FIELDS & ENERGY: Science and Public Relations

The 1919 eclipse story arrived on the scene at the same time as Bernays was busy revolutionizing the art of public relations and promotion. His distant cousin, the Swiss mathematician Paul Bernays (1888–1977), was an early critic of relativity, but Edward’s talents lay elsewhere. In 1919, he leveraged his wartime experience to found the first “public relations” or “PR” firm. A nephew of the famous Austrian-Jewish psychologist, Sigmund Freud (1858–1939), Bernays did not ask newspapers to print things. Instead, he aimed to create “‘events and circumstances’ which newspapers are compelled to notice as news”.

In a 1932 article for the Atlantic, legendary journalist John T. Flynn (1882–1964), described Bernays’ “science of ballyhoo.”

Bernays’s field, it will be seen, is the psychology of the crowd. He is fond of quoting Le Bon [Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931)]. The French writer popularized the theory that the crowd mind is less intelligent than the minds of the individuals who compose it, and that emotional states are contagious….

But Bernays fell to analyzing philosophically what he was doing, and when the war ended he felt himself to be in possession of a powerful instrument which could be used with rich results for business. His success has been extraordinary… It is obvious that the monetary rewards for the kind of work he does are very large….

One cannot talk long to Bernays without learning that the most direct way to reach the mind of the herd is through its leaders — its group leaders. Bernays, of course, deals with mental groups — groups arranged according to intelligence, tastes, prejudices, ambitions, emotions.

To publicize the fact of his marriage in 1922, Bernays induced his wife to register for the honeymoon suite at the Waldorf Astoria under her maiden name. “More than 250 newspapers ran stories explaining how, for the first time, a married woman had registered at the Waldorf with her husband, using a different name, and the elegant old hotel had permitted it”.

Bernays pioneered the art of celebrity political endorsement, inviting forty prominent entertainers to the White House for breakfast with Calvin Coolidge to boost his image for the 1924 election.

In 1929, he was commissioned to normalize smoking for women. He solicited women to parade along Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on Easter Sunday lighting a “torch of freedom” by smoking their cigarettes. When surveys showed women wouldn’t smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes because the green package clashed with fashions, Bernays launched a campaign to make green the fashionable color for the season, complete with a Green Ball held at the Waldorf-Astoria attended by New York’s most fashionable debutantes – all dressed in green fashions.

In his classic 1928 text on the subject, Propaganda, Bernays declared:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

What is the intriguing connection between Bernays and the unprecedented publicity Einstein received upon his arrival to the US in 1921? We will pick up that topic next time.