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Evening, they are sitting on a bench in the park, everything around is quiet, the light of the streetlamp softly falls on their faces.

— Do you know that people can sometimes stay silent and still hear each other? — she said.

— And if I hear you even when you’re not nearby — what does that mean? — he asked.

She smiles.

— That you imagined me.

— And what if I imagined you too close?

She looks away, but stays near.

— Then… it’s dangerous.

— For who?

— For both of us.

A small pause. He leans slightly toward her.

— I wonder… can danger be kissed?

— It can… but after that it will never let go.

— And if I’m ready?

She almost whispers.

— Then maybe I’m not ready to stop being afraid.

They look at each other, their breathing mixes, but no one moves any further. He pulls back for a split second, as if saving this moment in his memory.

— Let’s leave danger for later for now.

— Yes… but I still feel it here.

She places her palm on her heart.

Pause. They both look into the darkness of the park, as if trying to distract themselves from what just happened.

— You know… danger isn’t always bad. Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes the heart beat faster.

She laughs quietly.

— You say it like you’re checking whether mine is still beating.

He leans a little closer.

— Is it?

— Too loudly. Even the streetlamp can probably hear it.

— Then let it be a witness.

She sighs.

— You are dangerously close to making me stop being afraid.

— Maybe this is the moment?

She looks down along her legs, tapping her toes, creating a rhythm. He leans slightly so that she sees his face with her peripheral vision. Slowly, he moves a part of her hair behind her ear and touches her cheek with the back of his hand. She doesn’t pull away, on the contrary, she turns her head toward his hand.

— If it is… don’t ruin it with words.

He smiles, removes his hand, but stays close.

— Then let’s just… remember it.

— Remember it. And maybe… one day confuse it with reality.

Everything around is quiet, only the rare rustle of leaves.

— And what if we confuse it right now?

She gets slightly embarrassed.

— And who would judge us for that?

— Except maybe this streetlamp.

— It has already seen too much.

He laughs slightly, his gaze remains on her eyes. The pause stretches. He doesn’t look away.

— Then, it seems… we are already on the other side.

She slowly exhales, as if letting something go inside, turning her head toward him. He keeps looking. From the light tension, he moves his body closer to her. The movement is light, almost weightless, like an accident that is too right to be accidental.

Around them is still the same silence, and only the streetlamp, with its soft distant buzzing, reminds them of its presence.

How do you understand which segment you are in? Look at your product basket and the receipt after purchase. Even deeper analysis can be done if you stand near the checkout of a large grocery store and observe other people’s carts. Do you think marketing respects you?

Different segments have different rules and different laws of marketing.

Mass Segment

In the mass market segment, due to extreme competition, marketing mostly works through direct pressure. People are literally being «pushed» products and services. Communication is built as a set of instructions or almost commands: «click the link», «watch the video», «buy the product». This creates an experience of an information attack, where the person has no space for reflection. Only to submit and react to a signal.

Task — How do you sell perfume? You are selling perfume bottles for a mass market, where the entire value is the smell itself, but due to competitors standing next to each other on the same shelf in a line, all scents mix in the air, and the individuality of each product disappears. How do you sell perfume?

Premium Segment

In the premium segment everything is structured differently. The client is not directly attacked with information. Information is strategically designed in a way where the client’s attention becomes the number one priority. «But what about service quality?» — any sales manager would ask, and partially they would be right. In strategic terms, the marketer’s focus is always placed within the framework of attention control, where control is not understood as a manipulative way of directing the client, but as a pre-designed sequential cognitive load on attention, where the client freely moves through the experience and naturally encounters strategically placed elements that shape perception and define attitude through context. Why is that?

Ask yourself a personal question: «If you had unlimited money, what would be your number one priority?».

Task — How do you keep your hotel in the market? You are a marketer in a premium hotel located in the center of a large city. Your intelligence department reports that a Chinese clan nearby is planning to build two similar premium hotels, with a long-term strategy of pushing you out of the market through artificial competition between all parties involved. How do you keep your hotel in the market?

But what if I tell you this is still not mind games, even though the tasks are already complex. What if there is a segment above premium?

Human intelligence evolved because it was constantly facing complex problems. Over centuries we arrived at highly complex systems managed through departments and structures. Marketing is always one step ahead, because the marketer’s motto at any time is: «if you don’t move first, others will». Due to the rapid development of marketing, methods are constantly created and quickly die, because people adapt. So many selling techniques have been invented that even an average passive person starts sensing advertising before it appears, and to surprise such a person, a marketer has to go beyond their limits.

But if this «passive person» in context is not educated like, for example, a CEO of a monopolistic oil company, then how much further does a marketer need to push to sell to an educated person who values their attention, service, and does not tolerate mistakes?

International Segment

This is a segment where a person perceives the informational space so clearly that they protect it with thick walls of an information bubble. Every access point to this person is carefully designed, and information is filtered in such a way that even an interesting offer from a marketer may never reach the company’s director. In this segment, the question is not «so what?», the question is «why won’t this pay off in the long run?».

Task — How do you sell oil? You are a marketer in a monopolistic oil production and sales company in Norway. You need to sell oil to a large refinery company in Germany. The price is identical across all suppliers, so competition is not in the product itself, but in trust toward the supply source and the stability of long-term contracts. How do you sell oil?

This task is interesting, so I want to share one of my solutions.

Let’s assume the intelligence department reports that the director has a son under 7 years old, and he likes LEGO. Let’s ignore why intelligence included this as useful information in the report. It may seem irrelevant — what does LEGO have to do with anything? But strategically, the child is the closest personal information node through which information can indirectly reach the director. If we successfully solve the task of getting a LEGO set into the child’s hands without raising suspicion, this vector can be considered a usable channel of informational influence.

So what does LEGO have to do with this?

Now imagine a situation where the child, as usual, comes to his father’s office, spreads LEGO bricks on the floor, and starts building as if nothing else exists. At the end of the build, the father comes to say goodbye before leaving for his important work and sees a constructed oil rig made of LEGO blocks, with a Norwegian flag waving on top.

At this moment, we can say that we have effectively created an informational impact inside a closed informational field. But let’s remove the illusion and look at reality critically: how realistic is this? It is realistic not because the probability is low, but because it follows the first law of street trade: «it is not what and to whom, but where and when».

Such micro-attacks are built across thousands of directions, in different forms, abstractions, and meanings, and it would be a major success if even one of them actually reaches the target.

And let me ask you one more: «Do you think marketing respects you?»