father's of PR

Edward Bernays was Freud’s American nephew and founder of public relations, which influenced advertising. He was the first to take Freud’s ideas and use them to manipulate the masses: showing corporations how to make people want things they didn’t need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires. From this came a new political idea on how to control the masses: by satisfying people’s inner desires, one made them happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self, which has come to dominate our world today.

We’ll extract this wisdom so you can understand how public relations has bled into nearly all messages you see around you, from obvious paid advertising from less obvious news reports and even Hollywood movies.
Bernays begins in a mighty way when he’s hired to promote the US effort in World War I: “Bringing democracy to the world” then at the post-war peace conference” “Make the world safe for democracy.”
His success in winning over the European masses to a political idea inspired him to apply his propaganda techniques to peace: American advertising. Since the Germans had ruined the term “propaganda,” he found another word: “public relations.” His purpose: to find a way to manage and alter the way the American masses thought and felt. Or more bluntly, to make money manipulating the unconscious.
He based this on there being a lot more going on in the individual and in groups than just information to drive behavior. His conclusion: you need to find devices that play to people’s irrational emotions. Prior to Bernays, both governments and businesses assumed you present the rational argument for supporting policies or buying products.
His early successes included: getting women to smoke when it was taboo for them. This took place at the same place women were fighting for the right to vote.