The Public Relations Industry Comes of Age

one-way model of public relations a model of PR that concentrates on sending persuasive facts that benefit the client to the press, without any attempts at systematically learning about the populations whom the client wants to persuade

two-way model of public relations first championed by a practitioner named Edward Bernays in the 1920s, this model of PR draws upon the social sciences to carefully shape the responses of audiences to the client's views of the world

During the 1900s, PR and advertising grew into two separate industries. The new public relations practitioners emphasized a more elite role that was emerging for their profession: that of a PR “counselor” who could help guide the public images of large corporations in ways that satisfied management.

The social forces that made this sort of work lucrative—the growth of colossal companies aiming at large audiences in a national market economy—were the same ones that influenced the direction of the ad business. But whereas ad people worked to help firms get consumers to buy things, public relations practitioners gravitated to a very different corporate goal. This was an era in which the heads of large companies feared that the masses of consumers and workers might rise up against them in anger over negative articles about them that appeared in the press. Business leaders saw a major need to convince consumers and government officials not to interfere with their companies. The (often fabulously wealthy) chief executives wanted to make the case that their actions and the actions of their firms were in the best interest of the entire nation.

The job required people who could combine a Barnum-like feel for public image- making with an understanding of politics that recalled that of Julius Caesar. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, railroad firms and utility companies such as AT&T and Consolidated Edison hired PR firms to get newspapers to portray them as concerned corporate citizens as well as to coordinate lobbying activities aimed at convincing federal, state, and local government officials to preserve their monopoly positions.

Of particular note during this time was an organization called the Publicity bureau, which was the predecessor of the modern PR agency. Its first major account, in 1906, was aimed at defeating President I Theodore Roosevelt’s legislation cu abuses of power by the railroads. The bureau’s tacticians wrote essays favorable to the railroads and crafted them to look like news articles written by journalists. The bureau then paid to have those articles published in newspapers around the United States. The idea was to whip up public sympathy for the railroads and against the president’s bill.

Many of these early PR “counselors” would do whatever it took, even if that were shady or illegal, to take care of a client’s needs. Their actions ranged from bribing lawmakers to vote in ways that helped the company to paying freelance journalists to write articles favorable to the firm. After a number of years, though, such routine eth­ical lapses started backfiring. Indignant journalists began exposing these practices, and then companies had to dig themselves out of even deeper public relations holes.

Ivy Lee, a former New York City newspaper reporter, became one of the first prominent PR practitioners. He gained notoriety for carrying out damage control for the Rockefellers following the 1914 Ludlow massacre, in which eighteen people (among them women and children) were killed during an attack by the Colorado National Guard on behalf of Rockefeller mine interests in Colorado.

IVY LEE AND MODERN PUBLIC RELATIONS One of the first individuals to help build the dignity of the corporate public relations business in the face of such embarrassments was a minister’s son and former reporter named Ivy Lee. Lee culti­vated a reputation of honesty among corporate leaders, government officials, and the press. In 1906, he convinced the heads of the Pennsylvania Railroad to “come clean” to journalists about their company’s mistakes that had led to a rail accident. Lee argued that this sort of openness—which was unusual for its day—would lead reporters and consumers to trust the railroad for its straightforwardness.

Lee codified this view in a “statement of principles” that same year. “Our plan,” he wrote, “is, frankly and openly, on behalf of business concerns and public institutions, to supply the press and public of the United States prompt and accurate information concerning subjects which it is of value and interest to know about.”1 As distinct from the press-agency approach to PR, Lee’s view of the business saw the PR counselor as a kind of in-house journalist with the main purpose of disseminating factual information in order to influence public opinion. Many members of the press appreciated this perspective and turned to Lee for inside information about his clients that they could not find elsewhere.

Lee’s work for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company during problems at one of the firm's plants in Ludlow, Colorado, provides an example of how Lee used his press contacts. Eighteen people, including women and children, died during violent clashes that took place when representatives of the United Mine Workers tried to organize laborers at the company. Countering statements by the union that Standard Oil had hired goons to kill striking workers, Lee put out the company's version of events, which was that the victims had died in an accident that they themselves had caused. He tried to build credibility for this version by having John D. Rockefeller Jr., who actually ran his father s company, pose in overalls with union leaders and families of the workers.

There were people both within and outside of the press who were sure that this account was false and that Lee had used his clout with journalists—and his reputation for openness-to circulate a deceitful version of the event deliberately. This criticism-that the purpose of public relations is to saturate the public with falsehoods that fit the needs of wealthy clients-is one that has dogged the business through the decades.

Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, is one of those credited with creating the profession of public relations.

Public concern and awe about the alleged power of PR particularly developed when PR practitioner George Creel published his memoirs after World War I. Creel wrote of his wide-ranging campaign on behalf of the U.S. government to persuade the American people to rally around their country’s entry into World War I. The Committee on Public Information, which he led, perfected many techniques that are common today—for example the wide distribution of press releases to newspapers, the use of motion pictures to evoke emo­tional support for a cause, and the recruitment of local “opinion leaders” to convince people in their circles of friends of the correctness of the cause. His revelations caused a lot of people to become frightened of the power of PR “propaganda.” Looked at differently, the idea that PR could successfully carry out such a major campaign using so many differ­ent techniques was great publicity for the young PR industry in search of corporate clients.

EDWARD BERNAYS AND THE “SCIENCE” OF PR Public relations professor James Grunig describes the approach to PR that both Ivy Lee and George Creel used as a “public information” model. Grunig notes that it is a one-way model of public relations; that is, this version of PR concentrates on sending persuasive facts that benefit the client to the press, without any attempts at systematically learning about the populations whom the client wants to persuade.

The first two-way model of public relations was championed by a practitioner named Edward Bernays beginning in the 1920s. A nephew of famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Bernays believed that it was essential to draw upon the social sciences to carefully shape the responses of audiences to the client’s views of the world. Bernays is generally considered to be the first PR practitioner to offer all these ideas, together with a theory of how and why they would be successful. This “scientific persuader” business model is one reason PR historians call Bernays, rather than Ivy Lee, “the father of public relations.” Bernays wrote the first textbook on the subject and taught the first college course in public relations, at New York University in 1923.

Borrowing from philosophers of his day, Bernays justified public relations as a profession by emphasizing that no individual or group had a monopoly on the true understanding of the world; “truth” is relative, he said, and depends upon one’s perspective. In his view, the role of the professional PR counselor was to lead general or Particular audiences to see the truth from the client’s perspective. He angered many People both inside and outside the PR business by his blunt assertions that PR prac­titioners could “engineer” the “consent” of audiences for their clients by learning to push the right psychological buttons. Nevertheless, throughout his long life (he died at 103), he championed the importance of PR for organizations and cultivated a reputation for carrying out work that was based on a careful, social-scientific study of the “nature and dynamics of public opinion,” as he put it.

An example of this approach to PR is Bernays' decision to take into consideration children’s attitudes toward soap and bathing when the Procter & Gamble company asked him to increase American families' use of Ivory Soap. His conclusion: change kids’ attitudes toward bathing by promoting soap sculpture contests in schools. The idea was to get them to see Ivory Soap as a fun, friendly product that made washing and bathing inviting.