Public Relations Then and Now; Edward L. Bernays & Phillip Leslie

it's b public relations then and now a conversation between two public relations council's our guest sir edward elgar nays and philip leslie <unk> renee is one of the founders of modern public relations and the author of the volume of memoirs and biography of an idea mr leslie is president of the philip was a company a leading public relations counseling for now here of mr leslie but renee is your new book biography of an idea is a remarkable chronicle of a very diversified guerrero in a remarkable era of depicting how you have had a role and so many of the things that occurred and movements and the ideas the last two generations of very interested though was seated you started in this work as a theatrical press agent you develop to a world renowned polaroids and council of europe are on the field and i think we might start by asking you

to define the differences between the press agent the publicity man relations council and the head of the area's other interest to me press agent an activity i was engaged in as a young man out of college was an activity of the one way street attempting to draw the attention of the public mainly through the press at the time because it was the only medium of attention going on the basic one that without regard to any particular elements outside of attention calling it a concept concept no themes no knowledge of social scientists know no social objectives it was a matter of taking a beautiful dancer and having her go up to this issue and to put a boa constrictor around herself and to learn the movements

of the russian ballet dance from a pet snake that had no other implications than the implications of attention calling even though if we looked at it psycho analytically which we didn't at the time it might have other implications press agent terry lasted for well still going on but i was in this for only two or three years but it taught me many basic lessons namely that tear there was so much competition in the marketplace of ideas that anybody who had a good idea in singing or dancing or dramatic arts needed some attention color who knew the techniques of the legislation that has a gram of this baby but as someone would who had to penetrate as the threshold of the press competing with other news to draw attention to her so much for press agent publicity

is a synonym for press agency a but a little bit more refined it a little bit less brash in the sense that in the early nineteen tens and nineteen twenties it always he always go depict any kind of activity that they need add enlisting public support they've already had a somewhat broader social science more significant than press agent three and was used by industry or in general of a publicity covers the song dissemination one way of any information right and you write when i got back from working with the us committee of public information in world war one eye i recognize that we have had a three four problem one was to break down the morale

of the enemy the other laws to win over the new approach and the third was to build up our own morale this was done principally through words it was not called publicity because publicity was pretty much a commercial word it was called public information now i got back and here i've been through an experience in which words had assumed the profane take that jeremy ended the next and cents and that the bible reported the word now her and i recognized that possibly this activity could be applied to peace time pursuit however i did not envisage that peace time pursue as the way i did later i called what we did publicity direction that is directing action so it

would result in publicity after i had done that for two years i recognized with a young woman who later became my wife and associate dollars fleishman renee i recognized that there was little satisfaction in simply getting you to act as you wanted to to get publicity because you might do other things that would be she ate that i might tell you is the manufacturer to get out at a product that serves the public interest but i had no relationship to the fact that you worked your people ten hours a day and build up public antagonism that would appreciate whatever i had dolgin ado about your brother and we changed the function at the definition of the function from

publicity direction do not the thinking of publicity as an end in itself but thinking of a social objective of adjustment as an end in itself and letting our particular activity rest only advice or counsel we gave you on public relations or your public relationships and it became what girl of the president's pattern is a true public relations coordinating and unifying the functions and objectives of the client with the public interest i may to a basis of adjustment with each other right so would you advise the crime those two or what so the climate of the republican ideals when it is what they're asked aspirations are and what direction so they expect the consulate to function and you help the quieter justice policies and then communicate

in order to look up until he loses eleven i was watching you you you you have said what we first proposed in a book that was a rather daring book for a publisher to get out at that time because this whole field was not discussed in the press and we said that the public relations counsel interprets the public to the client and the client that the public we tend to find that a little bit more closely and said the public relations counsel is a vocation in which an art is applied to a science in which the public interest and not the junior a motivation is the primary consideration the public relations counsel evaluates the relations of a client with the public's upon which the plant is dependent finds out what

the adjustments or mao adjustments are and then functions as a societal technician in interpreting the attitudes and actions products services or whatever tool that plant using words pictures and actions to accomplish the social goal your thoughts on one thing that i'm not quite interested in currently and that is what i call the end of his ability of the reputation of an organization be a good name the overlap of all the public's interests with it with each other leave the tendency of many companies for instance to feel that they should separate their their relations with the financial public or their relations with a government public order relations with their employees and not realize that the relations air with any of these automatically overlaps and affects the editor's all the others and this in the visibility this in a relationship of all of the factors of course is heightened by the

tremendous explosion of information at an intimate information techniques we have today in your book early the twenties and thirties a particularly are as you pointed out you were dealing with small number a very influential media but the major newspapers the wire services a magazine and within though that scope could reach the public and today yeah we've had an explosion the media and i think you might want to come and somehow not how you visualize the complexity of this function as contrasted with what you cover so so thorough in your book in the thirties and forties and i think you put your finger very important aspect this whole problem of public relations i first came across this idea in world war one there was a very brilliant south african south africa was not the country it is now under developed from crew grew into a very

fine republic and the news i'm and they're called smut who coined the word hole is i'm not a joe well i as sam but w h o r l i asked them and this whole isms gestalt was america's as i got really nervous because dollars and that is a bad term you always have to think of all not only the whole in terms of lowland is an island but the whole to such an extent the actor let's be very graphic in specific if you live in a great hotel will come to a town like new york and there the telephone operator gets the wrong number in the message that is delivered to you that may be the most important element that you remember about the hotel now if you if you take what you just said

this tremendous network of communication this telephone message spread through that network can roland one hotel so that it gets to a point in practically every aspect of life and i think it's a good thing that the institution for its effectiveness and its continuity must depend upon integration or adjustment of all a its facets that touch the public on a recognition of what the public interest is in danger of losing a child related of this is the fact that this explosion of communication has almost made it a thing of the past at one event or one major publicity break such as in the old days the cover of life for mr arthur godfrey devoting one of his tv shows to something i made at the topic of conversation and i was it was public property from them and to day of that hardly any at any one television show anyone magazine idea

that sort that there's even major fraction of our audience and the complexity of influencing the public or even communicating with the public becomes multiple rather than individual which in your case so many times one brilliant step for the organization the one group to put on one event a lot or an idea is a you know this is becoming a lesson less possible us most common and it it increases the necessity for professionalism in the field and so forth but you mentioned in the book how often in your experience with their crimes during the delay years on public relations was just developing when you came into an organization and there are someone was assigned to the polaroids and functional and i'd never had any experience in any face other medications or anything else the changed format to the present where almost every organization of size as a public relations function within itself now the trick the tendency of their of course then is to change the nature of what they retain

the outside counsel for the edging ahead your views on this they built the pros and the cons of the majority from i'm going to a specialist like yourself almost always to today one that the great majority of public relations counselor to retain through the polaroids department of our boys and director very often as a year as an adjunct function and how tall the objectivity and the other values of the council need to be rob injected in a situation in my experience in the relationship of the counsel on public relations you are dealing with such a new york area of activity or a new disciplines that most people in engaging council on public relations are really looking for re affirmation of their own conclusions and a validation of their own sense of

city of insecurity you're saying you'll forgive me for for broaching the subject which is far more in your ariely psychology and the managers in their dealings with their personnel and the chancellors one of the key points today undoubtedly is that we're developing professional manager's amendment managers almost all are innovations in institutions are trained to the manager george burgess and that as part of their training they are made to be very disciplined minded in seeking out the facts not letting anything but the facts and lonesome and so forth and they're becoming excellent professional managers at the same time the real problems of our world are in the human error is the intangible or the psychological barriers which you very so mom find anyone capable of mastering as well as the decision and elated action related things and yet there is a tendency for these

managers to want to have a status within their own organization who are themselves discipline back minded who come to them with detail predictions and measurable evaluations before the programming and so forth and the book when i'm trying to get over the discussion is the growing need despite the maturity of the internal organs and so forth the growing need for this outside very broad highly psychic a few were of psychology sensitive psychological our viewpoint well i would agree very definitely with you on that the problem of lead advisor of cause if he isn't simply a reformer of the other fellers conclusions are they actually related man is this how is he going to get his advice except it so that the eagle which is the most powerful

position of this other fellow is going to feed itself he fight it and in any activity of advisory it is not only important that the advice be sound from the public interest but the advice must be accepted by the klan otherwise it has no value at all and now in our relationships we found over the years that there were certain ways in which you could get advice that you thought to be sound in the public interest to be accepted keeping in mind that this ego that you were dealing with there was always a factor that a priori rejected it if a grand powdery to its preconceived bad decisions and it was obvious that the more effective the development of relations where that brought about the acceptance

of advice the more effective public relations but game now one way of cause to do this and i set this up early in my thinking was to ensure that in a profit oriented society that a public relations counsel received fees that word equivalent to the fees other professions received who's viewpoints were accepted because if the client pays you a legitimate fee that is on a party with those he pays his lawyers' he willed psychologically relate this advice in importance to those to that of lawyers but what he will also do is to recognize that immediately goes through the mental anguish of paying this amount had the advice that is given will be an equivalent that will

as wage is mental anguish for the second thing was that very often the tycoon so called it is so action related that he doesnt necessarily use the process is that the public thinks he uses when he makes his decisions i found for instance that a businessman is usually an aggressive action related person who is not an abstract thing who doesn't want a longtime plans but who is an ad hoc acted that can be said now there are a certain number of ways in which to get ideas accepted by a client that are legitimate and alive colorblind about one is precedent if i want to convince the amazing thing to me is that i would start in with the

assumption that i could use reason is the base sig element if i said to a client with the previous investigation united states steel company has recently done a comparable thing i didn't have to do that try to use race reason are obviously is used with certain kind of persuasion is used with others tradition is used with others' emotions may be used with others and factual evidence of the effectiveness yes we did say that increasingly as we get the more action oriented that managers the computer minded type of manager of whom obviously secretary mcnamara is the fields deals as two years and i'm very sorry that contest teddy doesn't deal with a molecule another this is the point of them another a man is learning to a bully with a man like that who was so extremely good at the practical ineffectual needs to open to into a head

into his computer and put his own metal computer and put a factor for the intangible the human and the human response to think before he makes a decision and in effect i think that's that's what we're saying and that the more closely related to him the source of this is the less likely it is to be a different window on the world if you're not if i'm a throw a summer gridlock of a question mr venegas the professional public relations in the eu experience you have live over so many years and now an operating as a yes as an independent council or new believer but roy sings man man should be forced by government and lula group practice that they must accept any clients sent to them that the government should set fees for them yeah i raise this as i said as a provocative question because a new chapter on the committee on the cost of medical care i get the

implication that you're advocating that that this be done for doctors i am i'm glad you got what i thought was more than an implication i think it is vital that a man is ensured not insured his health but is ensured his health by the society as i i feel that he should be ensured that as much education as he can absorb isis it now when i apply that to public relations as early as nineteen twenty three when that profession was simply being talked about a profession month to eight bases i advocated number one that the public relations counsel in order to safeguard the professions entries as well as the public interest

be licensed by the state and its databases of examination number one as the character and integrity numbered too as the scales and experience because an effective counsel on public relations as within his own power is the use of it the ability to carry on anti social activity for which there is no countervailing force as there is in law is up for another public relations counsel on the others that let doctors were licensed but that proposal that they be forced to work under government direction feeds through practice and so forth is not torture and that may bring up if i may a very basic thought there seems to have a reason in the united states a strange

concept in the last thirty years government is not the people i don't subscribe to that i subscribe to the thesis that our government represents the people presents the largest number of the people it represents a majority of dr eagleman turns that is the society but under present circumstances isn't there a very real danger that by representing the numbers and also this represents the excellence of our society known as those people who spend a lifetime know if you know them so if you believe in a democratic society there you'll have to believe what jefferson said that the individual citizen is the most important element in that societal question i maintain that there is no difference between a government a democratic government you're a republican government and the republicans' society and if that society reaches the point of recognition that part of the money that i earned

shall be taxed for the benefit of the society i know more or reject the income tax and i reject the concept that if that and the health and welfare of people is the most dominant element society and if in our economic system it does not provide and insurance of that for them and their children and then the government which is the people must provide such care and just as i am gone into a situation to save my society into war against the nazis so i must be drawn into a government representing the people to save the health of your child or somebody else's job and just as you say ah that the government is the people and is not separate let's recognize that the government does not provide the health care people provide health care and if there is incentive enough private

enterprise if there is will i thought for the welfare of the people will develop excellence for a purpose that the freedom of those people to practice with him degree of freedom of their own none of their own choice as well as their social responsibility that would seem to be an issue now i think as i say this with this would be a provocative a question i want to get out the open because it touches on one of the great questions about the public relations in general and that is a lot of the social responsibility is shared a public relations counsel agree with his client in all cases i am always worked on this premise that in a society as complex as this if general motors comes to me as they did and asked me to advise them i can't

investigate fifty one companies that at the time made up general lord but i can check up on the general reputation of general motors by that criteria and the standards of what i believe to be the best elements in the society i might call up the of financial aid issues the new york times what is the status i might ask the stock exchange what their practice has been lee then i might ask today an automobile dealer who i trust as to whether i consistently agree with their practices if on balance i can commit myself to their egos then i take them although i may disagree with their policy on the employment of negros or i may disagree with their policy making certain dealers take

more cars on a quarter than i would give them now on the other hand if a big drug company comes to marry and as a remedy which they say all as indicated for the symptoms of tuberculosis and if by quirion doctors i find that people are taking this because they believe that it cures there to where the losses will and i don't handle like you are an artist rene like you realized i think it's been a very a provocative questioning period i can tell you about the answers you've been listening to public relations then and now a recorded conversation between public relations counselor philip leslie and edward oberon a's mr leslie is president of the philip wellesley company and mr burnett is author of a volume of memoirs biography of an idea published in the fall of nineteen sixty five by simon shuster the program was produced by walter shepherd in the studios of

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