Book review and overview

Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, is known as the "Father of Public Relations." He penned Propaganda in 1928 (relatively early in his career) as, more than anything else, an advertisement for himself, his services and his ideas...the intended audience to be potential corporate clients. The book offers disappointingly little detail of his methodology, though his clients and "accomplishments" in later years serve as proof of his talent:

Employers/clientele (among others)
CPI (U.S. Committee on Public Information); President Calvin Coolidge; CBS; Proctor & Gamble; General Electric; United Fruit Company; the American Tobacco Company

Career "highlights:
...according to cited and uncited sources on wikipedia.org:
"1915 Diaghilev's Ballet Russes American tour convinced magazines to write articles that told people that Ballet is fun to watch

"In the 1920s, working for the American Tobacco Company, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He then told the press that a group of women's rights marchers would light "Torches of Freedom". On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers. The New York Times (1 April 1929) printed: "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'". This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public. During this decade he also handled publicity for the NAACP.

"Bernays used his uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.

"Bernays attempted to help Venida hair nets company to get women to wear their hair longer so they would use hair nets more. The campaign failed but did get government officials to require hair nets for some jobs.

"Bernays helped the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) and other special interest groups to convince the American public that water fluoridation was safe and beneficial to human health. This was achieved by using the American Dental Association in a highly successful media campaign.

"In the 1930s, his Dixie Cup campaign was designed to convince consumers that only disposable cups were sanitary.

"In the 1930s, he attempted to convince women that Lucky Strike cigarettes' forest green pack was the most fashionable color. Letters were written to interior and fashion designers, department stores, and prominent women of society pushing green as the new hot color for the season. Balls, gallery exhibitions, and window displays all featured green after Bernays got through with them. The result was that green did indeed become a very hot color for the 1934 season and Lucky Strike kept their pack color and female clientele intact."

At the time of Propaganda's writing, radio was a new media and still palled in comparison to the newspapers as a source of public information or propaganda delivery. Bernays theorized that, even more influential than these, was the interpersonal networks of social clubs, trade organizations, political action committees, volunteer groups, etc., of which most Americans were a member of at least one. It was one of Bernays' most important marketing developments, as empirically illustrated in Propaganda, that these groups and their leaders would become the nexus between marketing campaigns and the public at large; that is to say that instead of a politician or corporation appealing directly to the public, that politician or corporation would appeal to these peer leaders and let their credibility firmly plant the idea or product into the collective consciousness of their immediate group, and then the public at large. How these leaders were to be approached is apparently a trade secret that Bernays declined to publish in this work.

If one subscribes to the modern applicabilty of the afore-described aspect of the Bernays method, it will be necessary to examine where a given person's social sphere predominantly exists these days. The internet? Physical meetings of groups in a limited geographic area are still very popular, but for global reach - almost instant, at that - blogs and discussion boards specializing in a particular common interest, gaming/avatar communities, and social networking sites are obvious answers.

Bernays must have been a very familiar name among the circles of the Rand Corporation that developed the consensus-building application of its Delphi Technique. It, as well as another of Bernays' strategies, plays on indirect marketing where a goal, idea or product is decided upon by the parties of interest. Circumstances are then brought about by these parties to lead the public to these predetermined ideas or products seemingly on their own and by their own free will and intelligence.

An illustration is provided in Propaganda of a piano manufacturer (presumably one of Bernays' clients) who increased sales by coordinating with residential architects so that new home designs would include a music room or music nook. The resident of such a home would recognize that this space was large enough for a piano and would conclude (on his own, he thinks) that he must buy one.

As for the man himself, Propaganda shows evidence of a certain schizophrenia as to how Bernays reconciles the manipulative nature of his trade with the morality that most of us seek. On the one hand, he condescendingly states that the public is a disconcerted sea of wandering minds and incoherent thought - incapable of organized, meaningful and necessary action - and that an elite intelligence must not only achieve a position of authority, but must use propaganda to organize consensus and create societal support for an idea, action, or even a product. His justification: it seems that in 1928 Bernays was still convinced that the utilization of propaganda was for the good of all - that these "elite" would be just and moral and would only use propaganda to move their society to the next levels of human development and achievement. Today, we are not so sure.

In the edition of Propaganda offered by IG Publishing, author and activist Mark Crispin Miller's introduction cites the last several chapters...addressing the use of propaganda for such benign purposes as advancing science, the arts and social reform movements...as almost afterthoughts to counteract the borderline-nefarious suggestions of the previous chapters.

In this way, Propaganda becomes propaganda for propaganda. Its concepts are generalized, but can lead the reader towards the correct pursuits of information and the more finite idea-dissemination techniques (though to the same ends) employed by , say, a graphic designer.