Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Who's the modern Edward Bernays?

I've been reading up more about Edward Bernays, the father of PR. He started the way the consumer-age (the 20th Century) marketed and communicated to its audience. He played a major role in helping to define the communication industry's direction and methods.

Part psychologist, philospoher and self-publicist, he pioneered things we now take for granted in the modern world such as: linking celebrity to promotion and product placement at events. However I was most interested to read that he spent a lot of time promoting the new and exciting media of the time... radio and then moved onto promoting TV.

As PR and Media have once again changed in the last few years, who would you say was the modern Mr Bernays?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/08/20/not-just-another-press-release/

might be of some interest

Hayden Sutherland said...

Tristan
Thanks for mentioning this point, it had slipped my attention.
This move should mean cost savings as well as encouraging companies to use blogs.
I wonder what old thinking companies will still try to use 'the wire service' on the justification that they still don't believe 'blogs are the right thing to do'.