing depends on speed. It wants the emotional reaction before the thought. It wants the click before the question. It wants the purchase before the comparison. It wants the outrage before the evidence. It wants the identity commitment before the reader realizes they were being recruited.

So I hope people pause and ask better questions.

What is this trying to make me feel? Why this emotion? Why now? Who benefits if I react immediately? Is this actually urgent, or am I being rushed? Is this brand offering value, or is it trying to become part of my identity? Is this politician informing me, or trying to make disagreement feel like betrayal? Is this nostalgia serving me, or is it being used as a leash?

I do not expect people to stop buying things, enjoying brands, following public figures, or participating in culture. That would be boring and impossible. I want them to participate with their eyes open.

The goal is not to become cynical. Cynicism is lazy. The goal is to become harder to handle and harder to manipulate.

That is what I want readers to do differently. Be less available for manipulation. Be less impressed by emotional theater. Be more aware of when someone is trying to sell them a version of themselves.