Of course, lies are darned handy when the truth is something you dare not admit. Earning trust and goodwill is a nonstarter if you’re a cigarette company peddling a product (often to children) that everyone knows is offensive, addictive, and potentially deadly. An impartial observer might come to the same conclusion about the fossil fuel industry. ExxonMobil doesn’t really have to worry about its public image: because it has a stranglehold on a commodity that is also addictive (we need that energy to make our current economy function) and, in the current circumstances, ultimately life-threatening—especially for all those people who will not be able to adapt to dramatic changes in world climate. So when Exxon gives money to think tanks in support of programs that sow confusion about global warming, that isn’t public relations. It’s not an effort to build or maintain the quality of Exxon’s reputation. It is, rather, a direct interference in the public conversation in a way that serves Exxon’s interest at the expense of the public interest.
But here’s the part that bugs me the most: the people who are taking Exxon’s money are often in public relations. Or they are taking advantage of skills, tactics, and techniques that have been developed and refined in the shadier parts of the public relations industry. Just as there are unscrupulous lawyers who use their expertise to help break the law, or unprincipled accountants who help their clients evade taxes, it seems there have always been public relations people willing to meddle with the public discourse to promote the private interests of the people who are paying their bills.
The Public Relations Society of America has a professional code of ethics, which begins: “I pledge to conduct myself professionally, with truth, accuracy, fairness, and responsibility to the public.” I would urge you to keep that pledge in mind and to measure the stories that unfold in the following pages against that standard. I’m pretty sure you’ll be disappointed.
But I am equally convinced that it is important for you to hear these stories, to learn about how sometimes-questionable public relations tactics have evolved, and to arm yourself against the effect of those tactics in the future. It’s just as Aristotle said more than two thousand years ago: someone who is highly trained in rhetoric can argue any question from every angle—a skill that can be used for good or ill. But Aristotle didn’t teach rhetoric so shysters could play the public for fools. Rather, he was trying to make sure that people would recognize when someone was playing with the language rather than promoting the truth. He taught rhetoric to inoculate the public against that kind of abuse.
Looking back into the history of public relations can be inspiring, but, I have to admit, it can also be disillusioning. Consider the examples of Ivy Lee (1877-1934) and Edward Bernays (1891-1995), two men who, perhaps unfortunately, will forever compete for the title of “the father of public relations.”
If I could look only at what Ivy Lee said and disregard a lot of what he did, he’d be an appropriate hero. I say that because I see in Lee’s own writings some of the same advice that I am in the habit of giving myself. For example, when a client asks me the key to establishing, maintaining, or recovering a good reputation, I say three things:
1. Do the right thing;
2. Be seen to be doing the right thing; and
3. Don’t get #1 and #2 mixed up . . .
by which I mean, always make sure that you’re doing the right thing for its own sake and not for the reputational advantage you might gain.
Ivy Lee’s prescription sounds pretty similar. He said, “Set your house in order; then tell the public you have done so.” Do the right thing; be seen to be doing the right thing. So far, so good. Lee is also famously said to have told John D. Rockefeller Jr., “Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn’t like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want.”
This is all excellent advice, especially appropriate if you are trying to recover your reputation after an unfortunate accident. In fact when I first started thinking this way, it wasn’t because I was trying to force an ethical framework on the public relations business. It was because I had learned that this is what works. I had noticed that when my clients tried to cover up bad news or gloss over problems, those problems got worse. But when people stood up, told the truth, and did the right thing, they won public trust and earned higher regard.
It was obvious from early in his career that Lee also understood the importance of openness and integrity in building a good reputation. In 1906, for example, after a train crash on the Pennsylvania Railroad, he convinced management to forego the usual approach of bribing reporters to ignore the story in favor of throwing open the doors—actually bringing reporters to the scene at the railroad’s expense and offering all the assistance they might need once they got there. It worked like a charm. People understand that accidents happen, and are remarkably forgiving, especially if they see you making an effort to “set your house in order” and prevent an unnecessary recurrence.
Lee also distinguished himself during the First World War by organizing publicity for the fledgling Red Cross. He is credited with helping that organization grow in the United States from 486,000 to 20 million members by the time the war was over. And he helped to raise US$400 million—an unbelievable fortune given the strength of the dollar of the day.
Like so many who came after him, however, Lee found that the high road is a less attractive option when you’re managing a crisis that is not so easily forgiven. Working for the Rockefeller family in 1914, Lee was called in to manage media after the Colorado state militia and company guards had sprayed machine-gun fire into a colony of striking mine workers. The guards also set fire to the colony’s tents, resulting in the deaths of twenty-two people, including eleven children. Three guards were also killed. Lee responded by launching a series of bulletins titled “The Struggle in Colorado for Industrial Freedom,” demonizing the strikers and lionizing the supposed heroism of the Rockefeller guards. He did something similar in West Virginia, where seventy coal miners lost their lives in labor disputes. This time the bulletin was called “Coal Facts,” but the “facts” that Lee selected were particularly favorable to the Rockefellers.
Far from causing him a professional problem, these adventures helped seal Lee’s reputation as one of the most prominent and successful early public relations practitioners—a reputation that he lost rather abruptly in 1933 when he went to work for the German Dye Trust, trying to promote relations between the United States and Nazi Germany and leaving a stain that still blots his name.
Lee’s big competitor for the title “father of public relations” is Edward Bernays, an Austrian immigrant to the United States and Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Bernays is the person who coined the term “engineering consent.” In his 1928 book The Business of Propaganda, Bernays put into words something that every demagogue in history probably knew instinctively. He wrote, “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it? The recent practice of propaganda has proved that it is possible, at least up to a certain point and within certain limits.”
It would be foolish to take issue with this or even to insist that it is necessarily evil in its conception or intent. As anyone who has ever been involved in a public relations or political campaign knows, humans are not coldly rational in their decision making or uniformly predictable in their responses. They are generally busy, a little harried, and appropriately obsessed with their own affairs. In most cases it’s hard to get their attention at all, and when you do, people often respond emotionally or on the strength of biases that may be a complete mystery to an advertiser, an advocate, or a politician hoping to engage in a straight conversation. Effective public relations requires a degree of subtlety. You have to make the effort to understand why people think the way they do, and you have to find a way to communicate in a fashion that will enable them to understand you.
Bernays also recognized both the benefits and dangers of developing and using such skills. Writing in his other 1928 book, Propaganda, he said that a public relations counsel (another term he appears to have coined) “must never accept a retainer or assume a position which puts his duty to the groups