Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to the influence of advertisements on our lives, which offer us products we have never heard of, products we still don’t know about, but advertisements will make sure we find out so that we can immediately start buying.
There are also image consultants who try to present their clients in the best possible light and work to remove anything that could tarnish that image. When it comes to ideas, whether political or religious, we would say it’s propaganda, although that term is no longer used today due to its negative connotations. Also, to differentiate it from advertising that refers to physical products, many companies have started calling their services “products,” as something that can be offered on the market.
We wonder where all this comes from, how it started, and why we unquestioningly accept it. Let’s take a look.
The Father of Public Relations
Edward Bernays, who is remembered as the “father of public relations,” was born in Vienna in 1891, but he later immigrated to the United States. He grew up in the United States, where his parents emigrated a year after his birth. His mother was Sigmund Freud’s sister, and his father was Freud’s wife’s brother, so it’s quite a wonder that he didn’t have the last name Freud. He died in 1995, and in a television interview from 1985, when the host asked him how old he was, he replied that chronologically he was ninety-three, physiologically sixty-one, estimated mentally to be about forty-five, and then he mentioned two more ages, emotional and social, which he still kept to himself.
His father was a grain merchant, so he sent him to study agriculture at Cornell University. Bernays, however, was not interested in that field but rather in journalism, which he became acquainted with while working at the student newspaper.
Thanks to his exceptional journalistic and communications skills, at the age of twenty-six, he managed to become a member of the Committee on Public Information, established during President Wilson’s time with the purpose of convincing the American public opinion about the need to get involved in World War I. Night skiing. That war, which was supposed to be the “war to end all wars,” did not interest the average American who saw Europe as something distant and foreign. The committee managed to convince the American public of the need for war in order to make the world a “safe place for democracy.” This led to the creation of a strong anti-German sentiment in the country, to the point where, for example, the Boston Symphony Orchestra could not perform Beethoven’s works. The campaign was extremely successful, and the United States entered the war, which was clear confirmation to Bernays that public opinion could be manipulated.
Contact with Freud’s ideas.
He became aware of the instinctual side and its susceptibility to herd instinct. He came to the conclusion that skillful manipulation could profit from it.
He agreed with Walter Lippman, another member of the Committee on Public Information, that the majority of people are incapable of making decisions, that they are actually just observers and should be guided by the enlightened ones. In other words, the intelligent minority must control the attitudes and beliefs of the majority. Therefore, the majority needs to be mass-transformed so that these instincts do not lead to greater catastrophe. To achieve this, techniques needed to be found to optimize this management.
The key was to appeal to the unconscious, subtly stimulating desires and feelings so that people believe they have made the decision themselves and that they have done so of their own free will.
At the end of the Great War, industrial production gained momentum and was able to produce huge quantities of goods, but apart from the very wealthy, the vast majority of people were only buying what was essential. In other words, there was a huge supply and very little demand. It had to be created. This required a change in mentality for desire to become more important than need. Bernays, with his skillful advertising campaigns, created a new type of consumer – the compulsive consumer.
He was hired by many companies of different profiles to stimulate consumer desires for their products. For example, after Bernays’ campaign targeted at women, certain clothes or fashion accessories became desirable and sought after because they would appear on a famous and beautiful movie star. Newspapers and magazines then further spread these ideas. The desire to be like them, the movie stars, did the rest.
With men, on the other hand, it was necessary to build a sense that a car represents their masculine strength, because the bigger and more powerful it was, the more it represented the driver. That’s why it needed to be replaced with a new and better one as soon as possible.
Work with major companies
Bernays was popular because of his creativity, free thinking and refinement, because of his culture and pleasant manners, which left the impression that he was more important and influential than he really was.
One of his first successes was organizing a tour for the great opera singer Enrico Caruso in the United States. However, he also organized campaigns for various clients, such as convincing men to wear wristwatches, which previously seemed feminized, instead of keeping them on a chain in the vest pocket. One of the meat industries hired him to sell their enormous surpluses, so he launched a campaign to convince the average American that the best breakfast consisted of eggs with bacon and ham, rather than coffee with toast and orange juice, as it was until then. This happened in the 1920s, so when we see cowboys eating eggs and bacon in a Western movie set in the 19th century, it is obviously Hollywood propaganda.
Edward Bernays and Tob In 1920, the company American Tobacco realized that it was losing half of its market because women were not allowed to smoke in public. They hired an expert to help them “fix” the situation. After consulting with a psychoanalyst, who explained that the most courageous women saw smoking as a rebellion against machismo, they came up with a plan. They hired ten women who dared to smoke in public and strategically placed them in key spots during a large Easter parade. At the agreed-upon time, all the women began smoking conspicuously, referring to their cigarettes as “torches of freedom.” They also ensured the presence of journalists so that their “torches” would make headlines in all the newspapers. The goal was achieved – women started smoking in public and sales increased. It was a time when the harmful effects of tobacco were not yet known, as it was being promoted and sold as beneficial for health.
In politics, he realized that his manipulation tactics could be You are resourceful and in politics. He considered democracy to be a wonderful concept, but he couldn’t trust the judgment of all the people who could vote for the wrong person or want something inappropriate, so they must be guided without their knowledge.
A case that Bernays later fondly remembered was related to President Coolidge, who took office after the sudden death of President Harding, for whom he was an unnoticed vice president. The public, who carefully followed the 1924 elections, did not particularly like presidential candidate Coolidge, with his silent personality and strict, boring habits. To improve his chances, Bernays organized a breakfast at the White House, to which the greatest stars of Broadway at that time, singers, ballerinas, etc., were supposed to join the president. This was the era of silent films, and Broadway theater was the pinnacle of entertainment. It was rumored that during the breakfast in the presence of journalists, someone told the president that a minister was looking for him, to which he replied, “I’m busy.” When all of this was published, talk began about a warm and relaxed atmosphere that they enjoyed, and the public’s impression of the president changed for the better, leading to his victory in the elections.
In 1923, he published his first book, “The Crystallization of Public Opinion,” and in 1928, he released “Propaganda,” where he clearly presented his method and goals: consciously and intelligently manipulating the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element of democratic society. Those who manipulate this unknown mechanism of society become the invisible power, the true power in our country (…). The intelligent minority must continuously and systematically use propaganda.
However, the term propaganda acquired negative connotations in Nazi Germany, where it was used in the 1930s and 1940s in Joseph Goebbels’ infamous Ministry of Propaganda. That’s why he renamed his activities “Public Relations” and his theories as “consent engineering”. Walter Lippmann, whom we have already mentioned, shared the same viewpoint. The same idea has, but he called it “consent manufacturing.” Both theories are clear enough and refer to the same thing – manipulating to achieve the consent of the masses.
The famous case of Guatemala
The most famous case that gave rise to the term “banana republic” is that of the American multinational company United Fruit. It will be known in Latin America as the “octopus” because of its numerous and skillful tentacles, spreading its presence and influence in Costa Rica, Jamaica, Panama, Honduras, and Guatemala, and later in Colombia, Ecuador, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. It occupied thousands and thousands of hectares of plantations, sometimes even for free. In the early 1930s, it controlled 90% of the world banana market.
A fundamental part of United Fruit’s business policy from the beginning was to keep the governments of the banana-growing countries in Latin America at a distance. When he couldn’t bribe those in power or orchestrate a coup to remove them from power, he knew he could almost always count on support from The President of the United States. Samuel Zemurray, president of United Fruit, hired Bernays in 1948 to improve the negative image that his company had in both the United States and Central America. Bernays embarked on this task with his characteristic skill and energy, completely changing the perception of the company in the United States and connecting it with the top of the country.
When the presidents of Guatemala, Arévalo and later Arbenz, began proposing reforms that included the use of unused agricultural land, taxation, and the legalization of labor unions, among other things, it was a red flag for United Fruit. Bernays had the task of stopping the unfavorable development for his client in 1948. He first traveled to Guatemala for several weeks to familiarize himself with the situation, and upon returning to the United States, he launched a campaign of disinformation about the alleged communist threat in Guatemala, using a vast network Many politicians and lawyers connected to United Fruit, and particularly by manipulating journalists who spread news throughout the country. Many discovered that Guatemala existed and, when they sent correspondents to the country, everything was staged for them to see and hear what they were supposed to see and hear. A British correspondent believed this to such an extent that he wrote about Soviet submarine bases in the country. Everything fit perfectly, and Jacobo Arbenz and his government, who had no ties to communists, were accused of being agents of international communism, which is why the CIA and State Department supported the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954.
Edward Bernays never denied his backstage maneuver in this shameful operation and casually commented on it.
Consequences
Although Bernays called himself the “father of public relations,” the truth is that in the second half of the 19th century, a journalist named Ivy Lee used this method on a business level, and propaganda existed even before charismatic The work of Bernays has been attributed to him more due to his personality than to concrete facts. However, it is necessary to take a look at the work of him and others who, like him, have shaped our way of life towards superficiality, where excess represents value. The habit of several generations to constantly exercise the satisfaction of their own desires, natural or imposed, has created in the first half of the 21st century, especially in countries with greater economic capacity, a society that has become infantilized. These are people who think very little, feel a lot, get easily bored, and seek comfort at any cost. If they have a lot, they want more; if they don’t have, they don’t understand what is wrong with them. They like to have new toys and, if possible, be constantly entertained. Damage has been done.