That saucy Bernays
February 15th, 2008 | by Paul |Meet Edward Bernays.
That’s him. He looks a little like Walt Disney, huh? Happy guy. I bet he’s got a cute, happy quote to describe the worldview that makes him so darn smiley.
Here it is:
“If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.”
Meet Edward Bernays, the Father of Public Relations.
He led to the overthrow of Guatemala, convinced the nation Americans had always eaten eggs and bacon, made green the hot color of 1934, wrote books Joseph Goebbels consulted and headed up promotions for a groundbreaking 1920 NAACP regional convention in the heart of the Deep South. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew too, just to add to the crazy.
To quote Dave Barry, “that would be a good name for a rock band.” Oh, wait. No, the other one. “I’m not making this up.”
Allow me to begin at the beginning: Who the hell is this weird, weird man?
According to this New York Times book review, Bernays was born in Vienna in 1891. His family moved to New York while he was a baby. After starting as a Broadway press agent, he worked as a war effort propagandist during World War I: The Phantom Menace.
There, the book review states, Bernays found his calling, later writing “I could create events and circumstances from which favorable publicity would stem.”
More from the review:
“It sounded nefarious, and it was. To promote Ivory Soap, he organized a national soap-sculpturing contest in schools, though pliable Ivory was the only soap that could be used. To promote a bacon company, he enlisted a prominent doctor to solicit fellow doctors’ opinions on the salutary benefits of a heavy breakfast. In trying to re-elect Herbert Hoover, he formed a Non-Partisan Fact-Finding Committee, which issued a poll showing Hoover trouncing the Democratic candidate, Franklin Roosevelt.”
He really was Freud’s nephew. I gotta hit that part over the head. Although, as this PR Watch book review states (lots of book reviews, huh?) at least one author argues that Bernays, the Father of Public Relations, did a lot to cement Freud’s rep as the Father of Psychoanalysis. Why not? Bernays’ own bread was buttered with Siggy F.
From the PR Watch article:
“Bernays regarded Uncle Sigmund as a mentor, and used Freud’s insights into the human psyche and motivation to design his PR campaigns, while also trading on his famous uncle’s name to inflate his own stature.”
And oh how those Guatemalans hate him.
When Bernays was working for United Fruit, the company was relying on the corrupt Guatemalan government to supply them with cheap bananas grown by virtual slaves. Then, well, let’s let the PR Watch article say what happened next:
“When a mildly reformist Guatemala government attempted to reign in the company’s power, Bernays whipped up media and political sentiment against it in the commie-crazed 1950s.”
The book being reviewed, the PR Watch guy wrote, “sheds new and important light on the extent to which the Bernays’ propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company (today’s United Brands) led directly to the CIA’s overthrow of the elected government of Guatemala.”
Funny thing. That little incident seems to have slipped by the folks at The Museum of Public Relations.
In their online Bernays exhibit, it seems to veer more toward the cutesy or good. He made green the fashionable color in 1934 so women would buy the then-green-packaged Lucky Strike brand. He worked with the NAACP. He made Cal Coolidge seem hip.
The museum also mentions that he later resented doing so much work to publicize smoking. One of his early triumphs was linking smoking - particularly smoking Lucky Strikes - with feminism.
He called cigarettes “Torches of Freedom.”
This aint news. It isn’t even new. Bernays died in 1995 at the age of 103 and proudly wrote books about what he did. He’s not some little troll hiding in the darkness. He was a brash salesman who promoted himself along with his clients.
It’s just that not a lot of people bother to find out about the people who try to get them to buy things. People don’t bother to find out who were the people who influenced the modern salesmen, disinformation specialists, hucksters and bull artists trying to part you from your money and get you to go to war in Ira-
Um … sorry. Anticonsumer blog, nothing else.
Aren’t you glad you know a little about Edward Bernays and the world he helped create? And there’s a lot on neat links to find out more.
Just to throw in one more link, here’s an NPR piece on Bernays.
So think about Bernays next time you slice up a banana, make some bacon and eggs, light up a Lucky or vote for Herbert Hoover. (OK, so they don’t all apply). Doesn’t he just look so damn happy in that picture?