Propaganda, Peace, Flat Worlds and More

"If you can use propaganda for war, you can use it for peace," Edward Bernays. Tonight, we'll look at a a video featuring Edward Bernays, which shows how he took his Uncle Sigmund Freud's ideas in order to manipulate the public mindset related to purchasing power, among other things. In the short film, we're hear how Bernays was "the first person to take his ideas about human beings and use them to manipulate (us) into wanting things we didn't need by linking mass-produced goods to our unconscious desires." Out of this came a new idea of how to "control the masses"- a beginning of the all-consuming self that has dominated the world in terms of advertising, marketing and PR campaigns to date. Here's Bernays in his own words re: his infamous tobacco campaign.

After discussing these fascinating ideas related to manipulation, propaganda and PR, we'll move to a discussion about "Mad Men," which we held from last week's discussion, so that we'd have the full class present. Although a fictional character, we'll explore what "Don Draper" might have in common with Mr. Bernays. Then, we'll discuss "The Flat World and Employee Relations." We'll round out class with discussions of the cases in Chapter 3 on Southwest Airlines, ASA (Atlantic Southeast Airlines) and Kodak.  And of course, we HAVE to talk about SOCIAL MEDIA and Egypt and more.

Wow! Can't wait.

Yours truly,
Professor Berry