[4][5] His best-known campaigns include a 1929 effort to promote female smoking by branding cigarettes as feminist "Torches of Freedom", and his work for the United Fruit Company in the 1950s, connected with the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Guatemalan government in 1954.

Critics argue that his involvement in Guatemala facilitated U.S. imperialism and contributed to decades of civil unrest and repression, raising ethical concerns about his role in undermining democratic governance.

[6][7] He worked for dozens of major American corporations, including Procter & Gamble and General Electric, and for government agencies, politicians, and nonprofit organizations.

Citing works of writers such as Gustave Le Bon, Wilfred Trotter, Walter Lippmann, and Sigmund Freud (his own double uncle), he described the masses as irrational and subject to herd instinct—and he outlined how skilled practitioners could use crowd psychology and psychoanalysis to control them in desired ways.

By all accounts, Fleischman played a major though quiet role in the Bernays public relations business—including ghost-writing numerous memos and speeches, and publishing a newsletter.

"[24] He created the "Medical Review of Reviews Sociological Fund Committee" and successfully solicited the support of such elite figures as John D. Rockefeller Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, Reverend John Haynes Holmes, and Anne Harriman Sands Rutherford Vanderbilt, wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt.

To create interest in Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, he educated Americans about the subtleties of ballet—and publicized a picture of Flore Revalles, wearing a tight-fitting dress, at the Bronx Zoo, posed with a large snake.

[27] After the US entered the war, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) hired Bernays to work for its Bureau of Latin-American Affairs, based in an office in New York.

As reported by the New York World, the "announced object of the expedition is 'to interpret the work of the Peace Conference by keeping up a worldwide propaganda to disseminate American accomplishments and ideals.

[35] Bernays used ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud to help convince the public, among other things, that bacon and eggs was the true all-American breakfast.

He was chairman of the National Advisory Committee of the Third U.S. War Loan, co-chairman of the Victory Book campaign, and part of the New York State Defense Council.

Freud turned down further offers at promotion, such as a possible lecture tour and an invitation to write 3,000-word newspaper columns, for $1,000 each, on topics such as "The Wife's Mental Place in the Home" and "What a Child Thinks About.

George Washington Hill, head of the American Tobacco Company, which made Lucky Strike, promptly hired Bernays away from Liggett and Myers.

[48] When he started working for American Tobacco Company, Bernays was given the objective of increasing Lucky Strike sales among women, who, for the most part, had formerly avoided smoking.

[49] The first campaign succeeded; women smoked more cigarettes; American Tobacco Company brought in more revenue; and Lucky Strike led the market in growth.

Bernays consulted with psychoanalyst Abraham Brill, a student of Freud's, who reported to him that cigarettes represented "torches of freedom" for women whose feminine desires were increasingly suppressed by their role in the modern world.

[52][53] In 1934, Bernays was asked to deal with women's apparent reluctance to buy Lucky Strikes because their green and red package clashed with standard female fashions.

A Bernays memo in July 1951 recommended that this wave of media attention should be translated into action by promoting: (a) a change in present U.S. ambassadorial and consular representation, (b) the imposition of congressional sanctions in this country against government aid to pro-Communist regimes, (c) U.S. government subsidizing of research by disinterested groups like the Brookings Institution into various phases of the problem.

[63]Per Bernays's strategy, United Fruit distributed favorable articles and an anonymous Report on Guatemala to every member of Congress and to national "opinion molders".

[65] Bernays formed close relationships with journalists including The New York Times reporter Will Lissner and columnist Walter Winchell.

In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted research and found that the American public ate very light breakfast of coffee, maybe a roll and orange juice.

[75] Bernays expanded on Walter Lippmann's concept of stereotype, arguing that predictable elements could be manipulated for mass effects: But instead of a mind, universal literacy has given [the common man] a rubber stamp, a rubber stamp inked with advertising slogans, with editorials, with published scientific data, with the trivialities of tabloids and the profundities of history, but quite innocent of original thought.

[80] One way Bernays reconciled manipulation with liberalism was his claim that the human masses would inevitably succumb to manipulation—and therefore the good propagandists could compete with the evil, without incurring any marginal moral cost.

In his obituary, The New York Times said that "Over the years, he was instrumental in the formation of opinion-shaping methods that were used on behalf of many business and industrial enterprises, welfare and civic groups, and governments at home and abroad.

"[84] Near his 100th birthday, he led an unsuccessful campaign to pass legislation in Massachusetts and other states requiring public relations practitioners to be licensed.

As the leading figure in public relations and a notorious advocate of "propaganda", Bernays was compared to European fascists such as Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

)[88] Rather than retreating from the spotlight, Bernays continued to play up his ideas—for example, stating in a 1935 speech to the Financial Advertisers Association that strong men (including publicists) should become human symbols to lead the masses.

PR is a 20th-century phenomenon, and Bernays—widely eulogized as the "father of public relations" at the time of his death in 1995—played a major role in defining the industry's philosophy and methods.The Edward L Bernays Foundation, founded in 1949, is still active and incorporated in Northampton, Massachusetts.

]Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power.

Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.Propaganda is the voice of the people in the democracy of today because it gives everyone an opportunity to present his point of view.