Edward Bernays and Jolly Manipulation
Gather round, kids: here’s how you sway public opinion
Edward L. Bernays is called the father of public relations and his book Propaganda (NY: Horace Liveright, 1928) shows why. Bernays is absolutely jolly as he lays out the psychology of manipulation. He doesn’t just talk about the formulas, he gleefully demonstrates them in paragraph after paragraph. Much like one might describe building a shelter to a group of boy scouts, Bernays is positively beaming as he writes about how to pull self-interest into the equation to get publics to do your corporate bidding.
The modern propagandist studies systematically and objectively the material with which his is working in the spirit of a laboratory. (48)
Edward L. Bernays is the ur–flack.
If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway. (49)
Reading Propaganda today, it is clear Bernays thought corporations and government leaders and those in power would certainly use his manipulation techniques for good.
How could it be otherwise?
Look through here. You’ll see what you’re supposed to see.
But World War II was just around the corner and every nation developed their own propaganda machines. In the US, we still react viscerally to the imagery and code words used by Nazis. Today old Stalinist imagery has it’s own unique draw. The US had powerful PR apparatus as well. We continue to feed that machine. And since, then, of course, unending sets of military skirmishes/wars, each equipped with God-given reasons for why we must respond. Then Watergate and totalitarian despots revealed and deposed, and, well, it’s a long list of fails that contribute to today’s cynicism and “Question Authority” stance. People found their voice and collected it to push back with outrage at corporations and governments and to call attention to wrong doing when it appears.
Eighty-six years later, the entire population of the US—possibly the planet—is wise to Bernays’ techniques. Not that we’ve studied them: those techniques study us all day every day. Especially in countries like the US where consumption is our patriotic duty. We know manipulation from the inside out.
Bernays would be impressed were he alive to see it. I imagine him smacking his head and saying, “Wait—they know they are being manipulated, and …they still buy it? This is even better than I hoped.”
Why talk about manipulation? Not just because Bernays book is fun to read and easy to contrast with today. In particular, why would a copywriter talk about manipulation? Isn’t that secret sauce you trade in all day? Why pull back the curtain?
As a copywriter my goal is to tell my client’s story in the best possible light. I continue to argue that persuasion is a natural piece of how people interact with each other all day long. It’s part of the human condition. But I argue our efforts at manipulation damage actual conversation. When we use words and techniques with manipulative technique, we shut off further conversation. At that point it is about winning not connecting. Maybe there is a fine line between persuasion and manipulation. Propaganda is the textbook for manipulation.
As a copywriter, I want my clients to engage in conversations not endless manipulative monologues. That seems a more human approach to communication. I continue to think conversation is what today’s market will bear.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Big Data Will Never Write a Poem
Art & Craft in a Data-Driven Age
Big Data FTW.
With all the information we collect from you (and Bob and Carol and Ted and Ciley), we know when you’ll buy beer, buy steaks, invest in a crock pot, buy an engagement ring, get married, get pregnant, get divorced, get pregnant again, get diabetes, get congestive heart failure and, well, pretty much any of the human conditions. We know what kind of coffins people in your neighborhood buy. We know this because we track it.
We track everything from mouse clicks to toilet paper purchases.
Because we track things we can make offers you cannot resist because you just thought of it yourself. You just thought of what we already knew you’d think about.
This kind of knowing is the goal of the big-data wranglers embedded in most any marketing group these days, whether an ad agency, a car manufacturer, a hospital or my city leaders. Knowing all means better decisions—at least that’s the promise.
Years ago all this tracking would have set in motion a web of fears about being controlled. But since most of have agreed with Amazon and Netflix that we really should order this lens next and watch that movie next (because others did), we’re at peace with each day’s granular tracking.
Is there a place for the crafter in a world of analytics? I say “Yes” because despite all the predictive analytics, we still connect best with real people. Brands are not known for calling us back to our senses. As our buying and consuming gets easier and easier—which is not a good thing—we need the artists and the crafters and the writers and barista-poets to call us back to a life outside of consumption.
Big data is not likely to predict the veering humans are known for. Because, as they say: past performance does not guarantee future results.
Plus: big data will never write a poem—at least a good poem.
Long live the intuitives!
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
Letters to Father Jacob
And when your life work is revealed as futile:
Stacks of letters arrive daily at blind Father Jacob’s house. People ask for help and he prays for them. Sometimes he does more. Father Jacob’s previous reader is now in a nursing home. So he hired the convicted murderer who was recently pardoned: Leila. But these readings, followed by Father Jacob’s out loud prayers, feel particularly pointless to Leila.
And they start to feel pointless to Father Jacob as well.
And quite possibly Father Jacob is slipping into dementia.
This 2009 Finnish film, which is beautifully photographed, has the pace you might expect of a hermit or ascetic. Not exactly slow, but each frame full of meaning. The film asks about the result of our life work. Where did that passion lead and what was the result?
Our literature of success in the United States hints that passion + patience + perseverance lead directly to success. But real life is more full of falling forward and marching backward: ups and downs that depress and invigorate. Despair swings by. Elation makes an appearance.
Letters to Father Jacob is more like real life than our success literature. And the conversations between Leila and Father Jacob reveal far more than mere words let on.
The storytelling in this film will stay with you long after the 74 minutes it takes to watch it. That is because after joy turns to sorrow you begin to see the real story threaded already in your brain.
It’s masterful stuff.
Letters to Father Jacob left me hopeful.
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Image credit: IMDB
What Photography Teaches About Writing
Look for what reflects light
With camera in hand I look first for what is reflecting the light.
And then I shoot that thing.
It’s all about catching some sort of reflected glory.
The best writing does that too.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
“Viral” is Fool’s Gold
People often have legs and feet. So do collaborative ideas.
Years ago we noticed the threshold to globalization falling to the point where anyone could step over it. Back then advertisers talked about music or images that could transcend language with television and radio. And it was true: cloak your message with a mainstream song and off your product flew to sell among lands and languages previously unknown.
Today we routinely interact with people across the globe. Tweets and Tumblrs and blog posts and comments can and do come from anywhere at any time (because it’s always 17:01 somewhere). It’s mostly asynchronous. But not always—my WordPress friend in Hong Kong responds to my morning posts (his evening) and I respond to his evening posts (my morning) and it feels like real time.
Marketers and advertisers want to promise a viral result from the work they do for clients. But the bar for viral gets higher every day: interweb participants stand amazed at less and less.
More realistic: go back to the old way of focus on the important people. In this we make sure our message can be carried in a style to which our target audience is accustomed. Making sure our messages are sticky for the primary and secondary audiences we care most about is better than shooting for viral. And the first step toward sticky ideas is to simplify (not the same as dumbing-down) so the idea is quickly grasped and possibly even elegantly presented.
This simplifying process is a natural result of collaboration. Just explaining an idea in the course of a normal conversation is a step away from Teflon toward sticky. That simple act of saying it aloud helps you realize what works and what doesn’t: it’s all written in the face of the person you are explaining it to.
Start with a simple collaborative conversation to begin to move toward sticky.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
“Writer without permission.”
Write On Your Own Dime
A new LinkedIn friend in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area has a job title “Writer without permission.” The genius of her title is to say out loud what most every writer is thinking—nobody asked for this, nobody gave me permission, and frankly, no one is waiting for me to finish it. The whole thing is entirely self-motivated.
Let there be more of her tribe.
Writers without permission may encamp here as needed–not that you need permission.
Writers often stop mid-sentence and think,
I am entirely unqualified to write this. When will someone knock on my door and say, ‘Hey—Stop it: You got no business writing that.’?
When those Philip Glass moments occur, whether real or imagined, the writer without permission pauses and then continues the sentence. And the next sentence. And so on—breezing past the “No Trespassing” signs posted around the perimeter of the topic.
If you are waiting for someone to say, “You should write about X.” You have a long wait. If you are waiting for a fat check to cover expenses while you draft your manuscript, well that isn’t likely. Although I did chat with someone two weeks ago who received a sabbatical from her job to write a book. So, miracles do happen… and all that.
New stuff happens when we start writing without permission. But the alternative is also true: maybe nothing will happen. Maybe it will fail. Given all the books and writing and words floating around today, failure is likely. Then again, what is success or failure? If just getting your story out is success (I happen to think it is), then start writing. If success is getting famous, well…miracles do happen (and all that).
But there is something more to the kudos and the paycheck—it is a kind of validation that you are doing a good thing, a worthwhile thing, an important thing. It’s as if we need someone else’s validation to gather gumption and move forward. But what if someone won’t even understand what you are doing until you are done—because you yourself are working out the details? And you don’t fully understand it. Not yet.
We celebrate the creative genius of long-dead writers. But how many knew they were writing some landmark story until much later—or ever? Most had to battle the “No Trespassing” signs and the missing fat paychecks. And they created anyway.
Do you need permission to create the thing you cannot stop thinking about? You have my permission, for whatever it is worth.
Don’t put off creating.
Start today.
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Image credit: Kirk Livingston
conversation is an engine 