Did you have bacon and eggs for breakfast this morning? If so – and you happen to be reading this in New York, Boston, or LA – you can thank Sigmund Freud’s nephew for that.
Edward ‘Eddie’ Bernays, sometimes known as the ‘Father of Public Relations,’ was the man who persuaded an entire nation that bacon and eggs was the ‘All-American Breakfast.’ How? Well, he used his Viennese uncle’s famous psychoanalytic techniques.
Bernays unleashed the Freudian id’s primitive, instinctual drives, around food, sex, and pleasure to set America’s cash registers ringing.
Principally, using a strategy that the modern influencer marketing industry owes much to. As Bernays, himself, put it, "If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway.”
In the early 1920s, the Beech-Nut Company – a supplier of packed foods, including bacon, had a big problem – many Americans had stopped doing manual work and now worked in offices. And, as Communications Consultant Vinton D'Souza writes in Legitur, “You didn’t really need a big meal if you weren’t doing farm work for 8 hours a day. Coffee and toast became the staple.”
So, Beech-Nut called Mr Bernays. And Freud’s nephew – a chip off the old block, if ever there was one – soon came up with a plan.
Having first surveyed his own physician – so he knew exactly what answer he would get – Bernays wrote to 5,000 more doctors, asking them a simple question – “did they recommend a hearty or a light breakfast?”
Soon, newspaper headlines all across the country were reporting: ‘4,500 physicians urge bigger breakfast!’ While other carefully placed articles stated that bacon and eggs were a central part of any ‘hearty’ breakfast.
Dually influenced by its doctors, America obeyed. Sales of bacon began to expand exponentially. (Presumably, so, too, did waistbands.) Bernays, who styled himself "America's No. 1 Publicist," was now a man in demand. Major corporations like the American Tobacco Company, Proctor and Gamble, and Cartier all hired him to influence the influencers who, in turn, influenced everybody else.
So, the next time a major Instagram name like Taylor Swift picks up a couple of million dollars for a single social media post, like it or not, they should tip their hats to Freud’s errant nephew.