Get ready to enter the Thrive Time Show 3, 2, 1, boom!

All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back to the conversation.

It is an odd rare opportunity to interview the actual man behind what is known in the PR world as the Tiffany Theory.

If you don't know what the Tiffany Theory is, the Tiffany Theory, I'll go ahead and jump.

Can you read the notable quoteable from Michael Levine, the most successful, arguably the most successful PR consultant in the history of the planet.

He is a guy who was worked with three presidents.

He's a guy who's worked with Nancy Carrigan, he's worked with Cameron Diaz, he's worked with Pizza Hut, he's worked with Nike, and he wrote the Tiffany Theory, which has totally changed the game for PR.

And we had a chance to sit down with him and have him break it down for us.

He'll back that onion.

Break the notable quoteable for us, my friend, before we hop into it.

Whenever I first heard this, years ago when I started working with you, this really connected with me and makes so much sense.

So the Tiffany Theory, if you give someone a present and you give it to them in a Tiffany box, it's likely that they'll believe the gift has a higher perceived value.

If you give it to them in a box and no box or a box of less prestige, that's not because the receiver of the gift is a fool, but instead because we live in a culture in which we gift wrap everything.

Our politicians, our corporate heads, our movies, and TV stars, and even our toilet paper.

Yes.

Public relations is like gift wrapping.

So Michael Levine breaks down the Tiffany Theory and how he got started in the world of PR.

Well, we have a kind of humorous way of discussing it in our industry, which is to say that advertising is what you pay for, and PR is what you pray for.

And what that means is that, you know, if you take kind of an ad in time or newsweek or people or US News and World Report or USA Today or the Wall Street Journal of the New York Times, you get a certain cost and the ad has a certain believability by virtue of the fact it's an ad.

On the other hand, if you had a story in the Wall Street Journal or USA Today or the New York Times or the LA Times,

its believability would be at a rate of at least 10 to 1.

See, because it would come with the impromata or the authority of the Wall Street Journal or USA Today.

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