The Impact Of Edward Bernays On Advertising

We have come a long way from the advertising tactics of old. Where the first advertisements may have had more to do with the features of the product, nowadays we see companies utilizing soft cells, associating with lifestyle, desirability, and many other desires that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the product that is being advertised. Through studying and pondering advertisements, we can see the marked change of in selling tactics, as well as a working knowledge of psychology being applied to the advertising we see today. Seeing this begs the question: when did this change happen? Who are the innovators within advertising responsible for the change in tactics? Though a case can be made for many people, I will be talking about Edward L. Bernays. Through his relation to and application of Freud’s work, he was able to move advertising forward into new ways and tactics to sell products and appeal to potential customers. Though he is most famed for coining the term (and starting the industry known as) public relations, his work, ethos, and approach has been endlessly emulated throughout history, and can even be seen in advertisements to this day. In this essay, we will be studying his most successful campaigns, and the impact they had on the markets, and, advertisers to this day.

Edward Bernays was an Austrian-American, born on November 22, 1891. He was a nephew to Sigmund Freud, the renowned psychologist. Though he worked as a press agent for several years, foraying from writing about theatre and medical journalism. Eventually, he found a way to utilize his uncle’s work on a larger scale: using psychology to make advertisements, publicity, and campaigning more effective, reach more people, and ultimately, be more successful. He is responsible for many advertising campaigns, some of which are controversial, many of which are trailblazing for the time.

We will start with his most notorious, and, arguably successful campaign, “Torches of Freedom”, in 1929. This campaign was an answer to the question of getting more women smoking. During this point in history, it was a taboo for women to smoke. Not only could you risk social exclusion, but there was even a potential for jailtime for women who were caught smoking. For the tobacco companies, there was a lot of stigma to overcome if they wanted to tap into what was to them a fresh new market. So, what premise would we start with if we wanted to crack the market of women and get them smoking? Surely, there was something that could be done to start to overcome these societal norms. Bernays cracked the code. He came up with the idea of making women smoking a victory for feminism, and emancipation for women. A herculian task, to be sure, but the people at Lucky Strike were willing to leave the task for Bernays. He used advertisements, as well as orchestrated real-world events to bring this message forward, even going as far as to engineer an event that would be covered by newspapers. There was an advertisement for Lucky Strike released with a depiction of a women smoking, with the quote “An ancient prejudice has been lifted”. The message was clear, women were denied the privilege of smoking for too long, and the taboos of old were lifted victoriously. It is worth noting that at this time, women were not even allowed to vote. Regardless, this seemed to be a victory for feminism in the public eye, albeit one that was engineered by a company. Cigarette sales skyrocketed. Later, Bernays would say, about Torches for Freedom. “Age old customs, I learned, could be broken down by a dramatic appeal. " Since then, we have seen countless other companies use revolutionary messaging or images to attach their product with positive social change, the most notable and recent one being Nike’s Colin Kaepernick advertisement.

Another notable success from Edward Bernays was his Dixie Cups campaign in the 1930s. Drinking fountains were commonplace. Selling disposable cups that cost money seems like a difficult sell to people who are used to not worrying about that sort of thing, so how do you do convince the public to buy? Make it a sanitary issue. He used imagery of diseased water and implied that the only way you could be sure your drinks weren’t infected with someone else’s sickness was to use a disposable cup. This fear-based tactic was a success and Dixie cup sales rose. We see similar sorts of imagery with mouthwash advertisements, hand sanitizer ads, and much more. The threat of sickness and infection is a deep, animalistic fear deep inside of all us, and the idea to tap into that to sell products is a powerful one, that will continue to see use for years to come.

Both these campaigns operated on very similar axis, even though the content were incredibly different. From these campaigns as well as other ones he partook in, we see Bernays’ love for the soft cell. He never really sells you on the products being advertised. Instead, he focuses on emotions surrounding them, or ones he wants to surround the products with, at least. With cigarettes, we see an association with the product with feelings of liberation, equality, emancipation, and victory. With Dixie Cups, we see them being associated with cleanliness, freshness, and good health. In neither of these cases is there a real direct correlation with the product and its features. It is safe to say that the approach that Bernays mastered in his messaging was a soft cell, appealing to emotion rather than logic. Though he is not the first to take this approach- a quick study of advertisers would prove otherwise- he was notably adept in this. One extremely noteworthy thing about Bernays is that his techniques reached beyond typical advertising, as well. As I touched on earlier on this essay, part of the ‘Torches of Freedom’ campaign included hiring actors to create what was perceived to be a scandal by smoking during public events, going as far as to collaborating with newspapers to write articles on it. At this time, this sort of thing was unheard of, and anyone who creates a buzz this way, through flashmobbing or what have you, has Bernays to thank for this, for his work allowed for things like this to happen.

Bernays is an interesting character who has done much to influence advertising, as well as publicity and public relations. If either of the cases presented here seem average now, it is thanks to him. He blazed the original trail. He helped to apply social sciences and psychology to the art of advertising and swaying public perception. Though his intentions weren’t always ‘for good’, as is evidenced with his association with tobacco companies, he left a good blueprint of ways that you can advertise that will speak to the audiences you are trying to reach, that has subsequently been used to forward society, as well as helped future advertisers change their way of thinking in terms of how to bring attention to a product.