The father of public relations: Edward L. Bernays - Section 1: Drawing from the Past to Build the Future

Communication World, Jan, 1992 by Alvin M. Hattal

The TV director is having fits in the control booth. In the studio, the floor manager slashes his index finger across his throat in a frantic signal to the talk-show host to end the interview. The three cameramen exchange glances. The interview is already two minutes overtime and the studio crew is coming unglued.

Oblivious to them all, the talk-show host, Maury Povich, calmly asks his guest:

"At 94, Mr. Bernays, what are your plans?" And with actress Liv Ullman good-naturedly waiting her turn to be interviewed about her new book, Edward Bernays replies:

"First of all, Mr. Povich, I'm 95, although my doctor says that, physiologically, I'm only 64. Everyone, you know, has five ages: chronological, physiological, mental ......

That was five years ago. Povich, then running a popular noontime program called Panorama on WTTG-TV in Washington, D.C., was so intrigued by the man whom many call the father of public relations" that he forgot about time.

Outside the public relations field, where Bernays is a legend, people such as Povich who have never heard of him, are fascinated to learn how his radical ideas and brilliant innovations have influenced their lives and behavior. Like how he turned children into soap lovers - specifically, Ivory soap - by setting up a national competition in the 1920s for the best sculptures made from client Procter & Gamble's product. And how he got people to eat more bacon by citing medical research showing that a hearty breakfast was good for them.

In his still very active, 75-year career, he has been intimately involved in countless history-making events with people who have changed the world often with his help and advice.

In 1934, when it was socially taboo for women to smoke in public, George Washington Hill of American Tobacco set his sights on "the other half of his potential market and hired Bernays to find a way to change the public's attitude.

"I rang up a few debutante friends," he says, "and asked them if they would be willing to march down New York's Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday carrying their lighted 'torches of freedom."' They did, and that dramatic event literally lighted the way toward fulfilling Hill's dream. (Years later, when the dangers of smoking become known, Bernays actively campaigned to keep cigarette advertising off television.)

Marketing public relations, however, has been only one of Bernays' interests. His hundreds of clients have included world leaders ranging from U.S. presidents Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover, and Eisenhower) and industrialists (Thomas Edison, David Sarnoff and publisher Henry Luce) to international figures (Caruso, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nijinski and the Diaghilev Ballet Russe).

Along the way, he refused to advise Hitler and Franco, who sought his counsel despite the fact that he was a Jew born in Vienna, the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Although he turned 100 on November 22, Bernays continually travels around the world in response to invitations to speak to college students, public relations groups, commercial and nonprofit organizations, and clients. just a year ago he went to Barcelona to help mark Spain's industrialization and its preparation for joining the Economic Community in 1992. The Spanish group lionized him from the moment he arrived and gave three parties to celebrate his 99th birthday.

"When I looked out the window of the limousine that took me into town, I saw that every lamppost had two big posters with my picture and the words: 'Homenaje a Edward L. Bernays.'my hosts in Barcelona had asked me for permission to reprint my first book, "Crystallizing Public Relations," and I signed more than 200 copies." It was in that very book - one of 14 he has written - that Bernays invented the title of "public relations counselor."

In a special issue last fall, Life magazine, in tribute to his part in creating what it called "the industry of public relations," named him one of "the 100 most important Americans of the 20th century," along with such influentials as Henry Ford, Jonas Salk, Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein.

He also is undoubtedly the envy of counselors who have heard that he commands - and gets - $1,000 an hour from his clients, which include the Massachusetts Bar Association, Golden Gate University, Smithsonian Institution, Mortgage Bankers Association, Bureau of Business & Technology, American Insurance Association, Personnel Development Institute, and California State University at Fullerton.

What does a popular icon think of the current state of the industry he helped to create and nourish?

"As far as the public and the media are concerned," he says, "the current status of public relations is dismal. Any dumbbell, nitwit or crook can call himself a public relations practitioner. Many who do so are only press agents, if that."

Bernays stirred up a controversy several years ago by calling for the licensing of public relations practitioners by the government. It would have been the equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, he says.

"They would have committed themselves to giving up their title of public relations counsel or adviser if they engaged in any unethical act."