Founders
Episode 256 #256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)
Founders

Episode 256: #256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)

Founders

Episode 256

#256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye.

What I learned from reading The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations by Larry Tye.

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[0:54] The very substance of American thought was mere clay to be molded by the savvy public relations practitioner.

[1:48] Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in and provided them to be made public after his death.

[4:15] The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America's Banana King by Rich Cohen. (Founders #255)

[6:43] Thinking unconventionally, operating at the edge, and pushing the boundaries became his trademark over a career that lasted more than 80 years.

[10:13] Problems are just opportunities in work clothes.

[12:06] Eddie was convinced that understanding the instincts and symbols that motivate an individual could help him shape the behavior of the masses.

[12:32] 1. Get hired to promote a product. 2. Attach that product to a cause that gives the consumption of that product a deeper meaning. 3. Use the cause to get a small newspaper/media organization to write about the product. 4. Use that media to get larger media to promote the cause indirectly promoting your product.

[15:36] Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products. Read the trade journals in the field. Spend Saturday mornings in service stations, talking to motorists. Visit your client’s refineries and research laboratories. At the end of your first year, you will know more about the oil business than your boss. — Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy (Founders #82)

[17:13] Humans love if other humans will do their work for them.

[19:01] A lesson he is learning promoting: Public visibility had little to do with real value.

[24:13] The Man Who Sold America: The Amazing (but True!) Story of Albert D. Lasker and the Creation of the Advertising Century by Jeffrey L. Cruikshank and Arthur W. Schultz (Founders #206)

[24:35] He never, never, never, never has just one plan of attack. It is always many, many, attack vectors, relentlessly.

[28:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)

[37:23] The outcome was one that most publicity men can only dream about. An irresistible script for a stunt flawlessly executed, covered in nearly every paper in America, with no one detecting the fingerprints of either Bernays or his tobacco company client.

[38:18] John D: The Founding Father of the Rockefellers by David Freeman Hawke (Founders #254) and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller by Ron Chernow (Founders #248)

[44:15] His philosophy in each case was the same. Hired to sell a product or service, he instead sold whole new ways of behaving, which appeared obscure but over time repaid huge rewards for his clients.

[44:26] The Dao of Capital: Austrian Investing in a Distorted World by Mark Spitznagel (Founders #70)

[45:00] He was convinced that ordinary rules did not apply to him. He repeatedly proved that he could reshape reality.

[45:21] The formula was simple: Bernays generated events, the events generated news, and the new generated a demand for whatever he happened to be selling.

[48:47] In an era of mass communications modesty is a private virtue and a public fault.

[52:45] The best defense against propaganda is more propaganda.

[59:54] Advice to younger parents from Eddie’s wife: Be certain to keep a balance where that little girl is concerned. Be sure not to let her get lost in your busy life. (The little girl was 2 or 3 at the time)

[1:09:14] He's like journalists, writers, media representatives, news anchors — You have something very valuable that I want —the attention of the public. If I can make your job easier, I am more likely to get some of that attention for my private interest.

[1:14:55] I still earned fees until I was 95.

[1:17:29] His children remained mystified as to how Eddie managed to die with so few assets.

[1:17:37] Sometimes later in life Eddie told me that he hadn't spent his money wisely. It is the only time he ever told me that he regretted anything.

I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ”

— Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

#256 Edward L. Bernays (Public Relations, Advertising, & Persuasion)

Introduction

Edward Bernays almost single-handedly fashioned the craft that has come to be called public relations. He is widely recognized as the man who fathered the science of spin. Bernays was the man who got women to smoke cigarettes and who put bacon and eggs on the breakfast table, books in bookshelves, and Calvin Coolidge back in the White House. Although most Americans had never heard of Edward Bernays, he nonetheless, had a profound impact on everything from the products they purchased to the places they visited to the foods they ate for breakfast. In doing so, Bernays demonstrated to an entire generation of PR men and women, the enormous power that lay within their grasp. If housewives could be guided in their selection of soap, so could husbands in their choice of a car and voters in their selection of candidates and candidates in their political posturing. Indeed, the very substance of American thought was mere clay to be molded by the savvy public relations practitioner. The techniques he developed fast became staples of political campaigns and image-making in general.

That is why it's essential to understand Edward Bernays. This book uses Bernays' life as a prism to understand the evolution of the craft of public relations and how it came to play such a critical and sometimes insidious role in American life. He made that exploration possible and actually encouraged it by leaving to the Library of Congress more than 800 boxes of personal and professional papers that detailed cases he worked on and tactics and strategies that he employed over a career that spanned eight decades. Bernays saved every scrap of paper he sent out or took in and provided them to be made public after his death. In doing so, he lets us see just how policies were made and how, in many cases, they were founded on deception. This volume seeks to unmask the man himself. Bernays was able to accomplish all he did in part because of dogged determination combined with an inventiveness that set him apart from his contemporaries and make his ideas as relevant in the 1990s when there's 125,000 PR practitioners in America as they were in the 1920s when he and a handful of others got things going.

His spirit was electric and his enthusiasm was so infectious that many who had heard a single speech decades before or studied with him for one semester could recite his every phrase years later. Bernays was also a bundle of contradictions. He rode roughshod over his young staffers even as he preached the virtues of tolerance and democracy. He promoted cigarettes which he suspected were deadly at the same time he was promoting national health insurance. He espoused women's rights, but often treated his female employees and his wife like indentured servants. He continually capitalized on the fact that he had outlived all of his contemporaries. He died in 1995 at age 103, to advance his contention that he more than they deserve to be called the Prince of Publicity. Although he was a small man, his claims were as huge as his dreams. It was those claims that first drew me to Bernays.

My suspicion that he was a fascinating character, possibly an epic one, grew during my year as a fellow at Harvard when I got to know his daughter Anne and her husband. I met Bernays only once a year before he died when he was a very, very old man. He was sitting in the library of his home and he told one story after another in rote fashion as if they had been prerecorded, and then he told them again.

That was an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and The Birth of Public Relations, and it was written by Larry Tye. I wanted to read this book now because last week on episode 255 when I was studying the life of Sam Zemurray in the book, The Fish That the Whale, Bernays is a character that pops up later in Sam Zemurray's career. Zemurray actually hires Bernays when he's the president of The Whale, which is at the United Fruit. Bernays' job was to get the U.S. Government involved and the CIA specifically so they could overthrow what turned out to be a hostile government of Guatemala that was threatening to take away assets of the United Fruit Company.

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