[HN Gopher] Freud's nephew and the origins of public relations (...
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Freud's nephew and the origins of public relations (2009)
Author : tosh
Score : 60 points
Date : 2022-02-03 11:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apa.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apa.org)
| bleuchase wrote:
| And Bernays is the grand-uncle of one of Netflix's founders.
| Small world.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I don't know if Small World is the reason for that.
| verisimi wrote:
| I think he was also behind the idea of marketing white goods not
| on their efficiency, but by their appeal to consumers. This is to
| say, he initiated the move away from quality as the sales pitch
| to where we are today - where white goods are flimsily made, hard
| to repair, break after their warranty - as this maximises profits
| at the expense of the customer.
|
| On so many levels, its a shame we are so easily sold, for sure.
| mustardgreen wrote:
| The first episode of Mad Men alludes to Bernays work. They are
| trying to come up with a new campaign for Lucky Strike and he
| rejects an idea to base the campaign off of Freud's research.
| techer wrote:
| Very much enjoyed this, very prescient
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-Packard/dp/09...
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Strangely enough, Bernays was also the PR man behind water
| fluoridation[1]. He was hired by the Aluminum Company of America
| to help dispose of sodium fluoride, a by-product of the
| production of aluminum[2].
|
| > The drive to encourage public acceptance of fluoride was handed
| over to Edward Bernays, known as the father of PR, or the
| original spin doctor, and the man who helped persuade women to
| take up smoking. "You can get practically any idea accepted,"
| Bernays explained, "if doctors are in favour. The public is
| willing to accept it because a doctor is an authority to most
| people, regardless of how much he knows or doesn't know."
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jun/08/lifeandhealt...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations_campaigns_of_...
| bleuchase wrote:
| Don't forget his laudable work with the American Tobacco
| Company to encourage women to smoke. Truly a champion of gender
| equality.
|
| https://fcpp.org/2021/11/09/how-bernays-changed-the-world-th...
| yamrzou wrote:
| The story as told by Bernays himself:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pyyP2chM8k
| User23 wrote:
| To this day the medical establishment leans heavily on rhetoric
| like this over dialectic.
|
| Bernays's _Propaganda_ [1] isn't just a good book on the
| subject, it was literally an advertisement for his services.
|
| [1] http://whale.to/b/bernays.pdf
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > "You can get practically any idea accepted," Bernays
| explained, "if doctors are in favour. The public is willing to
| accept it because a doctor is an authority to most people,
| regardless of how much he knows or doesn't know."
|
| Doctors should try telling people to get flu and COVID
| vaccines. Oh wait..
| saas_sam wrote:
| 64%+ of the entire diverse population of the USA got at least
| one shot of, from a layman's perspective, some kind of new
| experimental wonder drug. In under a year. That is an example
| of effective persuasion.
| belval wrote:
| My favorite story about the guy:
| https://medium.com/@CelikBugra/psychoanalytics-behind-the-ca...
|
| TLDR: Cake mix was impopular and the Betty Crocker company did
| not understand why. They went to Bernays who theorized that it
| was because cake mix was "too easy" leading to housewives feeling
| guilty that they weren't really contributing anything to the
| cake. They changed the recipe to include a fresh egg instead of
| just water and the sales increased substantially.
| amatic wrote:
| > housewives feeling guilty
|
| Or maybe the cake mix with dried egg powder didn't taste as
| good.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| Yeah, the Freudian explanation for why this worked looks like
| pseudo-scientific gibberish.
|
| > By the Freudian psychology, an unconscious gift from the
| woman to the husband. The woman offered her eggs and the
| guilt has just disappeared. Because as stated on
| changingminds.org, by the Freudian theory, "an egg also has
| the connotation of life and birth, making the creation of the
| cake more meaningful - the housewife thus 'gives birth' for
| her husband."
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| that's because it is psuedo-scientific gibberish
| swayvil wrote:
| It's the science of marketing aka population-scale
| mindfuckery. It's a solid science. It works. It rules the
| world. And you, yes you, are clutched within its iron claw,
| oblivious.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| The 3 step method they use works shockingly well. Build a
| problem (not associated to your product/idea). If you can
| tie it to some sort of base emotion all the better. Sell
| what does fix it (happens to be a product/idea you have
| but still not associated to you). Sell your product/idea
| and show how the experts know your product/idea is the
| best. When it works it is quite stunning, and many have
| no idea it was even done to them.
| swayvil wrote:
| Wait, isn't that exactly how they sell the vax?
| uoaei wrote:
| It's how they sell everything. This behavior is shaped by
| profit motive first and foremost.
| swayvil wrote:
| There's this stuff called "Ovaltine". It's like chocolate
| milk powder
|
| They offered it as a solution to that great national
| scourge, "children chewing without swallowing"
|
| (Cue video of callow youth. Food hanging out of his
| greasy mouth)
|
| Then they cite doctors telling us how Ovaltine is totally
| necessary for good health.
|
| Ya, your 3step program
| sumtechguy wrote:
| That is an example. But usually for the 3 steps to be
| effective it would be different distinct stages separated
| by time. You would for example read about 'the scourge'
| in some mags/newspapers. The mags would amp it up for
| weeks/months. Then 'scientists say' stage, usually the
| same news/mags/newspapers talking about it how 'some
| things are known to fight it, milk chocolate for
| example'. Get some peer reviewed papers written up to
| back it up, or '4 out of 5 kids agree' sort of thing.
| Then commercial time. Showing all three together. If you
| dump them all together you will get a small segment
| buying it. But if you prime the pump for them to be ready
| to accept the idea and solution. You get more traction on
| it. One downside is it is wickedly difficult to see when
| you are being subjected to it. As the campaign is
| designed to hide from you until the solution is
| presented.
| [deleted]
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah... one reason I don't use cake mix because by the time
| you have to have do the egg part yourself, you may as well
| just mix the rest too. Everything's a totally normal
| ingredient any minimally-stocked kitchen will have--which,
| the egg is too, but it's the messiest/fiddliest ingredient
| involved (not saying it's rocket science to crack a damn egg,
| but everything else is easier and less error-prone).
|
| I might use it, sometimes, if it eliminated the egg step but
| still tasted good. I suspect it tasted like crap.
|
| [EDIT] Should have written, the messiest and fiddliest
| ingredient _necessarily_ involved. Chocolate can be much,
| much worse if you 're melting bars rather than using powder,
| as can some other things that _may_ be in a cake.
| gist wrote:
| > Or maybe the cake mix with dried egg powder didn't taste as
| good.
|
| It's not one or the other and can easily be both reasons.
| swayvil wrote:
| That is a concise and logical explanation, consistent with
| the popular narrative and affirms the agency of the common
| housewife. Smartly done!
| belval wrote:
| That's entirely possible, just not how the story goes. When
| it comes to story in people presented as "marketing
| geniuses", it's always good to remember that they were
| probably equally good at selling themselves and their story.
| smartscience wrote:
| Obligatory https://xkcd.com/125/
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| This is taken almost verbatim from Century of the Self.
|
| The full documentary is free on YouTube and worth the time.
| swayvil wrote:
| Theater is everything, everywhere, all the time.
|
| Find out what they really want. To be loved, to be a good
| person, to be smart, to be successful, to have a bright
| future...
|
| And then tell them a story about how that is exactly how it is.
|
| They will buy it. Every time
| Psyonic wrote:
| I am very suspicious this is a Just-So story. This BBC article
| seems to agree
| (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171027-the-magic-
| cakes-...). Also interestingly credits the marketing aspect to
| Ernest Dichter instead of Bernays.
|
| Quote: In later years, many would portray this as a pivotal
| moment in the history of cake mixes, the inflection point of a
| dramatic upward curve.
|
| The truth is, though, that the cake companies already knew
| about the egg problem. In fact, as early as 1933 Duff had
| introduced a mix that had bakers add eggs themselves. "The
| housewife and the purchasing public in general seem to prefer
| fresh eggs and hence the use of dried or powdered eggs is
| somewhat of a handicap from a psychological standpoint," reads
| the patent application (read more on Duff's cake patents in
| this lovely Bon Appetit story about cake mix). And actually,
| the mixes worked better that way. "The fact was one of the
| reasons cake mixes didn't taste good was they tasted like dried
| eggs," says Shapiro. The companies performed surveys and asked
| women which version they would buy - the results were
| contradictory - and in the end, they just did as they pleased.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In hindsight the solution seems so obvious. I wonder what lead
| to this insight. Did he get direct feedback, or did he intuit
| it?
| s_dev wrote:
| TIL: 'Engineering Consent' was coined in 1955
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engineering_of_Consent
|
| I always assumed this was a Noam Chomsky thing.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Although the term wasn't coined yet, the idea of engineering
| consent goes back even further to the Enlightenment period,
| when Reason sought to overthrow King and Church. Weishaupt and
| his Illuminists (of conspiracy theory fame) reasoned that men
| were largely mechanistic in nature, and could be controlled by
| their passions. Therefore, whoever could control men's passions
| could control men. Their intentions were nobler then if you
| take them at face value (i.e. help men become enlightened
| beings rather than consumers), but illuminism was a crude form
| of the behaviorism and structural functionalism operating
| today. It's pretty interesting to trace the developments from
| then, up until the advertising and PR we are immersed in today.
| smingo wrote:
| Chomsky talked of "Manufacturing Consent".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| Julesman wrote:
| http://centuryoftheself.com/
| estebank wrote:
| The Century of the Self was a great 4 part British documentary
| about this.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| +1
|
| Probably Adam Curtis's best documentary series.
| shermablanca wrote:
| Came here to say this. Fantastic documentary, very eye-opening.
| Glad to see Bernays and the history of propaganda getting
| noticed more. Very relevant in today's age of mass propaganda.
| dang wrote:
| I changed the URL from
| https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=461246...,
| which is mostly a radio episode, to a readable article with
| background. Other suggestions are welcome.
|
| There's also this about Bernays: https://theconversation.com/the-
| manipulation-of-the-american...
|
| and this: https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=3128
|
| and Adam Curtis's famous documentary about this stuff:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Sir, this quality of moderation is worth some multiple of what
| you are paid.
|
| Imagine what Bernays would do if he were in control of a
| strife-monetising _social media_ product.
|
| Cheers!
| uoaei wrote:
| You -- fallible you! -- are not immune to propaganda.
|
| Being able to understand the ulterior motives at play in
| advertising and PR more broadly does not absolve you of being
| caught under the spell. I had trouble reconciling this for a
| while after getting turned on to media criticism outlets, e.g.
| Citations Needed podcast[1]. But it is important to stay humble
| and remember that you are still a bag of electrified proteins
| that reacts essentially the same as other bags of electrified
| proteins, and so are subject to essentially the same forces.
|
| [1] https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/
| 0x4d464d48 wrote:
| Manipulators tell you how special, wonderful and smart you are.
|
| The socially conscious tell you how weak, falliable, unspecial
| and prone to folly you are.
|
| The socially conscious have a really, really tough sell. At
| worst it becomes an exercise in catering to someone's vanity to
| be "more woke" than those other dullards.
|
| Robert Greene really hammered the point home in his opus "The
| Laws of Human Nature". People, all of us, need to cater to our
| vanity. We aren't well equiped to accept the idea that we can
| do stupid things or even just be stupid.
|
| It's far easier to fool a person than to convince a person
| they've been fooled. The great struggle of our time isn't
| telling truth to power it's telling truth to our own
| communities...
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