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Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations (2015)
- axiomdata316 6y agoI first learned about Bernays from attending a live episode of "Stuff You Should Know" in Los Angeles. The full show was about Edward Bernays. Hair nets and Bananas both owe their popularity to Bernays. The "Stuff You Should Know" podcast that eventually posted nicely covers all the points but I couldn't find it on their website since iHeart Radio bought them and removed their website.
- kyuudou 6y agoAlso got more women to smoke cigarettes: More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom Sinister! Well, great for the tobacco companies. Humanity overall? Not so much.
- carapace 6y agoHe paid women to walk and smoke in an Easter Sunday parade, which to me just seems so vile. (the whole thing is vile, but that particular touch seems to me almost diabolical.)
- kyuudou 6y agoYes, it surprises me what some are saying positively in this comment thread about Bernays. In my mind he's always been the epitome of evil. And that mustache... Jeez... This subject always brings to my mind the old "kill marketers" skit by comedian Bill Hicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
- grawprog 6y agoI learned a lot of the techniques pioneered by Bernays in school. It was the basis of a lot of our public communication lessons. I'd always assumed these were just things that had been collectively figured out over time, I never realized there was one person essentially responsive for spreading that kind of manipulation. I wonder what the world would be like if major corporations, governments and just about everybody trying to convince people of something hadn't latched onto his ideas and built modern society around them.
- bnegreve 6y ago> I never realized there was one person essentially responsive for spreading that kind of manipulation. Maybe the others have been forgotten ... Bernays was most probably at managing his own publicity as well.
- bmwracer 6y ago"The Century Of The Self" by Adam Curtis is a great documentary series on Bernays and the PR industry he invented. Gets scary towards the end when you realize that mainstream political discourse is now managed using the same PR methods that took over the business world a generation before.
- pengaru 6y agoFor those wishing to watch this, it's all on youtube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s While dated by now, it's rather disturbing how clear the lineage is from where the show ends to the current "social media" era. The breadth and efficacy of public manipulation is arguably greater than ever, and it's a clear threat to democracy IMHO.
- lihaciudaniel 6y agoIt is a constant and universal truth that irrationality of the masses exist. And then there are those who think that they can manipulate through propaganda
- AndrewBissell 6y agoGiven the way they are pushing the systems they control to the breaking point for the sake of ever-more-marginal gains in their already staggering wealth and power, it's harder and harder to view elites as any more rational than the masses.
- nikofeyn 6y agoi think it's less a threat to democracy and more that it's already ended democracy (what little was implemented in the first place) in the u.s. (i'm just repeating your use of the word democracy, as there's an implicit assumption there that democracy is a cherished thing being destroyed.) adam curtis' other documentaries build upon similar ideas, converging to the (relatively) recent hypernormalization.
- cronix 6y ago
- wilsonchaney 6y ago"The Attention Merchants" by Tim Wu nicely covers some of Bernays' influence, in the context of advertising and other forms of attention capture from the 19th century through present day. Can't recommend the book enough.
- staticautomatic 6y agoBernays' work is certainly important but I think the amount of credit he's typically given for the idea that propaganda could be wielded in peacetime is undeserved. That distinction really belongs to Walter Lippmann, who had begun formulating the idea 5-10 years earlier and articulating it in Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925), well before Propaganda (1928). Propaganda was really more of a formalization of something that was already understood to exist.
- seagullz 6y agoSpot on. Besides, W. Lippmann was apparently a lot more sophisticated with capacity to influence wider circles of intellectuals and mandarins. The title of Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky’s book “Manufacturing Consent” was borrowed from Lippmann’s writing where he was making the case for the elites to manage the perception of the meddlesome public.
- staticautomatic 6y agoYes. However, I don't think it's accurate to characterize Lippmann's assessment of the public as "meddlesome". It's true that he was an elitist, but Lippmann's brand of elitism stemmed from the empirical observation that governing a large population is clearly too complex for even a representative democracy to do well (and is certainly more difficult than proponents of democracy are willing to admit, if not impossible). Unlike most forms of elitism, his view of the public as incapable of governing itself was not rooted in ideas about their moral inferiority but in the acknowledgement that it just isn't functionally possible for them to run the show. This observation led to three conclusions (which IMO are correct): 1) That democracy at scale always regresses to partisanship, 2) The idea that "the people" actually govern themselves in any real democracy is largely a farce, and 3) That a system of "representatives" and bureaucrats running the show is itself elitist.
- tehjoker 6y agoI think it is very easy for people living in the US to tacitly accept these very dangerous assumptions given the state of our democracy. However, I would posit that the degradation of our democracy is due in part to elite acceptance of the idea that the people are either too dumb or physically incapable of governing themselves and thus governing for their own benefit. I would strongly push back on these assumptions. The democratic structures outlined in the US constitutions are flawed by design and leads to the specious conclusion that democracy is impossible. Mass participation in the democratic process, smashing old structures, and reconstituting new structures will allow democracy and the public to thrive.
- vinniejames 6y agoCoronavirus has a great PR team
- lowdose 6y agoI bet it was a boomer.
- ncmncm 6y agoThe book "Men Who Stare at Goats" (no idea about the movie) is a terrifying look at the weaponization of the technique turned on the American public. You have to read between the lines: most people believe the CIA really was exploring use of ESP against the Soviets. Very, very few understand that it was a successful propaganda operation against the American public. Those few also have a clue how we were collectively convinced that invading Iraq would be a really good idea.
- arminiusreturns 6y agoThey were studying the human mind, and the esp angle was just a subset. The propaganda techniques are also a subset. Hence it is wrong to say the former was fake and it was just the latter. They were doing it all, and seeing what stuck.(mkultra/artichoke, etc) Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, could you elaborate on your meaning?
- ncmncm 6y agoYou only know what was published about it. Guess who decided what would be published about it. You have been played. You have two possible responses, denial and understanding. Before deciding, consider how you are still being played. The project was a huge success, and has expanded beyond the dreams of its proponents. Iraq is proof. They even got people thinking that torturing people was a great idea. To this day nobody has been prosecuted for that.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoRecently read this after seeing your recommendation on the Project MKULTRA thread. Very entertaining and eye opening, appreciate you pointing me to it.
- ncmncm 6y agoThanks for the note. I had to read the book three times before I figured out what was going on.
- spondyl 6y agoHah! Funny, I was just talking to my flatmate yesterday about Bernays :) +1 on the recommendation for Century of the Self by Adam Curtis. There's a snippet in there about how Bernays was brought in during the creation of easy bake goods ie add 2 eggs and some butter to make some fudge (as I did yesterday) Anyway, they initially tried to just have no ingredients required but during trials with housewives, found they felt like imposters who lacked agency during the baking process. The solution? The baker adds one egg, which isn't included in the ready mix ingredients
- hoistbypetard 6y agoRobert Evans did two excellent episodes on Bernays on his Behind the Bastards podcast. Part 1: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-edward-bernays-the-founding-47116977/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236... Part 2: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-edward-bernays-the-founding-47170732/ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
- dntbnmpls 6y agoLets not forget Ivy Lee who really founded the modern PR industry. Ivy Lee rebranded Rockefeller as america's lovable, generous and charitable "grandpa" by having him give money to children on camera and setting up family controlled "charities". Which has been copied by many wealthy people since. Most recently by Bill Gates and his family controlled charities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee Funnily enough, both bernays and lee were journalists... But then again, newspapers have always been PR and journalists have always been influencers/PR workers.
- koolhead17 6y agoI enjoyed reading Edward Bernay's book title: Propaganda. Some examples resonates so well even in 2020 with advertisement industry.
- neuro_image3 6y agoI encourage anyone interested in this topic to listen to this podcast: Radical institutional reforms that make capitalism & democracy work better, and how to get them https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/glen-weyl-radically-.. https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/glen-weyl-radically-....
- gdubs 6y agoThere’s a Mad Men episode where someone asks Don Draper if “all this stuff actually works” and Draper says, “who knows?” (paraphrasing). Like many, I learned of Bernays through Adam Curtis’ documentary, “The Century of the Self.” But many years later, I wonder — where’s the evidence that Bernays ideas were actually effective? I love Curtis films, and I think there’s a lot of great ideas in them — but it’s also easy to be hypnotized by them and forget to be critical. Anyway, would be interested if anyone’s found any research that makes a compelling case that Bernays’ ideas actually work, and that he wasn’t just a really good salesman for his own services.
- fierycatnet 6y agoIt certainly does work. It worked remarkably well. It changed the whole public perception of war in 1917-1918. If you can find it, read "How We Advertised America" by George Creel. Bernays was involved in that.
- AlexCornila 6y agothe documentary about this https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
- AlexCornila 6y agohttps://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/ https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-century-of-the-self/
- Seabiscuit 6y agoAn interesting overview of Edward Bernays' life, work, and life's work cementing his position as the creator of modern commercial propaganda is Larry Tye's _The Father of Spin_. It's the source of a hundred little ingenious anecdotes that demonstrate the imagination behind Bernays' campaigns, but one of the most alarming is that of Beech-nut bacon. Here I quote from one of Bernays' own books, 'Biography of an Idea': "The sales of Beechnut bacon were falling off because people had slimmed down their breakfast to a piece of toast, orange juice and a cup of coffee.[...] Beechnut favoured breakfast habits of a century before, when people started their day with bacon and eggs, doughnuts, pie and coffee. If the trend of breakfasts could be reversed, beechnut, the dominant breakfast bacon, would regain its sales. Physicians confirmed to me [i.e. Bernays] that heavy breakfasts were scientifically desirable. The body needs food replenishment twelve hours after an evening meal. I enlisted a well-known New York phyisican, Dr A L Goldwater, to write to phyisicians thoughout the country for their opinion on heavy verses light breakfasts. Physicians from all over the country gave overwhelming support to the hearty breakfast. Six months after widespread publicity on the survey, Bartlett Arkell, president of Beechnut, announced that Beechnut sales of bacon had increased “enormousely in the past half year. Nothing else did it , except the recommendation of American doctors.”/ Bernays recounts this anecdote in such a way as to minimise the appearance that he himself deliberately sought or bought trusted medical opinions to confirm his campaigns: they simply 'confirmed' things to him. But while the Lucky Strike and soap-carving contests he organised often get the most attention - they're beautiful works of creative showmanship and inventive campaigning - quick portraits of his work tend to obscure just how data-driven he actually was. Rare was the PR stunt he pulled without extremely thorough research behind him. It's also traditional to comment that either Ivy Lee or Walter Lippmann were in fact the 'real' fathers of public relations. One of Edward Bernays' most interesting commentators was Jacques Ellul, whose work expands and develops the role of propaganda in mass or atomised society. He's not well-known in the Anglophone sphere because he published in French, but his book 'Propaganda' has been translated into English and, despite first being published in 1962, actually remains shockingly relevant. In his estimation, 'public opinion' was infinitely malleable, and any political or commercial system that answered to public opinion, without recognising just how vulnerable that was to anyone with an agenda and a good means of delivering misinformation, was doomed. Both he and Bernays make excellent reading in the context of modern political advertising and 'populism' i.e. when public opinion is led or actively wanders into dangerous territory.