You are walking down a busy city street and you see a woman pause to light a cigarette. In our current world, this is a mundane sight that barely registers as you walk past. A century ago, this same simple act was a major social taboo. The stigma vanished almost overnight, as the act took on a whole new meaning.
Such a rapid shift in culture happened because of a strategic approach to the human psyche led by Edward Bernays. Sigmund Freud’s nephew, also known as the Father of PR, realized that the best way to sell a product is to make sure the consumer never realizes they are being sold to at all.
The tobacco industry provides the perfect example of his most famous deception. In 1929, a woman smoking in public caused a social scandal. Because of this, millions of potential customers stayed away from cigarettes. Bernays decided to rebrand the habit as a political statement. He hired a group of debutantes to march in the New York City Easter Sunday Parade and instructed them to light up in front of the press. By telling the newspapers that these cigarettes were Torches of Freedom, he successfully linked a health hazard to the concept of women’s rights. Smoking suddenly became a symbol of equality and independence.
Bernays applied this same tactic to the American breakfast table. During the 1920s, the Beech-Nut Packing Company struggled with a massive surplus of bacon and a stagnating market. Most Americans ate a light meal of rolls and coffee before his intervention. To boost sales, he bypassed traditional advertising entirely. He utilized a third-party authority by consulting a physician who claimed that a heavier breakfast was medically superior for energy. Bernays then convinced thousands of other doctors to sign off on this claim. Newspapers across the country published these findings as objective health news. Consequently, bacon and eggs became the definitive American meal.
He believed that irrational impulses rather than logic drive the average person. He stopped selling the features of a product and started selling how that product made you feel about yourself. This shift moved society from a culture of necessity to a culture of endless, manufactured desire.
Bernays thrived on the indirect approach. He rarely told people to go out and buy something. Instead, he manipulated the environment so that the purchase felt inevitable. When he wanted to increase piano sales, he avoided running ads for pianos. He worked with home builders to include music rooms in their floor plans. Once a person had a dedicated room for music, he knew their own ego would demand they buy a piano to fill it. He was a master of making the consumer think the idea was their own.
The modern influencer is the ultimate evolution of the Bernays model. While Bernays used doctors and debutantes to build unearned trust, today’s algorithms use creators to perform the same task. When you see a creator casually using a product in their daily life, you are witnessing the “engineering of consent” in real time. The influencer acts as the third-party authority who bypasses your natural defenses against traditional ads. Because you feel a personal connection to the creator, your brain registers their endorsement as a recommendation from a friend rather than a corporate sales pitch.
We like to think of ourselves as the masters of our own preferences and the captains of our own minds. We believe our tastes in food and fashion are authentic reflections of our true selves. This sense of independence persists even as the strategies perfected by Edward Bernays serve as the foundation for every targeted ad and viral trend we encounter. He proved that a person who controls the environment can successfully control the individual.
Every time you feel an organic urge to follow a new trend or adopt a specific lifestyle, you are navigating a landscape designed by someone else. You likely believe you are making independent choices today.
More often than not, you are simply following a path that was paved long before you arrived.
Intrigued? If you want to dive deeper through videos or podcasts, here are some starting points:
Propaganda – Edward L. Barnays (or listen to it)
The Century of the Self (4-Part Series) – JustAdamCurtis
A Brief History Of The Man Who Brainwashed America – A Day in History
The Silent War For Your Mind You Were Never Meant to See – Philosophy Coded
The Founding Father of Lies (and Part 2) – Behind the Bastards
The Origins of Corporate PR Manipulation – Drilled
Leave a Reply