The+Granfalloon+Technique+and+Advertising+by+Gabe+Ruggiero

Question: How is the granfalloon technique successful in attracting members, supporters, and customers to cults, political parties, groups, and businesses?

Research Methods: Online article research, content analysis

The **granfalloon technique** is a method of persuasion in which individuals are encouraged to identify with a particular granfalloon, such as a pressure group or political campaign, as a means of securing for that group the individual's loyalty and commitment through adoption of its symbols, rituals and beliefs. My goal for this project is to discover how this technique works to attract members to certain groups. By researching this particular question I hope to gain deeper understanding of how these groups leaders use psychology to sell their group's ideals.


 * Rationale.** This technique can be used to create cults and other followings, such as The Nazi following and The Waco, Texas cult, The Branch Davidians. These followings are examples of threatening groups but there are also less serious examples like the fake group of the Flat Earth Society who still try and say the Earth is flat even after all of the evidence. Why do people follow groups like this? This is what I hope to gain from doing this research. Politicians also use this to bring followers to their political party. More recent granfalloons would be a group like the Al-Qaeda. It is extremely important that we know more about how granfalloons are used today in order to understand why and how these cults are created. The more we understand about these cults the better chance we have of combating similar tragedies like the Holocaust and the Waco massacre. We can also see how political parties use this to gain supporters even if their party does not have the greater good in mind. Perhaps with more knowledge of how these "leaders" gain their supporters, we can stop these groups before massacres occur. Along with the political aspect, people in business use this technique to gain customers and patrons. Companies like Apple make owning the iPhone a passage into the "iPhone group" giving people a reason to want to buy an iPhone if for nothing else just be in the "in" group.


 * Method.** My main research will be done online searching for articles involving granfalloons and these followings. This will be to gain a general and sometime specific knowledge of how and why this technique is used. I then want to dig deeper into the specific groups like the Waco cult and the Nazis and see exactly how they got their followers. Along with this I want to see how companies use the technique so I will be analyzing advertisements that employ the granfalloon technique.

Y ou've given me enough details for me to see a clear plan of action for learning more. You have the green light!