Edward Bernays: How One Man Manipulated All of America

We are living in an age of consumerist mania, a culture that breeds consumers and addicts. A world where we are bombarded with advertisements every minute or click of a button. And all these advertisements have left us chasing material things that only left us wanting more. Companies have been using advertisements to market their products and brands for many years. And these advertisements have ways of manipulating our minds and influencing our decisions

The notion that our minds and tastes can be governed and manipulated may seem downright impossible and hard to digest. But it’s a fact. And it’s been going on for a long time. The idea of using group psychology in advertising started in America by Edward Bernays. Many things in American life was systematically engineered by this public relation agent who set many dreams and created movements to sell his product.

Edward Louis Bernays, born in Vienna, Austria in 1891, was a pioneer in the field of propaganda and public relation. He was considered to be the father of ‘public relations’. Life named him one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century. He was a public relations agent who was greatly influenced by and next of kin to Sigmund Freud.

His mother was the sister of the iconic psychologist, Sigmund Freud. He learned about the inner workings of human psychology from his uncle. Being completely and constantly inspired by the works of his uncle, he believed that advertisements would be much more effective if advertisers understood group psychology. If they could comprehend the emotions, longings, unconscious desires, and questions of the consumer, they could market their product as a fulfilling answer. It was a revolutionary idea that changed the whole of advertising forever.

Drawing on the insights of Freud he developed an approach he termed as “the engineering of consent”. He provided leaders and clients with ideas to control and regiment the masses according to their will without them knowing about it. He was manipulating the people without them knowing it by appealing to their unconscious part of the mind.

His marketing strategies were the stuff of legend, his campaigns redefined and revolutionized the whole of marketing. He popularized concepts that are very prevalent in advertising today. Bernays was not your average PR guy, taking his cue from Freud he constructed campaigns to control and manipulate the people according to his will without them knowing about it. How he tugged the strings of society according to his will is deeply rooted in his understanding of cultural sensibility combined with group psychology.

His campaigns are made up of innovative tactics to manipulate the unseen mechanism of society. Here are some of the tactics Bernays used in one his cigarettes campaign

Create symbols

The product was linked to a symbol to increase the perceived value of the product. To transcend the boundary of a mere product and transform it into a movement by attaching emotions or values to it.

Appeal to unconscious desires

Linking the product to people’s desire by appealing it to the unconscious. By associating the product with things in vogue can grab the attention of the mob. During his campaign to overcome sales resistance to cigarette smoking among women, Bernays first linked cigarettes to the female desire to be thin and then linked it to the growing female independence movement.

Normalizing behaviour

Bernays took advantage of the basic idea of “everyone’s doing it, you should too!’. He was not a normal advertiser who took a direct approach to advertise. He ventured to normalize certain behaviours in society and exploited that movement to sell his product. In the cigarettes campaign, he reached out to influencers and media connections to bring the thin body into fashion and linked cigarettes with thinness and normalized smoking among women.

Mental Space

Bernays occupied all the media outlets, newspapers, magazines, and minds as possible to market his products. He wanted his products to take up a place in the heads of everyone. He claimed the mental space by sparking conflict and debate in the community.

The so-called American Dream which American boast about was created to sell automobiles and other stuff. PR agencies have been and are still manipulating our desire to be normal and successful to sell products to us. And one way or another we have all been a victim to this propaganda. On an ending note, I leave this video by Steve Cutts to reflect on.