Propaganda, Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising - Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays

Propaganda, Public Relations, Marketing, and Advertising: Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays

Propaganda has been around basically since the dawn of man in one form or another. But when it comes to modern propaganda, there are a few names that stand out. This documentary focuses on the origins of modern propaganda, and the practical applications.

Ivy Ledbetter Lee was an American publicity expert and a founder of modern public relations. (The term Public Relations is to be found for the first time in the preface of the 1897 Yearbook of Railway Literature). He is best known for his public relations work with the Rockefeller family. His first major client was the Pennsylvania Railroad, followed by numerous major railroads such as the New York Central, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Harriman lines such as the Union Pacific. He established the Association of Railroad Executives, which included providing public relations services to the industry. Lee advised major industrial corporations, including steel, automobile, tobacco, meatpacking, and rubber, as well as public utilities, banks, and even foreign governments. Lee pioneered the use of internal magazines to maintain employee morale, as well as management newsletters, stockholder reports, and news releases to the media. He did a great deal of pro bono work, and during World War I, he became the publicity director for the American Red Cross.

Edward Louis James Bernays was an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations." He combined the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the "herd instinct" that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.

Subscribe to this channel - http://www.youtube.com/c/ProperGander
Ivy Lee wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Lee
Edward Bernays wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Public Relations Campaigns of Edward Bernays - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_Edward_Bernays
Edward Bernays - http://pr.wikia.com/wiki/Edward_Bernays
Ivy Lee - http://pr.wikia.com/wiki/Ivy_Lee
Ivy Ledbetter Lee - http://www.britannica.com/biography/Ivy-Ledbetter-Lee
Public Relations Through Time - http://www.ipr.org.uk/public-relations-through-time.html
Psychoanalysis Shapes Human Culture - http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer.aspx
Freud's Nephew and the Origins of Public Relations - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612464
Propaganda Quotes by Bernays - https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/481391-propaganda
The Iraq War and the Power of Propaganda - http://nationalinterest.org/node/5887
Media Propaganda in the War on Iraq - https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/papers/mediapropaganda.htm
War Programming - http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121509?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Freud's Nephew and Public Relations - https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-drugs-and-boredom/201002/freuds-nephew-and-public-relations
Edward Bernays - Propaganda - http://smellslikehumanspirit.com/edward-bernays-propaganda

As always, use this info to gather more info.

Public opinion is big business.

As of 2011, there were more than
7,000 public relations firms in

the United States alone.

These companies work on behalf of
corporations, trade organizations, or

individuals who hope to put
a positive spin on their image.

Whether it's a celebrity trying to salvage
his or her reputation after a meltdown,

a musician promoting an album, or
business combating negative press.

Chances are, you've recently encountered
PR work and you might not have known.

There's no denying the importance of
this multi-billion dollar industry,

but what exactly is it,
how does it work, and who invented it?

>> We often talk about the propaganda
being relatively recent, but or

course it isn't.

Even in ancient societies
that weren't democratic,

especially large states it was
understood by elites that,

if you don't have the support of
the people you could be in trouble.

And so a fair bit of attention
was actually given to

legitimizing military adventures.

>> Propaganda and persuasion have
been around for centuries, eons.

But propaganda in its modern sense
can be traced to the 15th and

16th century, when the Catholic Church
was in a tough competition with

the Protestants over how to articulate
a religious vision for the world.

And the reason that I mention this
is that it shows that propaganda is

about mindset, it's about ideology,
it's about world view.

How people see things as distinct
from individual policy or

whether you happen to like this
candidate or that candidate.

So, that's where the word came from for
propagating the faith.

And that's the way the word was used
up until the early 20th century.

And then what emerged, particularly
with World War I, was the application

of this propagating the faith,
to refer to international affairs,

to refer to what a national government
would do, a national security policy.

[MUSIC]

>> There were clear warning signs
long before the age of the invent.

During the assault on Serbia,
under President Clinton,

a report emerged,
by the Dutch journalist, Abe De Vries,

revealing the presence of
Psy warriors working at CNN.

They derived from the third psychological
operations battalion at Fort Bragg in

North Carolina.

De Vries quoted Major Thomas Collins
of the US Army information service.

Psyops personnel, soldiers and
officers have been working in CNN's

headquarters in Atlanta through our
program training with industry.

They helped in the production of news.

[MUSIC]

What made the Iraq War different were not
so much the tactics or even the scale, but

the high tech synergy.

It was almost impossible to tell where the
state ended and the Fourth Estate began.

>> One of the things that we don't wanna
do is to destroy the infrastructure of

Iraq because in a few days
we're gonna own that country.

>> Should they have used more?

Should they use a MOAB, the mother of
all bombs and a few daisy cutters.

And let's not just stop at
a couple of [INAUDIBLE]

>> You're only 40 [CROSSTALK]

>> The invasion of Iraq

represents a pinnacle of domestic
psy-war in the United States.

An unparalleled integration
between public relations firms,

corporate media, and military psyops.

At the time of the assault, large segments
of the American public were convinced that

a nuclear attack by Saddam Hussein on
their nation was not only possible,

but imminent.

Soldiers who comprised the invading
force were similarly confused.

With a remarkable 77% believing
that Hussein was responsible for

the attacks of 9/11.

[MUSIC]

Many earnestly believed that the mission
was to destroy a mysterious group known as

Al-Qaeda while bringing
freedom to the Iraqi people.

Yet but what was actually happening,
was what the Nuremberg charger

describes as the single greatest
crime under international law.

The planning, preparation, initiation,
or waging of a war of aggression.

[SOUND]

[MUSIC]

Seven years later,
the results of the invasion are clear.

According to the Lancet, one of Britain's
most respected medical journals,

approximately 600,000 Iraqis had been
killed from the invasion as of 2006.

By 2009, a polling agency put
the number at over 1 million.

4 million Iraqi have been made
refugees in their own country,

their entire society is shattered.

[MUSIC]

How did the land of the free and the home
of the brave arrive at a place where

citizens could be manipulated with such
efficiency, and on such a massive scale?

[MUSIC]

>> Ivy Lee went to work for
among other clients the Rockefellers,

the Rockefeller family after
the Ludlow massacre used Ivy Lee to

manage the public perception around
that event and other events.

Ivy Lee's specialty was crisis management.

Among other things, he's credited with
inventing the press release which all of

us just sort of think of
as something helpful.

You wanna publicize an event,
a church picnic, call a news conference,

you put out a press release.

But at the time the idea was very radical
because what Ivy Lee was saying is, well,

we're gonna manage this crisis
by calling attention to it.

We're gonna actually assist and help the
news media and journalists in covering it.

What he knew was that the degree to
which journalists became used to and

dependent on his services was the degree
to which he could actually cultivate and

manage coverage.

[MUSIC]

>> He began by waging
a disinformation campaign.

He put up news bulletins claiming that
the 2 women and 11 children at Ludlow,

had not been killed by militia,
but by an overturned stove.

He circulated stories
suggesting that Mother Jones,

in addition to being a labor organizer
was a modern Haryana Bordello.

He ghost wrote letters to the governor and
even the President Wilson.

Lee's techniques achieved little success,

in part because he himself had
become a highly visible figure.

[SOUND] In the future, PR experts would
learn that their techniques are rarely

effective unless practiced in the dark.

Yet, one of Lee's innovations
was epoch making.

Upon learning that the Rockefeller
Foundation had $100 million set aside for

promotional purposes.

He convinced Rockefeller to donate large
sums to colleges hospitals, churches,

and charitable organizations,
in order to generate positive publicity.

He also suggested that Rockefeller Senior
begin handing out money in public,

and that Junior appear in
staged photo ups at work sites.

What Ivy Lee understood was that
the corporation needed a makeover.

Widely perceived as greedy,
tyrannical institutions,

corporations needed to manufacture
an image of worth and caring.

>> This is the beginning of
the public relations industry.

Rockefeller didn't set up
the Rockefeller Foundation until

Rockefeller became very unpopular
because of his labor policies and

suddenly they Rockville and
needed to create a good impression.

>> Well, it's an interesting phenomenon
that the poor actually give a larger

percentage of their income than the rich.

And I think the rich feel
they're doing more because,

giving 100,000 dollars seems like
a substantial kind of donation and

it doesn't matter that
they have 100 million,

they still think they've done quite a lot.

>> Ive Lee went to work for the IG Farben
company, the German industrial company and

we know now that IG Farben Was actually
part of the Nazi propaganda inner circle.

One of the most effective and
of course horrifying government propaganda

campaigns ever organized was the Nazi
campaign that continued for years and

years under the direction of Nazi
propaganda administer Joseph Goebbels.

Ivy Lee, and
also paid Ivy Lee's son to represent,

not just their interests, but
the interests of Nazi Germany

in an effort to paint the Nazi
regime as being a friendly regime.

>> But before lending his
expertise to the Third Reich, Mr.

Lee would do so for
the American government.

Along with other experts in
the burgeoning field of mind science and

public relations, he would engineer
propaganda for World War I.

Not just against the enemy,

the Germans, but
against the American people themselves.

In republic and
parliamentary democracy alike,

citizens would be reduced
to passive observers.

They would be allowed to pick and

choose which individual make
decisions on their behalf.

But they would not be able to
make those decisions themselves.

Returning to the period after the first
World War I, we find widespread support

amongst intellectuals from Madison's
elitist interpretation of democracy.

According to Walter Lippmann,

the public's function in politics was
to be interested spectators of action.

Than non-participants.

[MUSIC]

Yet, Lippmann perceived a problem.

New technologies in communication and
transportation had awakened millions of

disenfranchised people to a new world
outside their towns and cities.

While traditional economic, political,
and social structures remained in place.

Something had to change, but
rather than advocate structural changes in

society's institutions, Lippman suggested
that propaganda readjust the public mind.

>> In his essays on
democracy in the 1920s,

which are incidentally called
progressive essays on democracy,

he was a Wilson, Roosevelt,
Kennedy [INAUDIBLE] American sense.

He says that the majority
are simply incompetent.

They are ignorant and
meddlesome outsiders in his view,

that's the majority of the population.

And to allow them to participate in
the decision making would be a complete

disaster.

>> So therefore we have to
design means to ensure that

what he called the responsible men,

of whom he was of course one,
are protected from the roar and

the trampling of the beasts,
the ignorant majority.

[MUSIC]

>> [SOUND]
>> And he devised a number of methods.

Lippmann called it manufacture of consent.

We have to manufacture the consent of
the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.

The mass of the population and

the huge public relations industry
was developed at the same time.

They are the people who manage and

control the marketing exercises that
are called elections in the United States.

They are marketing exercises,
and they're well aware of it.

>> Apparently, we have all been wrong.

It is pronounced California.

Ladies and gentlemen, the governor of the
great state of California, Arnold My God.

[MUSIC]

>> So, for example, in the last election,
2008, the advertising industry gives

a prize every year for
the best marketing campaign of the year.

2008, they gave it to the Obama campaign,
who beat out commercial competitors.

The idea is, we market candidates
the same way we market toothpaste or

life style drugs or automobiles.

Of course it helps to have
a lot of money and in fact,

Obama greatly outspent McCain and
not because of popular contributions.

It came mostly from financial oil
industries, he was their candidate.

And his policies all predictably
respond to his constituency.

[MUSIC]

>> Prominent intellectuals continue to
argue that world's complexity makes

democracy impossible.

A recent cover story in
TIME Magazine claimed that,

democracy is in the worst
interest of national goals.

The modern world is too
complex to allow the man or

woman in the street to
interfere in its management.

[MUSIC]

A man who surely would have
agreed was Edward Bernays.

Like Litman, Bernays served as
a propagandist on the Creel committee, and

like Litman, he went on to
refashion wartime propaganda.

For peacetime aims.

[MUSIC]

In his classic text Propaganda,
Bernay suggested that elite regiment

the public mind every bit as much
as an army regiments their bodies.

Bernay considered mass mind control so
crucial that it constituted in his words,

the very essence of
the democratic process.

Bernay's opportunity to shine arose when a
crises threatened not only the profits of

major corporations but
the entire capitalist system.

The solution as theorized by business
leaders would lead to social breakdown,

environmental catastrophe, and further
alienation between the American people and

their government.

It would also lead to wealth on
a scale never before imagined.

[MUSIC]
>> The problem of capitalism is

the problem of consumption, and
the problem is that after your

basic needs have been met,
there is no real need for consumption.

And so you have to convince people that
in fact their identities are based upon

the consumption of objects for
which there is no material need.

That's the problem that comes
from the expansion of the market.

If you look at advertising,
it's a very interesting history.

In the first period of advertising,
we can say right up until about the 1920s,

Advertising talked about goods themselves.

It talked about how they were made,
what they did, how well they lasted, etc,.

It really is a discourse about objects,
about what goods did.

However, starting around 1920,
that changes, and from that period on,

advertising doesn't really
talk about good themselves.

They talk about the relationship
of goods to our needs.

>> At the center of the new
strategy was Edward Bernays.

If Walter Litman had concerned
himself with an overarching analysis

of mass media and democracy, Bernays would
devote most of his energies to propaganda

on behalf of the corporation.

His uncle, Sigmund Freud,
would serve as his muse.

Rather than focus on the intrinsic
worth of a particular product,

Bernay's suggested a strategy
where products became linked

with the unconscious
desires of the public.

In this manner there would be virtually
no limits to either production or

consumption.

>> Freud's nephew was a man
by the name of Bernay.

And he's regarded as the father
of modern public relations,

particularly in the United States.

His contribution if you want to
call it that was to take propaganda

techniques that have been developed for
military psychological warfare,

national security type
issues during World War I.

and apply them in a systematic
way to commercial issues.

One of his best known efforts had to do
with encouraging females, women to smoke.

He would stage beauty pageants.

He would stage what are today would be
called photo ops and that sort of thing.

In which smoking by women was
portrayed as women's liberation.

Was portrayed as a way to be free and
empowered is getting addicted to nicotine.

The audience, the market in Bernay's
mind had a clear desire to be free,

to be stronger,
to be more self- empowered.

So women clearly wanted these things along
comes Bernays in the tobacco industry and

says here is how to have it.

>> The major story that advertising
tells us about human happiness is that

the way to happiness is through
the consumption of things.

That, in fact, buying something in
the marketplace will make you happy.

In fact, that's the message
of almost every single ad.

And it's not often that you can say,
that there's one message that is in

the literally millions of ads
that are produced every year.

Well actually I think that is the message,
the message of advertising as a whole is

that it's better to buy
than to not to buy.

That in fact the way to become, and

that you'll happier as a result
of buying than not buying.

That idea in fact I think
is the major force for

global social change
over the last 50 years.