“Two most magic words
“Studies show…”
“If a tabloid prints a
sex crime, it's smut, but when The New York Times prints it, it's a
sociological study.” Adolph Ochs – founder of the New York Times
Here’s a fascinating item: Ed Bernays (another guy from
Austria/Germany who later moved to the United States and worked for President
Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge) is known as one of the “fathers” of
Advertising/Spin/Public Relations. And guess what? Ed Bernays was the nephew of
Sigmund Freud.
Bernays had grown up
watching people fall under the spell of his Uncle Sigmund– simply because Freud
stated he had “Science” backing his opinions.
Bernays learned that the fastest way to convince people was
to say “According to Doctors…” or “According
to Scientists” and people were trusting because remember, America was built on character – on people
being honest and because we’ve been taught that the highly educated (doctors,
scientists, etc) are superior.
In 1925, the Beech-Nut Corporation was trying to sell bacon
but no one was eating it. Bacon was not popular (hard to believe!), no one ate
it for breakfast. Breakfast in the 1920’s consisted of a cup of coffee and
toast. So Bernays approached a doctor with a simple question: Was a hearty breakfast
better for a person or no breakfast? Once he had the obvious answer, he then
asked whether bacon and eggs could be considered a hearty breakfast. Again the
doctor agreed. That was all he needed; Bernays repeated this process with many
more doctors, using this vague method to get doctors to agree that fried fatty
meat (and I love bacon, by the way!) is a healthy way to start your day.
Newspapers across the country treated the publicity stunt as a scientific study
and ran story after story about how, if you weren't starting the day with a big
plate full of bacon and eggs, you were signing your own death certificate.
Beech-Nut's sales soared and everyone went bananas for bacon.
Speaking of bananas…
Bernays was hired by United Fruit to sell bananas. So
Bernays created a mass market via sneaky methods. He found an old report by a doctor
on the beneficial effects of bananas on infant digestion. He created a fake/front organization with an innocent
sounding yet convincing name: the Medical
Review of Reviews. The MRR distributed copies of the report and relayed the
information to mass media outlets such as newspapers and women’s magazines. The
technique worked. Bananas were the new super food thanks to the approval of ‘Modern Medical Science’ and earned the
reputation of a healthy food, with United Fruit, of course, the undisclosed beneficiary
of a doctored report which became a trend which has become a habit.
With bacon and bananas, Bernays realized how easily people
fall for what he called ‘spinning’ and also what we call “doctoring the facts”
All it takes is a few sentences of citing ‘scientific research’ and people are
sold. Bernays believed that behind every campaign, the marketing/public
relation guru should use the phrase ‘based on psychology and sociology.’
Aristotle believed that appealing to emotions
(fears/desires) rather than reason was the fastest way to sell people on an
idea.
Bernays took the wisdom from the great Philosophers and re-crafted,
repackaged it as the “Science of Marketing.”
Bernays combined creative ‘science’ with bold stunts like
the one he did to sell cigarettes at the Easter Parade in 1929.
In 1929 the American Tobacco Company had a problem. Men were
smoking, but women were not. They hired Bernays and even though there was evidence
that smoking was hazardous, Bernays was aware that women, who had only been
allowed to vote since 1920, were still fighting to be taken seriously.
So he took the cigarette, called them “Torches of
Freedom" and had his secretary Bertha Hunt, send a telegram to ‘beautiful’
women from a list of elite, wealthy, families. The list had been provided by
the editor of popular women’s magazine – (this was long before Google and
Facebook sold personal information!). Bernays secretary appealed to the women
by using their emotions and desire to be significant. He asked them if “they would join in doing something that
would strike a match to light women's freedom!”
The targeted women arrived and took part in a carefully
staged event - that was made to look
like a spontaneous event - and marched down Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday,
1929.
Bernays had notified the press beforehand to what was going
to happen. Though it appeared to outsiders to be a spur-of-the-moment incident,
everything had been perfectly scripted. Bernays recast smoking as an act of women's
liberation, the parade made headlines coast to coast, and convinced a
generation of women to start smoking - increasing profits for Bernays tobacco
company client.
Ironic, isn’t it, that our rational, practical, mind knew
all along that putting chemicals into
our body wasn’t beneficial- HOWEVER, smoking was billed as a “women’s right – a
women’s choice!” And by using attractive women in “news stories” sold a whole
country on smoking; Beautiful rich women smoked. Smoking was a symbol of
freedom. Smoking was cool, hip, and rebellious!
Bernays understood that people respond more quickly when
using emotions –by using something that was socially and symbolically important.
And the instinct in terms of cigarettes wasn't to convince women that buying
cigarettes made any rational sense or that the money they would spend or what
they were putting into their body made sense. It was to tap into something that
was instinctively important; our biological desire to be significant and to be
independent. Bernays appealed t the
women that they were sending the message of freeing themselves from the idea it was okay
for men to smoke but distasteful for women.
Everybody wants to be liberated, “free” and the cigarette
sent a message of status (all the elite pretty girls are smoking), and stood
for freedom (which is quite ironic because cigarettes made us addicted, dependent
and sick).
These same techniques are still regularly used to market
health fads, dietary supplements, and hijack social movements (feminism, civil
rights, children’s rights, religious rights), into selling often questionable products
and/or ideas.
“Every great cause begins
as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
― Eric Hoffer
These techniques are nothing but illusions disguised as news,
or issues on talk shows. They appear as scientific reports and studies from ‘independent
testing firms’ - the primary recipients who you know nothing about (like
bananas and the United Fruit Company,
bacon and the Beech-Nut Corporation) and these companies benefit while
you pay.
The Middle American Information Bureau and the Medical
Review Reviews were only two fake “front groups” of many that Bernays set up
during his career to get out supposedly “neutral” information. If a client was
willing to pay enough money, Bernays set up front groups for every client that
he could, and he had over 400 clients over the years.
Do you ever notice that as soon as someone quotes a statistic…if the statistic is coming from an authentic
sounding institution, you don’t really question it.
Take this study from The International Psychology Institute
(IPI): “In a factor analysis of 200 Men, Cognitive Scientists found women 80%
more attractive if they were wearing red lipstick.”
What you don’t know it that the International Psychology
Institute doesn’t really exist – it’s a P.O. Box somewhere in New York. The IPI
is really a front group – an offshoot of a cosmetics corporation – and that
‘study’ will be posted on an advertisement for their new line of red lipstick.
If the organization sounds legitimate, we don’t question the
studies. If the studies are being reported in a newspaper or on a major news
network, we often believe them. Perhaps the organization is real, but
understand that, just like Bernays always did, the studies or statistics have
been manipulated to ‘prove’ their opinion is true. But maybe what they aren’t telling you is in
the survey of men who found the women
wearing red lipstick were more attractive it was because they were being
comparing women wearing lipstick with pictures of women who had just rolled out
of bed…or perhaps they were comparing a woman with a rock and posing the
question; “Which do you find more attractive?”
Terms like “factor analysis” “ multifaceted scaling” and “
data clustering” all sound impressive but they are simply just words and
phrases that sound really intellectual.
When Ed Bernays became involved in “Public Relations” there
were only a few people in that field. Now, we have over 150,000 people using manipulated data to sell us
‘information’ which will help make us ‘better’ people.
Bernays, like his Uncle Freud, didn't believe in God. He believed
the PR man was God: that PR people
had to tame the unruly masses, to give them order and to lead them in a- “socially
useful direction” But that social direction was one that served his clients.
As I write this, Hillary Clinton has been exposed for
running a front organization called “The Clinton Foundation.” Millions of
dollars were donated to it by people looking for favors and people who actually
believed the foundation was doing good work. It’s not just democrats or
republicans or marketers who do this; you see it all the time with people on
social networks using social causes, ‘social awareness campaigns. ’ You see it on Go Fund Me sites…people pretending they have cancer or are raising money to help
a need family or ill dog…in essence, these are personal front
organizations.
The solution is awareness – and some legwork. The bad news
is, it might take a bit of time. The good news is, we have more access to
information now more than ever. But always remember, don’t stop when your
search leads you to “The Foundation For Women’s Equality” – don’t stop when you
see 12 names listed on the board of directors. Sadly, you have to drill all the
way down to make sure you aren’t being misled. That you are donating money to
an actual organization that is using the money for what they say. That the
organization citing statistics and studies isn’t a fake organization created by
a company trying to tell you something. And that something, is often not just
products, but also ideas (compassion) regarding social “justice.”
People rarely have the time to investigate – and that’s
exactly what these front organizations are counting on.
by Elizabeth Gilbert
