The Century of the Self
The documentary that we watched in class called, The Century of the Self, is about Edward Bernays and how he became famous for “knowing what people want.” After World War I there was mass production of products and it was soon found that you had to create a desire within a person to want to buy a product. This is about the time that advertising became important and Bernays had a huge part in the advertising world.
Bernays had a great way of creating desire within Americans. A great example of this is when he promoted smoking to women. He basically told them that by smoking they would have power like a man. He then created the idea of “Torches of Freedom” when he had women smoking in a parade caught on camera and published throughout the country. Smoking then became acceptable to the masses.
There were numerous other things and ideas that Bernays worked to make popular in the 1920s. He was an inspiration to advertisers in his time, but he is also a huge inspiration to advertisers now. As an advertising major I can appreciate the hard work he put into making the products popular. That was a difficult thing to achieve in his time and it is equally difficult to place products in our time. His original ideas and ways of going about advertising can act as models for us as young advertisers today.
4 years ago • Notes