Tuesday, August 08, 2006
THE GRANDFATHER OF STRATEGIC INFLUENCE
Found this nice summative post about Edward Bernays at Maximum Advantage.
For those who are unfamiliar with Bernays exceptionally long career, he deeply influenced the advertising industry and developed the cardinal strategies of influence in a mass-media age.
An excerpt:
"When a person would first meet Bernays," says Cutlip, "it would not be long until Uncle Sigmund would be brought into the conversation. His relationship with Freud was always in the forefront of his thinking and his counseling." According to Irwin Ross, another writer, "Bernays liked to think of himself as a kind of psychoanalyst to troubled corporations." In the early 1920s, Bernays arranged for the US publication of an English-language translation of Freud's General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. In addition to publicizing Freud's ideas, Bernays used his association with Freud to establish his own reputation as a thinker and theorist—a reputation that was further enhanced when Bernays authored several landmark texts of his own, most notably Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, ISBN 0871409755), Propaganda (1928, ISBN 080461511X) and "The Engineering of Consent" in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 1947)."
Read the whole thing here. ¶ 8:12 PM
Found this nice summative post about Edward Bernays at Maximum Advantage.
For those who are unfamiliar with Bernays exceptionally long career, he deeply influenced the advertising industry and developed the cardinal strategies of influence in a mass-media age.
An excerpt:
"When a person would first meet Bernays," says Cutlip, "it would not be long until Uncle Sigmund would be brought into the conversation. His relationship with Freud was always in the forefront of his thinking and his counseling." According to Irwin Ross, another writer, "Bernays liked to think of himself as a kind of psychoanalyst to troubled corporations." In the early 1920s, Bernays arranged for the US publication of an English-language translation of Freud's General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. In addition to publicizing Freud's ideas, Bernays used his association with Freud to establish his own reputation as a thinker and theorist—a reputation that was further enhanced when Bernays authored several landmark texts of his own, most notably Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923, ISBN 0871409755), Propaganda (1928, ISBN 080461511X) and "The Engineering of Consent" in Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March 1947)."
Read the whole thing here. ¶ 8:12 PM
