Mr. Edward L. Bernays, Father of Modern PR & Spin PR Case Study

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Today I’m very happy to present 101st Blog ‘PR Case Study: Mr. Edward L. Bernays, Father of Modern PR & Spin.’

Friends you would agree with me that PR today has become a well organized and recognized vocation. Thanks to thousands of dependable and resourceful PR practitioners, PR agencies and consultancies, and professional bodies e.g. IPRA, ICCO, IABC, GAPRCM, ICA, AMEC, PRSA, CIPR, PRCA, APACD, ABCI, IPR, WCFA, PRCAI, PRCI, PRSI and PRSD etc representing and advocating the profession of PR.  PR has a growing sense of social responsibility and that’s one of the main reasons of steady growth of conscious PR activities globally by individuals and celebrities, profit and non - for - profit organizations and the government today.

Friends, Today, Public relations tools and tactics are creatively used to appeal to the desires of the target audience, and make them feel like they need the product and or service on offer. The concept of creating consumer appeal was non-existent until the 1920s. The man, who was closely related to Mr. Sigmund Freud - the founder of psycho-analysis, and who introduced the psycho-analytical approach to the field of public relations, was none other than the great Edward L. Bernays, the Father of modern PR and SPIN.

The father of PR was born into a world that was changing, a world where people were, for the first time, becoming the public i.e. a public whose thoughts, attitudes and behaviors were identifiable, understandable and, as per Bernays soon realized, malleable.

Public Relations as defined by Mr. Edward L. Bernays, the father of modern PR:

Public Relation is the attempt by information, persuasion, and adjustment to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement or institution. 

Edward L. Bernays coined the term “Public Relations Counsel” in ‘Crystallizing Public Opinion’ the first ever book on public relations authored by him in which he had defined the principles and techniques of the field of PR. He also broke ground when he gave a course in public relations at New York University in 1923, the first course in that subject ever given at any university.

Edward L. Bernays, who was referred to in his New York Times obituary as the “Father of Public Relations,” became famous for his promotional campaigns for the U.S. Government and NGOs, as well as for commercial brands. His methods drew heavily on the work of European psychologists and fueled trans-atlantics debates about the vices and virtues of propaganda and the “Engineering of Consent” at the middle of the twentieth century. His campaigns were influential in marketing to such a degree that even today his ideas on PR remain omnipresent in the United States and in university public relations curricula everywhere.

Bernays applied the psycho-analytical approach and psychological insights of his uncle Sigmund Freud to experiment, to shape public opinion and decision making through PR campaigns. Psycho-analysis or psycho-analytical approach as a system or school of Psychology was the brainchild of the Bernays. On the theoretical side this approach presented a theory to conduct and explain the human psyche and on the practical side it provided a method known as ‘Psycho-analysis’ for the study of human behavior.

Freud’s psycho-analysis claims for itself the unique position of delving deep, beneath and beyond into the real roots and springs of human action and of unraveling for us the natural history of mental growth and thus placing within our understanding, the means for its conscious direction and control.

PR is more effective than advertising because the message about a product comes from an independent source: the news media. Bernays discovered that it is even more effective to put another layer of credibility between the product and the news media: an outside authority. Bernays transformed what had been an unsophisticated matter of attracting attention into sophisticated, multi-level campaigns that could mold and manage public opinion.

Edward Bernays had his first success as a theatrical publicist, making stars of the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso and the avant-garde Ballet Russe but World War-I changed the course of Bernays’ career. During the war years, Bernays served on the Committee on Public Information, an innovative government propaganda service that whipped public opinion into supporting American intervention in the European war through speeches, posters, newspapers, and film the then new mass media.

After the war, Bernays’ reading of the pre-eminent psychiatrist’s work and ongoing correspondence with Sigmund Freud led Bernays to see an opportunity to strengthen the effectiveness of publicity campaigns by appealing to both the public’s conscious and unconscious desires. Bernays executed a number of campaigns in the 1920s that played an important role in changing American society. Bernays’ trademark strategies often involved roundabout ways of meeting the client’s goals.

Let’s take a look at some of landmark PR campaigns executed by Mr. Edward L. Bernays that redefined PR.  

Damaged Goods - Bernays' First PR Campaign

Bernays stumbled across his role as a press agent. After bumping into an old school friend, he had become co-editor of a medical journal called the Medical Review of Reviews. It was a distant second in the market, so he had to devise new publicity techniques to keep it alive. Bernays organized symposia and signed all letters “The Editors”. By writing in the plural, he felt it gave more weight to his correspondence.

Bernays' PR break came in New York in February 1913, when he came across a screenplay, called Damaged Goods, about a man who contracts syphilis but goes right ahead and gets married to another woman anyway.  First, the problems: one was money. The second and potentially fatal issue was whether the show would be allowed to go on. Anthony Comstock, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice had closed other shows he thought too daring, such as Mrs. Warrens Profession by George Bernard Shaw.

Bernays created a Sociological Fund Committee, contacted few distinguished men and women such as John D Rockefeller and Mrs. William K Vanderbilt, Senior, and appealed to their good natures. As “The Editors” of the Medical Review of Reviews he invited them to help prevent the spread of one of the scourges of that era, venereal disease. Bernays contacted the press while show rehearsals went on, with news of the Sociological Fund Committee, and many of its distinguished members made comments to the press when contacted. The show “Damaged Goods’ was staged with the funds raised through Sociological Fund Committee and became a cause célèbre before the curtain rose.

Lucky Strike Cigarettes - Torches of Freedom

While many, if not most, men smoked in the early 20th century, it was still taboo for women. The tobacco industry hired Bernays to overcome this restriction of the market for their product.

Because of the suffrage movement then underway, the inequality between men and women was already on the public’s mind. Since smoking in public was taboo for women, breaking this stigma would be making a statement about their desire to be treated equally, Bernays surmised.

Lucky Strike cigarettes were having a challenging time convincing women to buy Lucky’s because they were put off by the pack’s forest green color. Lucky Strike hired Bernays to change women’s opinion of the color.

In 1929, public relations were a new experimental field that Bernays had effectively invented. Bernays’ market research suggested that Lucky Strike’s green packaging had put women off buying them, as it wasn’t a desirable color. Furthermore it was a taboo for women to smoke in public; Bernays’ well thought PR campaign to encourage women to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes that year was hugely successful and became the stuff of legend.

Bernays applied his unique approach to overcome the hurdle. As the green packaging was deemed too expensive to replace, Bernays researched green and learned it is the symbol of “hope, victory and plenty.” Using this information, he wrote to fashion designers and department stores, urging them to promote the color. Soon, store windows and galleries featured “Lucky Strike green.” Bernays also convinced fashion designers to incorporate the color into their new season designs, and held a ‘Green Gala’ at the Waldorf Astoria hotel for some of society’s most prominent trend-setters.

The audacious campaign went further. To break the taboo of smoking in public, Bernays linked Lucky Strike cigarettes to the women’s liberation movement. Bernays hired fashionable young models to walk in the 1929 New York Easter Parade with a cigarette in their hands, getting photographed flaunting their “Torches of Freedom” – Lucky Strike cigarettes.  He alerted the press in advance about this scandalous display of feminine independence. It became a national story, and women were soon seen in public openly smoking what Bernays’ parading smokers called “Torches of Freedom”. The Lucky Strike brand became the symbol of gender equality in the U.S. during those years.

Beech-Nut Packing Company - Hearty Breakfast

We’ve all heard the saying ‘’breakfast is the most important meal of the day’’, and Bernays went someway to creating that. The Beech-Nut Packing Company was struggling to sell one of its largest meat products, Bacon, so employed the expertise of Bernays. Rather than simply reduce the price, Bernays posed a more probing question - who tells the public what to eat?

Bernays sought out an authoritative outsider to make his client’s case though, as was the case with most “outsiders” Bernays relied upon, it was actually someone in his employ, a doctor he had on a retainer. Bernays asked him if a breakfast like bacon and eggs would be healthier than the lighter fare i.e. piece of toast, orange juice and a cup of coffee most Americans were consuming at the time to remain slim. Not surprisingly, the doctor agreed. Bernays asked the doctor to get other health professionals to concur. As a result of this effort, thousands of other doctors agreed that a big breakfast of bacon and eggs was “scientifically desirable.” Bernays got 5,000 physicians to sign a statement that agreed a protein-rich, heavy breakfast of, say, bacon, and eggs, was healthier than a light one and the all-American breakfast was born, with a huge spike in sales of bacon. The results of the survey of bacon loving doctors were also distributed to news media across the nation, who eagerly shared the “news.” Six months after he publicized the survey’s results, Beech Nut’s sales boomed, and a classic breakfast was reborn.

Betty Crocker Instant Cake Mix

Bernays applied psycho-analytical methodology to improving the sales of Betty Crocker Instant Cake Mix. Bernays’ appointed a focus group to conduct research on the target market i.e. American housewives. Based on the research Bernays concluded that the housewives felt an unconscious guilt for using a product that required so little effort to make. Bernays communication gave the housewives a greater sense of participation, by requiring them to add an egg to the mixture. Sales soared as the symbolic egg tickled the depths of the subconscious, and removed the barrier of guilt.

Bernays’ method of using psycho-analytical techniques in shaping consumer demand is the foundation upon which all modern marketing is built, and Bernays was the man behind it. Bernays realized a fundamental truth of effective PR that people are more likely to believe your story if it is told by someone else.

Venida Hairnet

Bernays often used public figures of authority for campaigns and publicity, also front organizations and third-party authorities to gain attraction to the client’s interests and productions, but mask the direct interest itself.

Bernays, wherever hired to sell a product or service, instead sold whole new ways of behaving. These varied from the small to the large. The hairnet manufacturing company “Venida” was hit by new fashion trend for short hair.  When Venida hired Bernays' services, he started a campaign for women at work to wear nets both to stop it being caught in machinery, and to keep it out of food products; on the other side, he paid leading actresses to endorse the beauty of long hair.

The campaign was launched by Bernays to convince women to grow their hair longer so they would buy more hairnets. Although the campaign failed to influence many women, but it convinced the government officials to require hairnets for certain jobs. When working for Venida in the 1920s, Bernays was successful in changing the beginning trend for shorter hairstyles. He persuaded important women to wear hair nets in public. He also lobbied the government circles and authorities. Eventually legislation was passed, that required women to wear hair nets during work.

P & G Ivory Soap

Bernays’ work with Procter & Gamble’s ‘Ivory Soap’ is another case of psycho-analytical technique in action. In the Bernays line of thinking, he aimed to broaden the market by tackling children’s’ innate distaste for soap and bathing, while distinguishing the brand from competitors.

Inspired by an artist he had met who used soap instead of wax to carve miniature sculptures, Bernays created the annual “National Soap Sculpture Competition” to inspire children, ‘’The Enemies of Soap’’, to get creative with it. Within one year of the original competition, 23 million school children were entering. Kids no longer feared soap and houses were relieved of their adolescent stench. The competition ran annually for 25 years and involved millions of children, and cast the name ‘Ivory Soap’ into the public consciousness.

Bernays also started events such as a Soap Yacht Race in Central Park, to prove it floated better than competitor brands, and employed a medical consultant to survey American hospitals on their preference for white, non-perfumed soap such as Ivory, rather than the colored, scented soaps most competitors used.

Luggage Bag  

In the 1920s, US luggage industry was worried that Americans were buying less and smaller luggage. They asked Bernays for help. Bernays
sent articles to magazines titled “What the Well Dressed Woman Wears on a Weekend”. These stressed the need for women to travel with a varied wardrobe, advised hostesses to stress in their invitations the different sorts of activities their guests would be involved with and the need for different clothes for each activity. Bernays suggested the US health officials to emphasize the importance that a person should own their own luggage. He encouraged the stores to put luggage in window displays, and to show the relationship between new clothes styles and new luggage styles. Bernays wrote to colleges and universities to send their new intakes lists of the clothes and luggage they would need before arriving. He also created the Luggage Information Service, to be an easy point of call for any journalist or salesperson who wanted to know more about luggage. Bernays wrote to railway and steamship companies and urged them to make sure their designers left plenty of room for luggage.

Russian Ballet US Tour

In 1915, Americans thought masculine dancers were deviates, and that "dancing was not nice". Bernays wrote an 81 page, easy to read informational guide that was written to allow magazines and newspapers to tailor select pieces of his story to allow their readers to find a relatable interest to dance. Bernays then convinced manufacturers to make products and clothing relating to the sets and costumes of the show. All of this hype led to an eager crowd waiting for the arrival of the ballet artists at the New York docks and a sold out nationwide tour. This led to every young girl wanting be a ballerina, which still stands today.

US World War I Campaign

Bernays and Walter Lippman, a journalist, joined US forces to assist Woodrow Wilson with the World War I effort. Their goal was to turn gun shy America into an anti-Germany force ready to enter the trenches. The slogan, “Make the World Safe for Democracy”, was emphatically embraced by Americans who in turn helped end World War I. His ability to motivate the masses through propaganda inspired future leaders of other countries to turn to these practices in the years that followed. Thankfully, he did not forget about the soldiers that he helped recruit. Following the war he led a successful campaign that promoted re-employment of returning veterans.

Having seen how effective propaganda could be during war, Bernays wondered whether it might prove equally useful during peacetime. Yet Propaganda had acquired a somewhat pejorative connotation so Bernays promoted the term “Public Relations.”

To sum up;

Bernays’ PR campaigns were influenced by the psycho-analytic theories of his uncle Sigmund Freud. Bernays argued that it was important to use mass psychology when addressing irrational and misguided mass behavior. Bernays thought it necessary not only to give information to the public for their consideration and to encourage them to act accordingly but also to pursue what he termed an “Engineering of Consent,” which he understood to mean the influencing of people’s opinion and therefore their behavior. To that end, Bernays acted as the “Engineer of Consent” behind the scenes, not always disclosing the clients, to promote the general product they aimed to sell, but not necessarily a specific brand.

Thank you,

Dr. Suresh Gaur, P R Guru

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