Before Bernays, marketing was largely based 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 governed, our minds are shaped, our tastes shaped, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
When I told my friends about one of Bernays’ saudi arabia mobile database campaigns, they thought it seemed far-fetched. 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 worked insidiously, so that the public received 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 repeatedly got movie stars to smoke in their films.
edward bernays
Marketing Strategies by Edward Bernays, Father of Public Relations
His handling of public opinion was such that he even managed to impose it as a discipline. In 1928 he wrote the book Propaganda, where he defined the boundaries of this specialty. After the war, the term “propaganda” acquired a negative connotation since it was used by the Nazis as a political tool. So Bernays applied 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 replaced 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.