Edward Bernays (1891–1995) is perhaps the least-known most influential person of modern times. Proclaimed by the Public Relations Society of America as one of the giants of PR, along with the likes of Dan Edelman and Harold Burson, he is often seen as the inventor of PR and indeed of marketing, advertising and Consumerism itself.
In 1992, during Congressional hearings into the licensing of PR, Bernays said: “Public relations embraces the “engineering of consent” based on Jefferson’s principle that “in a truly democratic society, everything depends upon the consent of the public.” This fundamental truth is the basis of my life’s work… A public relations counsel is an applied social scientist who advises a client on the social attitudes and actions he or she must take in order to appeal to the public on which it is dependent. The practitioner ascertains, through research, the adjustment or maladjustment of the client with the public, then advises what changes in attitude and action are demanded to reach the highest point of adjustment to meet social goals.”
Bernays is often blamed for having created a more selfish, unhappy and materialism-obsessed public, less engaged with politics and the interests of community. As Robert Lane says in The Art of Happiness in Market Democracies, Bernays “understood that the appetite of our present materialism depends upon stirring up our wants – but not satisfying them.”
Professor David Cadman, writing in Resurgence in April 2003, says that the deliberate creation of Consumer culture dates back to Bernays applying his experience of US propaganda to the foundation of what is now modern day Consumerism. In 2006, a Der Spiegel journalist interviewed Harold Burson: “Bernays thought that he could control public opinion. His methodology, of course, was fundamental. Most of the things we do today were identified by Bernays 80 years ago.”
Bernays’ belief in his uncle Sigmund Freud’s teachings led him to a conviction that the masses were not to be trusted, feeling that they therefore needed to be transformed from active Citizens into passive Consumers, driven by selfish desires encouraged by PR and marketing. His intention was to take our irrationality and use it to sell us products that rationally we did not need.
This was the process that Bernays and colleague Walter Lippmann named the “engineering of consent” – a phrase which political philosopher Noam Chomsky used for his influential critique of Bernays and Lippmann, The Manufacturing of Consent. Bernays aimed to busy the Id with its playthings of fear, sexuality, power and status so that it was less likely to become active and dangerous. Underlying this are the echoes of the inherited fears of his uncle’s, so influenced by the European unrest he lived through.
Bernays’ approach started a process that led to a world of political spin doctors, marketing moguls and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness should be society’s ultimate goal.
Bernays’ approach started a process that led to a world of political spin doctors, marketing moguls and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness should be society’s ultimate goal.
Bernays profited by linking mass-produced goods to corporate America’s unconscious desires. He was a key architect of the modern techniques of mass-Consumer persuasion, creating many of the now established forms of marketing and advertising such as message framing, values and lifestyles segmentation, celebrity endorsement and PR stunts.
In 1929 Charles F. Kettering, director of GM wrote in an article “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied”xvii “key to economic prosperity is the organised creation of dissatisfaction…If everyone were satisfied no one would want to buy the new thing.”
And yet, at various points along the way, the warnings of this mis-alignment between Wants and Needs was there, clearly, for all to see. In 1954, Kleber R Miller asked in the Public Relations Journal, whether practitioners had considered the moral implications of their actions and whether the ends justify the means. In his seminal work, The Hidden Persuaders published in 1957, Vance Packard called for a new code for “Ethically Responsible Persuaders”.
“Such codes might set up ground rules that would safeguard the public against being manipulated in ways that that might be irresponsible and socially dangerous”, he wrote.
