Public Relations

Evolution of the Function: The First Decades

Public relations has grown and evolved as a business function from its earliest days at the beginning of the 20th century. Ivy Lee is often credited with being the “founder” of the field when he began to advise John D. Rockefeller about ways to improve his public image, through philanthropy, policies toward workers, selection of plant sites, and so on.

While the press agency aspect of public relations was—and remains—a core activity, Ivy Lee's determination to go beyond simply issuing press releases laid the groundwork for a much broader business function that would provide input to basic business [Page 1738]decisions. Rockefeller at first resisted the advice but eventually gave in to the notion that public reaction had to be a factor in his business decisions.

Later, when Edward Bernays, another “founder” of the public relations profession, wrote the first book on the profession, titled Crystallizing Public Opinion, he too went beyond press relations. A student of Freud, he discussed the critical roles that events, third-party opinions, and social trends played in forming public opinion. He argued that public relations professionals had to be able to manipulate these elements if they were to be truly successful.

The early founders of the public relations function focused on image making. Given the historical period in which they were operating, which included the influence of F. W. Taylor's scientific management and the development of sophisticated mass marketing, Bernays and others worked to develop a scientific patina for public relations that ultimately came close to being a glorification of propaganda. Indeed, Bernays's second book was titled Propaganda. In it, he argued that in a complex democratic society, propaganda provided the means through which consensus could be reached, and he posited that those who knew how to manipulate public opinion were, in essence, the true ruling power in society.

While public relations professionals learned to shy away from promoting themselves in such terms during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, the focus remained on image making. The corporate public relations function was grounded in press relations activity—sending out press releases, maintaining good contacts with reporters, holding press conferences—but also included speech writing and the development of corporate brochures and films and, occasionally, systematic “speaker's bureaus” that would send out representatives to make speeches and presentations to schools and community groups. Ronald Reagan, for example, spent many years doing the speech circuit for General Electric.

...