The Illusion of Successful Projects in Show Business

Grandeur and the Facsimile of Grandeur

Grandeur and the Facsimile of Grandeur
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There is one interesting feature of our perception: we are much more willing to believe in the success of someone who already looks successful. A new artist with 70 followers is a beginner. A new artist with 70,000 is already someone interesting. Even if they released their first song on the same day.

That is why the launch of some new projects starts far from zero. An Instagram or TikTok page with an already established audience is bought, while media placements, Telegram channels, public pages, and influencer integrations are purchased in parallel. Photo shoots appear, the right people are around, along with interviews, posters, mentions. You still have not had time to understand who this is, but this person is already everywhere.

And the brain itself fills in the missing part of the story: if so much is being said about him, he must be important. If he has 100,000 followers, he must be popular. If there is a major interview, he must have something to talk about. If the fee is high, he must be worth that much. And the most interesting thing is that this mechanism really works.

When Perception Becomes Reality
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First, an impression is created, then reality is pulled up to it. At a certain point, artificially created grandeur really can stop being artificial. People begin to follow organically, the artist is invited to events because they have seen him elsewhere, media outlets write about him because other media outlets have already written about him, brands offer collaborations because they see the numbers and the informational noise. And then a wonderful self-reinforcing mechanism kicks in: “he is famous because everyone knows that he is famous.”

But here lies a fork in the road that is not immediately visible. The same mechanism launches both the one who is worth something and the one who is not. At the start they look the same — the difference appears later, when the impression has already been created and reality begins either to catch up with it or not. Under the structure, one reveals substance, and it becomes a foundation. Under the other — emptiness, and it remains a facade. And the most unpleasant thing is that at the start this is not visible even to the one building the structure around themselves.

That is why talent is not always decisive here. A person may be fantastically talented, or they may be quite mediocre — for the first stage, something else matters more: how convincingly the structure around them is built. And this already resembles the skill of a good illusionist: you understand that this is a trick, but if it is done professionally, you still watch.

Not Just About Music
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This applies to far more than music. A startup may have almost no product yet already look like an international company. An expert may have very little real experience, but dozens of interviews, a beautiful website, a professional team, and the right positioning. An entrepreneur may create the image of someone running a huge business, even though a significant part of its “scale” exists mainly on social media. We live in an attention economy, where perception is sometimes formed before real value.

where does marketing end and deception begin?
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I see nothing wrong with presenting yourself well. Buying ads, working with PR, creating a strong image, investing in recognizability, showing the product’s best side — that is business. The problem begins where we consciously pass one thing off as another. A purchased audience is presented as an established fan base, paid mentions as sudden media interest, artificially created noise as public hype, and numbers with no real human behavior behind them as proof of popularity. That is no longer just packaging. It is the creation of a reality that does not yet exist. And yes, the mass consumer believes in it very easily.

And if you strip away the decor, what will remain?
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But there is one good test. Try mentally taking everything away: the number of followers, articles, expensive clothes, connections, beautiful photos, badges, numbers, statuses, and informational noise. What will remain? And most honestly, apply this not to others, but to yourself. Would the person be interesting if no one told you in advance that they are interesting? Would you want to listen to an artist if there were no millions of streams next to their name? Would you want to talk to an entrepreneur if you did not know the size of their company?

This is where, for me, the line runs between greatness and the facade of greatness. Truly strong people also need marketing, PR, and packaging — I would even say they absolutely need them if they want to scale their influence. But for them, packaging amplifies what already exists rather than trying to replace the absence of substance.

You can buy the first hundred mentions. You can create the right first impression. You can even convince thousands of people that there is someone great in front of them. But real magnetism is harder to buy. We are drawn to some people because we have been told many times that they matter. And to others — even before we have any idea who they are.