Quote of the day 3

No matter how sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership.

From Propaganda, Edward L. Bernays

It's 1929. At the Easter Sunday Parade in New York, a group of ladies is walking on the Fifth Avenue smoking cigarettes in public. At this time smoking in public is a taboo for women as it is considered a corrupt and inappropriate habit.

This shocking act embraced by the feminist writer Ruth Hale hid a much more complex story. Not long before, George Washington Hill, president of the American Tobacco Company, wanted to expand his customer base of smokers to women, a large market still unexplored at the time. Edward Bernays was the right man for the job. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, and he had the cunning idea of applying what he learned in psychology and social science to advertising and propaganda. He wrote: "I found the way to help break the taboo against women smoking in public. Why not a parade of women lighting torches of freedom - smoking cigarettes".

Bernays, who is considered today the father of public relations, found a way to link women's desire for emancipation to the economic interest of the tobacco corporations. Brilliant and evil at the same time.

"Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!"

• A beautiful BBC's documentary on Bernays
• The book "Propaganda"