The Father of Public Relations
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BROOKE GLADSTONE: Selling a product that people don't need is child's play compared to selling a product that people are scared of, like for example, beef. Currently the St. Petersburg Times reports, the mad cow incident in Washington state has prompted Outback Steakhouse to wage very different PR campaigns in different parts of the world. Here, the company is saying that all their beef, which is American-grown, is safe -- nothing to worry about. In Korea, it's plastering the walls with notices that all its beef comes from Australia, which is true. History has shown that public relations, skillfully applied, can convince people of almost anything, and that history can be said to have begun with one man. What follows is the story of that self-proclaimed Father of public relations. [CLIP OF ENRICO CARUSO SINGING UP & UNDER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In 1917, Enrico Caruso was coming to America. It was a multi-city tour, and his sponsors were molto apprehensive. The great tenor was demanding and capricious and not likely to win the hearts of the heartland, so Caruso's backers turned to America's consummate salesman, 25 year old Edward L. Bernays. Bernays, fresh from 3 years promoting the Ballets Russes, paved Caruso's way with press releases extolling the man with the orchid-lined voice. He soothed and petted the transcendent tenor through Toledo, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati while regaling editors with tales that made Caruso an American hero before he sang a note. Bernays understood that shaping America's taste was not so hard once you had the key, and he knew the master locksmith. Bernays' mother was Sigmund Freud's sister; his father was brother to Freud's wife. Thus, young Edward was Freud's double nephew, and despite the doctor's occasional disdain for his relentlessly entrepreneurial relative, they'd take long walks together in Carlsbad.
LARRY TYE: He helped Bernays understand that you needed history, you needed sociology, and most importantly you needed an understanding of psychology to know why people bought or voted or generally behaved the way they did so that you could help re-shape that behavior.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Larry Tye is author of The Father of Spin which chronicles the development of Bernays' signature approach which he called "the engineering of consent." That's what America's first PR men did for the Woodrow Wilson administration, when they embarked on a determined effort to sell an isolationist America on the War to End all Wars -- the costliest propaganda campaign up until then. Bernays was a junior member of that campaign, but 7 years later he was ready for another Washington hard sell -- a president whose personality was so sour, said Alice Longworth Roosevelt, "he looked as if he'd been weaned on a pickle."
PRESIDENT
CALVIN COOLIDGE: [FROM VINTAGE RECORDING] I believe in the American Constitution. I favor the American system of individual enterprise, and I am opposed to any general extension of government ownership and control.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Calvin Coolidge. Bernays used a cheap trick -- glamour by association -- to turn a cold fish into a hot dog by loading a crowd of stars and starlets onto a midnight train to Washington and then on to the White House, where they whooped it up with Cal and the wife. The headlines blazed with such scoops as Actors Eat Cake with the Coolidges. [CLIP OF PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE]
CALVIN COOLIDGE: [FROM VINTAGE RECORDING] I believe not only in advocating economy in public expenditure, but in its practical application and actual accomplishment.
LARRY TYE: As the New York Times said in a headline the next day, President Almost Laughs. Did that transform his image? No. Was it important --one little thing that helped him win re-election? Absolutely. Was it important in setting a stage for today's spinmeisters? Absolutely-lutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Bernays' most famous - or infamous - campaign to engineer consent involved the overthrow of a longstanding taboo -- that against women smoking. In an interview shortly before his death in 1995, Bernays recalled that campaign.
EDWARD L. BERNAYS: One day, Mr. George Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, called me in and said "We are losing half of our market." I said "Have I your permission to see a psychoanalyst?"
LARRY TYE: If he couldn't go directly to his uncle Sigmund Freud, he went to Freud's disciple, Dr. A. A. Brill.
EDWARD L. BERNAYS: I went to Dr. Brill and asked him what cigarettes meant to women, and he answered very quickly -- "Cigarettes are torches of freedom to women. They want to smoke to dramatize man's taboo." And then he added as an afterthought, "and they titillate the erogenous zones of the lips." It occurred to me that any young debutante who was aware of the times would be delighted to walk in the Easter Parade from 34th Street to 57th, lighting torches of freedom to protest man's inhumanity to women by a taboo against smoking.
LARRY TYE: This incredible march was so delectable that every newspaper in America had a picture on their front page the next day of these women, very elegantly dressed, with a cigarette dangling from their hand or from their mouth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Within 3 days women were smoking in Union Square in San Francisco, Union Square in Denver and on the Boston Common in solidarity with their sisters in New York. [EXCERPT FROM ADVERTISEMENT UP AND UNDER]
ANNOUNCER: Then in 1920, women won their rights! [MUSIC]
COMMERCIAL JINGLE SINGERS: YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY...
WOMAN: Introducing new Virginia Slims -- the slim cigarette for women only -- tailored for the feminine hand -- slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke, with flavor women like.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Bernays was always quick to point out that all this happened three decades before the surgeon general's report on smoking. No one really understood the dangers. Except, as Larry Tye points out, Eddie Bernays did.
LARRY TYE: One of his jobs for American Tobacco was to take any reports indicating the risks of smoking. If he could, he was to cover 'em up, and if he couldn't, he was to make fun of them. At home, he told his two young daughters that if they found their mother's cigarettes in the house, they should, as he said, "Break 'em in half like brittle bones and flush them down the toilet."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In his book, Propaganda, Bernays observed that our minds are molded largely by men we have never heard of. This invisible government, he said, is a logical requirement of democracy which needs a consensus for things to run smoothly. And Bernays enthusiastically manipulated what he called this unseen mechanism of society. To sell books to a lukewarm public, he found celebrities to attest to the value of the printed word, and then convinced architects to build bookshelves into their housing designs. To sell bacon to people inclined toward orange juice and a roll, he tapped doctors to pitch the health benefits of a heavy breakfast. And then in 1954, to safeguard the business interests of the United Fruit Company, he convinced the United States to make a revolution in Guatemala. Larry Tye.
LARRY TYE: Bernays took this government that was actually quite tepid in its socialism and helped shape them as a danger in the public eye.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Guatemala's new government was engaged in a reform program, turning over tracts of uncultivated acreage to a hundred thousand poor families. Some of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company. Bernays led the media on carefully orchestrated tours of Guatemala, emphasizing the danger it posed to the U.S., until American covert action helped to topple the Guatemalan government. The new rulers used terror to consolidate power through dislocation, torture and murder. John Stauber is the editor of the newsletter PR Watch.
JOHN STAUBER: He was dressing up an overthrow of an elected government and the installation of a brutal military regime, so we would think our government policies were doing the good thing - the pro-democracy thing in a country like Guatemala.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Since then, PR professionals often have enlisted in foreign wars. Hill & Knowlton, for example, was hired by the Kuwaiti government during the Persian Gulf War, arranging for hair-raising tales of Iraqis dumping babies out of incubators to be told on the floor of the Capitol -- though the charge was never proved. Still, when the public does catch sight of the man behind the curtain, it reacts like Dorothy did, with rage and contempt. Successful public relations professionals know that when skepticism reigns, honesty and openness are powerful persuaders. That's how Johnson & Johnson reacted when packages of tainted Tylenol were found in 1982. It opened its doors to reporters, who closely followed the investigation.
MARILYN LAURIE: The net result of their openness was that Tylenol came back like gangbusters, as opposed to what everybody had feared at the beginning which is that Tylenol as a brand would be dead.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Marilyn Laurie spent most of her career in the top ranks of corporate PR at AT&T.
MARILYN LAURIE: The public relations people associated with the Tylenol incident are heroes in the profession.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But almost by definition, public relations is an invisible enterprise, and Bernays' pioneering strategies -- using celebrities and scientists -- linking products with causes and status -- still work their magic, still engineer our consent. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price, Katya Rogers, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In 1917, Enrico Caruso was coming to America. It was a multi-city tour, and his sponsors were molto apprehensive. The great tenor was demanding and capricious and not likely to win the hearts of the heartland, so Caruso's backers turned to America's consummate salesman, 25 year old Edward L. Bernays. Bernays, fresh from 3 years promoting the Ballets Russes, paved Caruso's way with press releases extolling the man with the orchid-lined voice. He soothed and petted the transcendent tenor through Toledo, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati while regaling editors with tales that made Caruso an American hero before he sang a note. Bernays understood that shaping America's taste was not so hard once you had the key, and he knew the master locksmith. Bernays' mother was Sigmund Freud's sister; his father was brother to Freud's wife. Thus, young Edward was Freud's double nephew, and despite the doctor's occasional disdain for his relentlessly entrepreneurial relative, they'd take long walks together in Carlsbad.
LARRY TYE: He helped Bernays understand that you needed history, you needed sociology, and most importantly you needed an understanding of psychology to know why people bought or voted or generally behaved the way they did so that you could help re-shape that behavior.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Larry Tye is author of The Father of Spin which chronicles the development of Bernays' signature approach which he called "the engineering of consent." That's what America's first PR men did for the Woodrow Wilson administration, when they embarked on a determined effort to sell an isolationist America on the War to End all Wars -- the costliest propaganda campaign up until then. Bernays was a junior member of that campaign, but 7 years later he was ready for another Washington hard sell -- a president whose personality was so sour, said Alice Longworth Roosevelt, "he looked as if he'd been weaned on a pickle."
PRESIDENT
CALVIN COOLIDGE: [FROM VINTAGE RECORDING] I believe in the American Constitution. I favor the American system of individual enterprise, and I am opposed to any general extension of government ownership and control.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Calvin Coolidge. Bernays used a cheap trick -- glamour by association -- to turn a cold fish into a hot dog by loading a crowd of stars and starlets onto a midnight train to Washington and then on to the White House, where they whooped it up with Cal and the wife. The headlines blazed with such scoops as Actors Eat Cake with the Coolidges. [CLIP OF PRESIDENT CALVIN COOLIDGE]
CALVIN COOLIDGE: [FROM VINTAGE RECORDING] I believe not only in advocating economy in public expenditure, but in its practical application and actual accomplishment.
LARRY TYE: As the New York Times said in a headline the next day, President Almost Laughs. Did that transform his image? No. Was it important --one little thing that helped him win re-election? Absolutely. Was it important in setting a stage for today's spinmeisters? Absolutely-lutely.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Bernays' most famous - or infamous - campaign to engineer consent involved the overthrow of a longstanding taboo -- that against women smoking. In an interview shortly before his death in 1995, Bernays recalled that campaign.
EDWARD L. BERNAYS: One day, Mr. George Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, called me in and said "We are losing half of our market." I said "Have I your permission to see a psychoanalyst?"
LARRY TYE: If he couldn't go directly to his uncle Sigmund Freud, he went to Freud's disciple, Dr. A. A. Brill.
EDWARD L. BERNAYS: I went to Dr. Brill and asked him what cigarettes meant to women, and he answered very quickly -- "Cigarettes are torches of freedom to women. They want to smoke to dramatize man's taboo." And then he added as an afterthought, "and they titillate the erogenous zones of the lips." It occurred to me that any young debutante who was aware of the times would be delighted to walk in the Easter Parade from 34th Street to 57th, lighting torches of freedom to protest man's inhumanity to women by a taboo against smoking.
LARRY TYE: This incredible march was so delectable that every newspaper in America had a picture on their front page the next day of these women, very elegantly dressed, with a cigarette dangling from their hand or from their mouth.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Within 3 days women were smoking in Union Square in San Francisco, Union Square in Denver and on the Boston Common in solidarity with their sisters in New York. [EXCERPT FROM ADVERTISEMENT UP AND UNDER]
ANNOUNCER: Then in 1920, women won their rights! [MUSIC]
COMMERCIAL JINGLE SINGERS: YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY...
WOMAN: Introducing new Virginia Slims -- the slim cigarette for women only -- tailored for the feminine hand -- slimmer than the fat cigarettes men smoke, with flavor women like.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Bernays was always quick to point out that all this happened three decades before the surgeon general's report on smoking. No one really understood the dangers. Except, as Larry Tye points out, Eddie Bernays did.
LARRY TYE: One of his jobs for American Tobacco was to take any reports indicating the risks of smoking. If he could, he was to cover 'em up, and if he couldn't, he was to make fun of them. At home, he told his two young daughters that if they found their mother's cigarettes in the house, they should, as he said, "Break 'em in half like brittle bones and flush them down the toilet."
BROOKE GLADSTONE:In his book, Propaganda, Bernays observed that our minds are molded largely by men we have never heard of. This invisible government, he said, is a logical requirement of democracy which needs a consensus for things to run smoothly. And Bernays enthusiastically manipulated what he called this unseen mechanism of society. To sell books to a lukewarm public, he found celebrities to attest to the value of the printed word, and then convinced architects to build bookshelves into their housing designs. To sell bacon to people inclined toward orange juice and a roll, he tapped doctors to pitch the health benefits of a heavy breakfast. And then in 1954, to safeguard the business interests of the United Fruit Company, he convinced the United States to make a revolution in Guatemala. Larry Tye.
LARRY TYE: Bernays took this government that was actually quite tepid in its socialism and helped shape them as a danger in the public eye.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Guatemala's new government was engaged in a reform program, turning over tracts of uncultivated acreage to a hundred thousand poor families. Some of that land belonged to the United Fruit Company. Bernays led the media on carefully orchestrated tours of Guatemala, emphasizing the danger it posed to the U.S., until American covert action helped to topple the Guatemalan government. The new rulers used terror to consolidate power through dislocation, torture and murder. John Stauber is the editor of the newsletter PR Watch.
JOHN STAUBER: He was dressing up an overthrow of an elected government and the installation of a brutal military regime, so we would think our government policies were doing the good thing - the pro-democracy thing in a country like Guatemala.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Since then, PR professionals often have enlisted in foreign wars. Hill & Knowlton, for example, was hired by the Kuwaiti government during the Persian Gulf War, arranging for hair-raising tales of Iraqis dumping babies out of incubators to be told on the floor of the Capitol -- though the charge was never proved. Still, when the public does catch sight of the man behind the curtain, it reacts like Dorothy did, with rage and contempt. Successful public relations professionals know that when skepticism reigns, honesty and openness are powerful persuaders. That's how Johnson & Johnson reacted when packages of tainted Tylenol were found in 1982. It opened its doors to reporters, who closely followed the investigation.
MARILYN LAURIE: The net result of their openness was that Tylenol came back like gangbusters, as opposed to what everybody had feared at the beginning which is that Tylenol as a brand would be dead.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Marilyn Laurie spent most of her career in the top ranks of corporate PR at AT&T.
MARILYN LAURIE: The public relations people associated with the Tylenol incident are heroes in the profession.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:But almost by definition, public relations is an invisible enterprise, and Bernays' pioneering strategies -- using celebrities and scientists -- linking products with causes and status -- still work their magic, still engineer our consent. [THEME MUSIC]
BOB GARFIELD:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price, Katya Rogers, Megan Ryan and Tony Field; engineered by Dylan Keefe and Rob Christiansen, and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Dave Goldberg. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield.
Produced by WNYC Studios