The art of communication, which is the pure core of Public Relations, has been present ever since man developed the ability to express verbal and non-verbal exchange of information – the language. Our world is dependent on communication with other every minute of every day, thus we inevitably witness public relations constantly all around us. This is the story of how PR as a profession was officially formed.
Going back all the way to ancient times, Aristotle was one of the first people to start noticing the impact of one speaking to many and he wrote about it in his famous book – Rhetoric. He described rhetoric as the ‘’faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion’’. It is safe to say that he was not far from what was being done with the profession of public relations at the very beginning later in 20th century. Additionally, he built the concept of emotions, in today’s world recognized as customer psychology, and how they influence the cognition of demonstration, logic and style. https://stanford.io/2DKLQux
The entire PR community knows that the founding father of modern PR was Edward Bernays, but not many know that before him there was a journalist named Ivy Lee who in a way launched the contemporary public relations. Ivy Lee is considered to be the forefather of PR profession as he was the one who helped the company Standard Oil, owned by John D. Rockefeller, repair their public brand image. The plan he enforced was encouraging Mr Rockefeller to visit the coal mines and the workers, after which the company had a boost of reputation amongst the miners as well as the general public.
On the other hand, Edward Bernays had a slightly different approach to public relations - a scientific one. He adopted several different psychological and sociological theories and blended them into his PR strategies. However, many (if not all PR practitioners) agree that his beliefs of applying political propaganda influences to corporations influencing customer behavior is a rather negative start and choose not to accept it as a part of today's PR. Despite this negative concept, I would still say his work is quite impressive and the techniques he used still applicable (-> https://bit.ly/2P8003C ).
I found a very interesting blog on The History of PR made with interesting pictures with the timeline showing how PR developed from ancient times to modern days. Take a look: https://now.mw/2P80rLi .
Additionally, Bernays was one of the first to present the idea of a two-way street in communication in order to increase efficiency of tasks performed, which he introduced in his book Crystallizing Public Opinion. ''Contrary to the misconception of public relations as deceptive manipulation, this two-way approach integrated the public’s experience with the practice of PR.''
For further reading: https://bit.ly/2bEpVNE
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