An email arriv. at my inbox titl. “exciting article about propaganda, consumer culture and manipulation”. It was from my boss, asking me to do some research on a person call. .ward Bernays for our blog. I didn’t even get to open two tabs about this man before thinking “my boss has gone crazy. He is asking me to go into the darkest side of this industry.”
However, digging deeper, I understood that Bernays’ marketing is nothing like what we do at the agency every day. This partly has to do with the differences between traditional marketing and digital marketing, a topic for another time. Now, with my conscience partly appeas., I was equally fascinat. and horrifi. by the dark genius of .ward Bernays. Here’s what I found.
Men we’ve never heard of
Marketing is the child of psychology. Or at least his nephew. Sure enough, that’s what .ward Bernays was to Sigmund Freud. Although Bernays’ name may not resonate as much as his uncle’s, the impact he had on society was just as poignant. .ward Bernays, appropriately dubb. “the father of public relations”, was responsible for using Freud’s theories on behavior and the human mind to help sell more products. Thus, he forever chang. marketing.
Before Bernays, marketing was largely bas. on showing the practical virtues of a product. He was the one to inaugurate the notion that to sell anything (from a brand to a public figure), it was best to link it to people’s deepest desires and fears. Bernays wrote “People are seldom aware of the real reasons for their conduct (…) We are govern., our buy telemarketing data minds are shap., our tastes shap., our ideas suggest., largely by men we have never heard of.”
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Discourse on the Method
When I told my friends about one of don’t overdo the filters Bernays’ campaigns, they thought it seem. far-fetch.. They found it hard to believe that such small seismic movements in culture could generate such a tsunami of consumption. This is because Bernays understood that there was a link between culture and consumption that could be taken advantage of. He work. insidiously, so that the public receiv. propaganda messages without suspecting it. For example, Bernays was a forerunner of indirect advertising in movies: during his long and famous campaign for Lucky Strike, he repeat.ly got movie stars to smoke in their films.
Marketing Strategies by .ward Bernays, Father of Public Relations
His handling of public opinion was such that he even manag. to impose it as a discipline. In 1928 he wrote the book Propaganda, where he defin. dating data the boundaries of this specialty. After the war, the term “propaganda” acquir. a negative connotation since it was us. by the Nazis as a political tool. So Bernays appli. the golden rule of public relations, which was made famous by the show Mad Men: “if you don’t like what is being said, change the conversation.” Bernays replac. the term “propaganda” for “public relations” and the rest is history. What follows is a brief tour of some of this man’s most important campaigns.
Lucky Strikes Back
During the twenties, the American Tobacco Corporation sought to reach a larger audience of smokers. George Washington Hill, its president, was at the time in charge of the Lucky Strike brand. Hill set out to appeal to a hitherto untapp. demographic: women. “We are losing half our market because men have invok. a taboo on women smoking in public,” he argu..
Smoke your shadow
In 1929, Washington Hill hir. .ward Bernays to convince women to smoke cigarettes. Bernays work. with his uncle’s theories in mind. Since smoking was consider. an appetite suppressant, and thinness was in fashion, Bernays design. a campaign that would appeal to women’s unconscious fear of gaining weight. In the ads, slim, pretty women were haunt. by the shadow of an obese future version. The tagline read: “When tempt., grab a Lucky instead. Avoid the shadow of the future.”
Torches of Liberty
.ward Bernays’ bold marketing campaign went even further. To effectively break the taboo on smoking in public, Bernays decid. to investigate what cigarettes meant to women. After consulting a local psychoanalyst, he came to the conclusion that cigarettes were a symbol of masculine power (according to the psychoanalyst he consult., they literally represent. “the phallus”) and that he could then get women to smoke cigarettes if he fram. it as a way to challenge male power. To this end, Bernays organiz. a demonstration at the 1929 Easter parade, where famous women held up their “torches of liberty”: Lucky Strike cigarettes. The brand manag. to become a symbol of gender equality in the Unit. States during those years.
Roses are green
In the 1930s a new problem arose that requir. Bernays’ peculiar assistance. Washington Hill not. that while women were smoking more cigarettes, for some reason they were not buying Lucky Strikes. A 1934 investigation yield. a curious answer to this enigma: the moss green color of the package was “hard to match” with women’s outfits at the time. Changing the color of the package was not an option, as Washington Hill had spent a lot of money on those colors. So instead, Bernays convinc. fashion designers to incorporate the color into their new seasonal designs. He held a “Green Gala” at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel for some of society’s most prominent tastemakers and sent 1,500 letters on green letterhead to interior decorators, home furnishings buyers and art groups in the industry. The campaign was an utter success.