By the first quarter of the 20th century, America was already a fully industrialized nation. The country had gone through so many incredible changes in the past decades under the First and Second Industrial Revolution. Public educational systems had generally been adopted and over half of America’s population resided in cities and urban centers.
America had fully evolved from its agrarian state into a fully industrialized working-class nation and the urbanization that erupted saw more and more people being crammed into smaller commercialized living spaces than decades prior. New American thought had sprung to box a large swath of its citizenry into a time-regulated regiment to manage, maintain, and steer this new industrial order. This is how America’s middle-class was born.
Because of the high productivity levels of the Second Industrial Revolution, the American public experienced a surge in the supply of goods and services. And with more disposable income suddenly in the hands of the average American, a new culture was sparked — the culture of consumerism. Folks began to desire ownership. There became this quest to own stuff which in many ways, was strongly incentivized by the high tide in productivity. Until it reached a tipping point — where there was now a glut in supply in comparison to the demand for goods and services. Soon, selling a unit of a good wasn’t as easy as it was from the get. Business owners and entrepreneurs then had to adopt new ways to get their goods in the hands of the growing populace. This in introspect, paved the way for what we identify now as modern advertising. There was a man behind all of it. His name was Edward Bernays.
Edward Bernays (1891–1995) is popularly referred to in many circles as the father of public relations and propaganda. His use of propaganda spanned several fields to include business, politics, entertainment, public and internal relations. Bernays helped theorize major concepts within the field and is recognized as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. He was also the nephew of prominent Austrian psychologist, Sigmund Freud.
In the very early days of advertising, there really wasn’t much to an adman’s campaign. The campaigns were pretty much straight to the point and highlighted only the useful features of a product. For instance, an advertisement for a car back in the day would simply state its engine and motor functions, speed, and fuel efficiency. It’ll also tell you how far it can run and so forth. Advertisements were as simple as they could get. Then came Edward Bernays who thought that advertisers and public relations experts needed to understand “group psychology.” He theorized how to make best the onus of herd mentality to nudge the public into wanting to own a product.
His first port of call was to pick on the deep cravings of people, their innate desires, and thoughts about their positions in the world and then try to satisfy them through the art of consumerism and ownership. Using the illustration of a car ad, instead of simply stating the basic features of a car, Bernays believed that the car could be advertised or marketed as a symbol of power, status, and class. While it might seem perfectly normal in modern-day advertising how goods and services are peddled as “illusions” of what they actually do, it was indeed revolutionary back in those times.
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One of Bernays’ earliest known works in public relations was when he got enlisted as a propaganda machine to help rally support for the war efforts during the First World War. The word “propaganda” however grew to take on a negative undertone among people who saw it as a tool for lies and mass manipulation for the selfish interests of a few. Propaganda some believed stripped off public autonomy which they viewed as wrong and dangerous for society. Bernays on the other hand believed that propaganda was only bad when it was used to tell lies and perpetrate other odious acts.
Bernays went on to give a comprehensive definition of what he thought of as propaganda.
What is propaganda according to Bernays?
“The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda in a broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine.”
Propaganda has since gone on to be used in various forms of media from magazines, radio, TV, and the internet to manipulate and sway people’s emotions towards a particular cause or action. The common denominator for most propaganda publicist and group psychologists is they somehow believe they know what is best for the common good of the people and see the general masses as dumb herds that needed an intelligent class to control and guide them towards a “desirable” path.
Interestingly, the populist narrative around modern advertising and Bernays’ mechanics is parallel with a time with the coming of age of erstwhile early 20th century communism; the nationalist rhetoric and tyranny of the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. There was beginning to be a new heatwave of mass manipulation, symbolism, and indoctrination which consummated a sizzling formula of “propaganda + psychology = ctrl.” It is been said even that Bernays’ use of propaganda had a profound effect on Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s second-in-command, who admired his work so much that he employed some of Bernays’ tactics himself during the infamous Nazi regime.
Bernays’ systemic use of symbolism to influence people’s thoughts served as a template for much of his life works. He believed an idea or a product could be made into a cause when it stood for something much bigger than just itself. He developed the unconventional method of selling an idea or product that appealed more to a consumer’s subconscious emotions and desires which was much more powerful than poaching them simply with facts. His fascination with symbolism was followed closely by three other tactics which he uses to horn the deeper yearnings of an individual towards a certain action, then taking that action and habituating it. The last in the pack was to invade as much mental space of the individual as possible. So what you have is a four-stage scientific approach to modern advertising devised by Edward Bernays as follows:
- Use of symbolism
- Appealing to unconscious or subconscious desires
- Normalizing behavior
- Invading mental space
This was aptly exemplified in one of Bernays’ most notable advertising campaigns to date: getting women to smoke cigarettes.
After the First World War, more women were forced into job roles and careers previously reserved for men. This afforded them the unique opportunity to earn personal income, and the traditionally-held notion that saw women as homemakers was gradually being deconstructed. To celebrate this new lease of female emancipation, some women started smoking — a habit exclusively associated only with men. Smoking up until this point was still a taboo among women and was looked down upon by a large section of society. But this bias was slowly starting to fade. At the same time, being slim and staying in shape was fast becoming fashionable among women. Both trends became open tickets for companies who wanted to exploit the opportunity to win over the female demographic.
The American Tobacco Company was one of such companies. The president at the time, George Washington Hill who wanted to make his flagship brand, Lucky Strikes a rave within this flourishing female market hired Edward Bernays to see to that end. Another key figure, Albert Lanskey was brought on board, and together they came up with a sly catchphrase: “Reach for a lucky instead of a sweet,” to appeal not only to smoking as a trendy habit but also capture the new desires of women wanting to stay in shape. Bernay’s launched this campaign by enlisting popular media houses and high-end photographers to help promote the idea that being thin was indeed in fashion. He went as far as getting doctors and medical experts to endorse the idea that smoking was a healthier choice over eating a sweet.
With this ingenious campaign, Bernays was able to establish two major inclinations within the female mental space that staying thin was in vogue, and smoking a cigarette helped achieve that. As a consequence, the number of women who smoked spiked to an impressive level. The American Tobacco Company would however not become complacent. Although the number of women smoking in America had increased significantly, women still weren’t comfortable smoking out in the open and smoked only in homes and certain enclosed circuits. Again, Bernays was called upon to tackle this “little” problem, and the singular feat that ensued sealed Edward Bernays as a master propagandist.
Bernays has since gone down in history with his best-known work: the 1929 campaign to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist “Torches of Freedom.” For this campaign, Bernays got in touch with psychoanalyst Abraham Brill, a student of his uncle Sigmund Freud, who gave him the idea of matching a new campaign with the feminist ideal of the time.
Bernays went on to mobilize a group of key women figures of the feminist front and got them to smoke cigarettes at a New York Easter Sunday parade in 1929.
Bernays said of the event:
“Because it should appear as news with no division of the publicity, actresses should be definitely out. On the other hand, if young women who stand for feminism — someone from the Women’s Party, say — could be secured, the fact that the movement would be advertised too, would not be bad. . . . While they should be goodlooking, they should not be too ‘model-y.’ Three for each church covered should be sufficient. Of course, they are not to smoke simply as they come down the church steps. They are to join in the Easter parade, puffing away.”
The march was very successful and increased to an unprecedented level, the number of women who smoked all over the country.
Bernays’ list of reputable clients spanned beyond the American Tobacco Company to include Procter & Gamble, Best Foods, General Electric, the United Fruit Company, CBS, Cartier Inc., and so on. Bernays’ success at walking the line between moral ambiguity and liberalism made him a 20th century zeitgeist marketing wizard and earned him the title of “America’s №1 Publicist.” His claim was that the general population would almost always fall to elite manipulation — as such — it was incumbent on the few good public relations experts and propagandists to compete with the evil therein, without incurring any real marginal moral cost. He spelled his opinion thus: “the minority which uses this power is increasingly intelligent, and works more and more on behalf of ideas that are socially constructive.
The essay around Edward Bernays and his exploits is in fact a centennial continuum of tugging on the strings of society. It is premised on elitist concerns of maintaining a tall order, stimulating the system, and preventing economic stagnancy. It was a master plan to service capitalism and a massive industrialization that was far beyond the grasp of the average man.
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