Tip of the Hat to the Father of Public Relations
June 17, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Since it’s Father’s Day today, we salute The Father of Public Relations.
Of course, there is no real father, just people who have made that claim, or had that claim made for them.
Edward Bernays got his start doing publicity for entertainers, served as a propagandist during the First World War, and went on to pioneer in PR methods for corporate clients and governments. One of his clients was his uncle Sigmund Freud, who, as his literary agent in North America, Bernays (correctly) positioned as a revolutionary thinker of the 20th century, helping drive sales of his books.
Nine decades before George W. Bush’s campaign to bring democracy to the rest of the world, Bernays was instrumental in selling America’s role in the war as the defence of democracy. He went on to spin smoking cigarettes as an expression of freedom for women, liberally employ front groups to lend credibility to his client’s causes, and devise numerous means of getting ideas and messages picked up by the media.
Ivy Lee is the other front-runner to be called father of the profession. Detracting from the claim of his fatherhood was his representation of strike-breaking hardball capitalists and later a consulting gig with the Nazis that he walked away from. It’s probably fitting that a pioneer of spin should have been undone by allegations that were never fully substantiated. Lee died before he was able to rehabilitate his image.
Lee innovation was to try to influence business to recognize the benefit of altering their business practices to conform with modern standards of ethics and behaviour.
His firm issued a Declaration of Principles, promising to "frankly, and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to the public to know about."
Who’s the real Dad? I’m not sure it matters that we choose one person. In a way, that just buys into the idea that we have to simplify reality, rather than explore its complexities.
The practice of public relations has become more sophisticated in the past 90 years, and hopefully more open. Maybe it’s time we accept the possibility PR was fathered by numerous pioneers, each with their own claim to paternity.
Two good sources on the early days of public relations are CBC Radio’s Spin Cycles and the BBC Television series The Century of the Self (available in six clips).
Resources:
Previous posts:
- Spin Cycles Avoids Blanket Condemnation of the PR Industry
- Official Communications that Doesn’t Communicate
Tags: history, fathers day, public relations, business, propaganda, spin, edward bernays, ivy lee, freud, smoking, front groups, tactics
