The Rise of Public Relations

Public relations goes back a long way. In military reports sent back to the Roman Sen­ate by generals such as Julius Caesar, historians have noted a self-aggrandizing “spin” on events that we would today associate with a masterful public relations counsel. By the time of the American Revolution, the forms of public relations clearly had a modern feel. Anti-British colonists staged the Boston Tea Party and other events to gain public attention. They used popular symbols that colonists were likely to recognize—for example the liberty tree and the minutemen—to mobilize support for their cause. In addition, writers such as Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Abigail Adams, and Benjamin Franklin developed messages that swayed public opinion against England. Think of the phrase Boston Massacre. As communication professor Joseph Dominick notes, what actually happened was that an angry mob got into a fight with British soldiers and a few people were killed. By calling this event a “massacre,” leaders who wanted to eject the British were using inflammatory language to gain support for their position.

The Boston Tea Party took place on the night of December 16, 1773, when a group of indignant colonists, led by Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and others, disguised themselves as native Americans, boarded three East India Company ships, and threw their entire cargoes of tea into Boston Harbor. This early “publicity stunt” helped sway public opinion against the British government and helped stir the beginnings of the American Revolution.

Early Pioneers in Advertising and Public Relations: Benjamin Franklin and p. T. Barnum

In Chapter 15 we discussed Benjamin Franklin’s knack for writing advertisements in the 1700s. One historian notes that “advertising and public relations, especially selfadvertising and publicity, were as natural to Franklin as his restless intelligence and curiosity. Franklin, in all his roles and on behalf of all his varied activities, was always the untiring promoter.”2 In fact, he was so successful a lobbyist and propagandist that in the 1760s he managed to persuade the British not to tax advertisements in the American colonies—even though ads were taxed in England.

Until the middle of the 1800s, people who practiced these activities (including Franklin) often didn’t see them as especially separate. Many imaginative entrepreneurs touted their goods or services in a multitude of ways, some of which we would call advertising and some of which we would call PR. Phineas Taylor (P. T.) Barnum used both advertising and public relations seamlessly before the two industries developed in separate directions. You may know his name through the famous Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey Circus—only one of Barnum’s many pursuits. In the 1800s, he gained fame as a result of a broad spectrum of activities that mixed advertising, public relations, and showmanship in ways that drew both scorn and respect and a lot of money. He generated an enormous amount of media attention when he exhibited an African-American woman who, he claimed, was the 161-year-old nurse of George Washington. Barnum also garnered great publicity for such oddities and hoaxes as a “mermaid” (in reality a dummy tied to a large fish tail) and the “marriage” of two short-statured people (which took place over and over again wherever his show stopped).

Barnum didn’t apologize for his tactics, arguing that Ins audiences liked to be fooled; he even revealed to newspaper reporters some of the tactics he had used for previous hoaxes. Everything about his work was brash; his bold, highly pictorial advertisements and his brazen promotional activities deeply influenced other showmen such as “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Barnum’s expertise at getting press coverage also served as a model for railroad publicists whose job was to lure people to settle near the tracks as railroads expanded west.

In 1842, circus pioneer P. T. Barnum (left) hired Charles Stratton, who became world famous as “General Tom Thumb.” Tom Thumb stood only twenty-five inches tall and weighed only fifteen pounds, and was thus billed as “The Smallest Man on Earth.” Barnum and Thumb became close friends. During their dealings together, they traveled around the world and met various leaders and royalty, including President Abraham Lincoln and Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The late 1800s brought growing literacy, new technologies, new organizational arrangements associated with the penny press, changes in the economy after the Civil War, and other broad social changes. Such changes gave Barnum and his cohorts a much larger readership than Ben Franklin had had 100 years before. These changes also encouraged ventures that led directly to the creation of industries devoted to public relations and advertising.