Marketing Secrets with Russell Brunson - The Propaganda Playbook - Legos (Did Iran Beat America’s $886 Billion Military… With Legos?) - #Marketing - Ep. 129

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

There’s a moment when you realize the most powerful military in the history of the world just got out-marketed by a group of teenagers with laptops. Not outgunned. Not outspent. Out-marketed. Iran��s $0 propaganda budget — a few Lego figures, some AI rap music, and a couple of memes — pulled more eyeballs and more shares than the Pentagon’s entire $886 billion public affairs operation. And the strangest part? They didn’t invent any of it. The exact techniques they used were written down a hundred years ago… by an American. In this episode of The Russell Brunson Show, I break down what The Wall Street Journal is calling “Lego Ganda” — the AI-generated Lego-style videos out of Iran that ran the table during the 2026 Iran war. I take you back to Edward Bernays’ “Propaganda” (the first-edition copy is sitting on my desk), through Neil Postman’s 1985 warning about entertainment-as-propaganda, and right into the four-part framework I use to decode what just happened. Because the exact playbook a group of anonymous Iranian students just used to humiliate the United States is the same playbook I used twenty years ago to bootstrap a company past a billion dollars in sales without a single dollar of venture capital. Same science. Different story. Key Highlights: ◼️The “Lego Ganda” breakdown — how a group calling themselves Explosive Media racked up millions of views per video, got referenced at Coachella, got their channel pulled by YouTube… and just kept popping back up everywhere else ◼️Bernays’ 1929 “Torches of Freedom” campaign and the cultural-hijacking technique Iran just ran in reverse — using American Legos, American rap, and American memes to undermine the American narrative ◼️Why Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” predicted all of this in 1985 — and why “slop-aganda” (cheap AI content + propaganda) is now the marketing format that beats every legacy media operation ◼️The four-part “Lego Lesson” framework: (1) use the audience’s culture, not yours, (2) entertaining beats convincing, (3) fast and frequent beats perfect and rare, and (4) the audience IS the distribution ◼️Why the Pentagon spent $886 billion and still lost the narrative war — and what every entrepreneur with a phone and an AI tool can take from a group of students who beat them with cartoons At the end of the day, this episode isn’t about Iran or politics or even the war. It’s about a hundred-year-old technique that just resurfaced in a brand new form — and the entrepreneurs who’ll dominate the next decade are the ones who recognize it. Because if the most powerful military on Earth can lose a narrative war to students with laptops, your business can lose its audience the exact same way — to someone who tells a better story, who’s more entertaining, who understands your customer’s culture better than you do. So the question I want you to sit with is this: are you still trying to win by being the biggest, the most credentialed, the most polished voice in your market… or are you ready to win by being the most entertaining one? ◼️If you’ve got a product, offer, service… or idea… I’ll show you how to sell it (the RIGHT way) Register for my next event → https://sellingonline.com/podcast ◼️Still don’t have a funnel? ClickFunnels gives you the exact tools (and templates) to launch TODAY → https://clickfunnels.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have a funnel, but it's not converting? The problem 99.9% of the time is that your funnel is good, but you suck at selling. If you want to learn how to sell so your funnels will actually convert, then get a ticket to my next selling online event by going to sellingonline.com slash podcast. That's selling online.com slash podcast. This is the Russell Brunson show. Okay, so that video you just saw, it was made by a group of anonymous students in Iran, using AI, using Lego, style animation and it got more views than most Pentagon press conferences. Now, I spent 20 years studying the science of persuasion.

Right here, this is the first edition copy of Edward Bernay's book called Propaganda, and this is literally the guy who invented public relations, and I used what I learned from that book to bootstrap a company passed a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. So I tell you that a group of Iranian students with laptops and AI just beat the United States in the propaganda war using children toys, I need you to understand how significant that is. Because the techniques that they used, Bernays invented them 100 years ago for Americans,

and now they're being turned against us. This is the propaganda playbook where I take the biggest stories in the news and decode the propaganda techniques that are hidden inside of them. And then I show you how to use the ethical versions of these same techniques to grow your business. So that said, let's get right into it. Okay, so here's what happened. Major combat operations in Iran. When the Iran war started in late February, 2026,

something showed up on social media that nobody expected. Not military footage, not news broadcasts, not government statements, Lego videos. AI generated Lego movie-style animated videos with rap music in English, mocking the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the entire American military operation. Made by a group calling themselves explosive media. And these weren't amateur.

These videos were fluent in American culture. They referenced the Epstein files, they mocked Trump's Bruce Hand that had been in the news. They called out the infighting and the mass. and they use Trump's own promises to keep us out of wars against him. One video has an Iranian military commander literally rapping at Donald Trump. You thought you ran the globe sitting on your throne, now we're turning every base into a bed of stone.

And the numbers were insane. Within a month, these videos had millions of views across every platform. The New Yorker called them inescapable artifacts of the war. The Wall Street Journal gave them a name, Lego Ganda. They were referenced at Coachella. They spread from Iran to Pakistan, where the creators started making their own. own version. YouTube actually took down explosive media's channel and they just popped back up on other platforms. A propaganda scholar named Nancy Snow, someone who's written a dozen books on the

subject, said something that I think every entrepreneur needs to hear. She said, they're using popular culture against the number one pop culture country, the United States. Read that again. They used our culture against us. Legos and American childhood staple, rap music, and American art form memes the language of American internet culture. References to Epstein, Maga, Trump's own words, everything about these videos was designed using our cultural tools to undermine our narrative and it worked. Now, before we go any further, I want to know if you've seen these videos. Have they shown up inside of your feed?

Did you watch one? Did you share it? And I want you to be completely honest. Because if you laughed at one of these and hit retweet, I need you to understand what just happened to you. And that's what the rest of this episode's about. So if you did see one, let me know in the comments down below. So if you've been watching the series,

you know this man. His name's Edward Bernays. He was Sigmund Freud's nephew. He's a man who invented public relations and the man who figured out over 100 years ago that the most powerful form of propaganda isn't telling people what to think. It's embedding your message inside of culture

that they already live in. And I'm going to show you exactly how I ran did just that using Bernay's own playbook. In 1929, the American Tobacco Company had a problem. Women weren't smoking in public. It was considered taboo, socially unacceptable, so they hired Bernays. And did Bernays run ads telling women they should smoke?

No, he organized the torches of freedom campaign during the New Year's Easter parade. He got young women to light up cigarettes, in public and told the press that they were lightning torches of freedom as a feminist statement. He didn't sell cigarettes. He hijacked the women's liberation movement and then embedded cigarettes inside of it. That's cultural hijacking. You take a cultural movement that already has emotional power and you embed your product or your message or your service inside of it. Look at what Iran did. They didn't try to create a new cultural form. They took Lego, something every

American grew up with. They took rap music, something every American listens to. They took memes, the dominant language of the American internet. And they embedded their anti-war anti-American message inside of all of it. They didn't invent a new delivery system. They hijacked ours. Exactly like Bernays hijacked the women's movement to sell cigarettes. Same technique, 100 years apart. The second thing Bernays figured out is that the most powerful propaganda ever comes from the propagandist. It comes from the audience. When Bernays wanted to make green the most fashionable color in America so that lucky strike packs would match women's outfits, he didn't take out ads saying that green is fashionable. He got fashion designers to showcase green. He got department stores to put

green in their windows. He got society pages to write about green. The message spread through hundreds of third parties who had no idea they were part of a campaign. Now, look at the Lego videos. Iran didn't need a media empire to distribute them. They didn't need CNN or Fox News. They made the videos entertaining enough that Americans distributed them for Iran. Every person who laughed and shared a Lego video became an unwitting distribution channel for Iranian propaganda. A researcher at Clemson University put it perfectly. He said Iran's strategy isn't to create new narratives, to amplify division that already exists inside of American society.

They find the cracks, Epstein, anti-war sentiment, distrust of government, and they pour their message into those cracks. And then Americans share it themselves because it validates what they already feel. Bernays called this the invisible government. The puppet master you can't see because the puppets don't even know that they're being moved.

And with these Lego videos, the puppets are us. Every American who shared one of these videos was doing Iran's propaganda work for free. Now, I'm going to ask you something that might be uncomfortable. Think about the last time you shared a meme about the war. Any meme from any side.

Do you check where it came from? Do you look at who actually made it? Or do you share it because you thought it was funny? Or because it confirmed what you already believed? I want you to be really honest about that, because that's exactly how this works. I want you to actually watch one of these videos now. Not a clip, a full one.

Because the Atlantic Council said something important. They said these videos are the real innovation of the war because they tell a story and you only really get it if you sit through them. So watch this. Hey, Orange Pigs. America first Oops oh boy that was the slogan you sold but bivis pulling strings and your voters getting cold We're not just fighting for Iran

Here this clear your people reached out to us. Yeah, we got the DMs here if one nation's gonna stand against the Epstein regime's fear It's us till the last breath. We've been doing it for years We're standing here for everyone your system ever wronged known all along the enemy was always you The real threat war resutin sung a patriotic song while selling their own citizens and calling it strong. Stealing from your own people, making them bleak losers first. That was made by a group of students in Iran

with AI tools and laptops, and it got more engagement than the Pentagon's entire public affairs operation. Now, there's a second layer to this that I need you to understand because Bernays explains how they did it, culture hijacking and third-party distribution. But there's another author who explains why it works,

and it's someone I've talked about before in this series. Neil Postman, 1985, amusing ourselves to death. Postman's whole argument is that there are two types of dystopia, George Orwell's and Aldous Huxley's. Orwell feared we be controlled by what we hate, censorship, surveillance, government banning information, and Huxley feared that we be controlled by what we love, entertainment, distraction, a flood of irrelevant information that makes us passive. And Postman said that Huxley was right.

The real danger isn't the government suppressing the truth. The real danger is the truth being drowned in a sea of entertainment so that nobody even cares about it anymore. Now apply that to the Lego videos. Nobody watches the Iranian Lego video and thinks that it's real news. Nobody thinks Lego figures are actually fighting a war. The content is obviously fake, obviously satirical, obviously propaganda. And it doesn't matter because it's entertaining.

People share it because it's fun. They share it because it's clever. They share it because it makes them laugh. And in the process of being entertained, the narrative shifts. The message embeds, the propaganda works, not because anyone believed it, but because everyone enjoyed it. That's Postman's nightmare. Propaganda that doesn't need to be believed, it just needs to be entertaining.

Researchers are calling this sloppaganda, a combination of slop, meaning cheap mass-produced AI content and propaganda. And it's made fast, it's made cheaply, and it's tailored to be so entertaining that people spread it voluntarily. The content doesn't need to be sophisticated. It doesn't need to be accurate. It just needs to be shareable.

And that, every entrepreneur in this audience, needs to hear this. That is the most important marketing lesson of 2026. All right, so here's I want to take everything that I just showed you and turn into something you could actually use. Because what Iran just did to the United States, with Lego videos is the same thing that's happening in your market right now. And if you don't understand it, you're going to get left behind.

Here's lesson. Entertainment beats authority every single time. Think about it. The Pentagon has unlimited budget, the world's most advanced communications technology, and the entire public affairs apparatus built over decades. Iran has a group of students with laptops and AI tools. Who won the narrative war? The students, and they won it because they made content that people wanted to share. Not content that demanded respect. Not content that cited authority, content that entertained. And this is the same dynamic playing out in every market right now.

The big brands with the big budgets are losing attention to creators with phones and AI who make better content. Because attention doesn't follow authority anymore. Attention follows entertainment. So here's the framework. I call it the Lego lesson, and it's four principles.

Principle number one. Use the audience whose culture, not yours. The Lego videos worked because they spoke in American cultural language. Legos, raps, means Epstein. If they'd made the same videos using Iranian culture references, no America would have watched them. Same thing in your business. Stop making content about your world. Make content in your audiences world. Use their language, their references,

their cultural touch points. The content that goes viral isn't the content that's about you. It's the content that's about them. Number two, entertaining beats convincing. Iran didn't present logical arguments about why the war was wrong. They made Lego characters rap. And it was more affected than every think piece and press conference combined because people don't share arguments. They share entertainment. content is educational but boring, it won't spread. If it's entertaining and educational, your audience becomes your distribution channel. Number three, fast and frequent beats perfect and rare. Explosive media was putting out at least two videos a week. They weren't perfect. Researchers literally

called them slopaganda because the AI generation was rough, but it didn't matter. Speed and volume beat polish. You don't need a $50,000 production. You need a phone, AI tools, and discipline to publish consistently. Number four, the audience is the distribution. This is the biggest lesson. Iran didn't need a media empire because Americans distributed the content for free. Every share, every reach, every, look at this text that you send to a friend. That's free distribution powered by entertainment value. Your business works the same way. If your content is good enough that people share it without being asked, you have infinite distribution at zero cost. If you're paying for every eyeball through ads, you've already lost the game. Use their culture, not yours. Entertaining beats

convincing. Fast and frequent beats perfect and rare. Make your audience the distribution. All right, so I want to test something. If you're an entrepreneur or a marketer, which of these four is the one that you struggle with the most? Is it using your audience's culture? Is it making content entertaining instead of just educational? Is it publishing fast and enough? Or is it making content shareable enough that your audience distributes it for you?

Drop your number in the comments. One, two, three, or four, and then tell me why. I'm honestly curious about where you guys are getting stuck. And I want to show you something that really drives us home. This is the clip that Iran's embassy in South Africa posted after the ceasefire was announced. Say hello to your new world's superpower. That's a government account, posting a meme about a war. And then a propaganda scholar says this in response. This world order is really changing overnight. And the U.S. is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody

listens to. So here's what I keep coming back to. For 100 years, America was the world's propaganda superpower. We had Hollywood. We had Madison Avenue. We had Bernays himself, literally. We had CNN and Fox in every social media platform in the world built by by American companies. We wrote the rules. We ran the game. And a group of students in Iran using American Legos, American rap music, American memes, and American AI tools just flipped the script. They didn't beat us with better weapons. They beat us with better storytelling. Using our own cultural language, our own platforms distributed by our own citizens. That should humble every single person who's watching this. Because if the most powerful military in the

history of the world can lose a narrative war to students with laptops, your business can lose this audience the same way, to someone who tells a better story, who's more entertaining, who understands your audience's culture better than you do. And here's part that really keeps me up at night. Bernays wrote propaganda in 1928. He laid out every technique that was just used against us, culture hijacking, third party authority, invisible government, engineering of consent. He wrote it all down in a book that anybody can buy. And somehow, a hundred years later, a group of anonymous students in Iran understood his playbook better than the country that produced him. The last question, this is going to be a big one for you. We invented a

invented propaganda as a modern science. Bernays was American. Hollywood is American. Social media is American. But Iran just used all of it against us with Lego figures and rap music. So my question is this. Who wins the next propaganda war?

Is it still America? Or is AI leveled the playing field so completely that any group with laptops and cultural fluency can now go toe to toe with the superpower? I want to hear what you think. What I just showed you is one technique from a playbook that goes back over 100 years. It started with Sigmund Freud figuring out

that human beings are driven by unconscious forces. Then his nephew, Edward Bernays, weaponized those ideas. He sold wars over through governments, made women smoke, and invented the field of public relations. Then Neil Postman warned us that the most dangerous propaganda wouldn't look like propaganda at all. It would look like entertainment. And then Dan Kennedy, my mentor,

figured out how entrepreneurs could use those same dark arts ethically. And I spent 20 years taking all of it and turning into a system that bootstrap click funnels passed a billion dollars in sales without any venture capital. I made a video that tells that entire story. If what you just saw got you thinking, this video is going to blow your mind. All you're going to do is go to Secrets of Propaganda.com

or hit the link in the description, watch it right now while it's still fresh, and then subscribe to the Propaganda Playbook channel. Every other episode, I take a big story from the news. I decode the propaganda behind it, and I show you how to use the ethical versions to grow your business. Same science, same playbook, different story.

And the next episode is coming soon. Thank you guys so much, and I'll see you on the next one.