Thousands of Online Marketers came to Las Vegas each year for PUBCON, a conference for webmasters, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Media Tricks and Internet businesses.
Many of the sessions were about Twitter and Social Media.. and how to make them work for business. In one of my sessions, “Latest Trends on Twitter,” I shared my thoughts about what make Twitter work so well in the new world of marketing and a step by step approach to getting your message out today.
Social Media Tricks from a century ago. Propaganda by Edward Bernays
They wanted to know about tips and tricks. I gave them bacon.
I told them about Edward Bernays, the greatest marketer of the 20th Century and the 3 steps for making a message spread.
Bernays is the guy who invented Public Relations. Before Bernays, we called it propaganda. Propaganda wasn’t a negative term until much later. In fact, Bernays wrote a book [eafl id=1581 name=”propaganda” text=””] in 1928 long before the Nazi’s gave the word a bad name.
Bernays was an expert as determining the desires of the public, then crafting his messages into short, memorable ideas that people would want to share. Today, we these memes.. the smallest unit of an idea, Or the more popular term for a short repeatable message: sound byte
Bernay’s worked for pork producers. They wanted to sell more bacon. After researching how people thought about bacon and breakfast, Bernays decided to tie bacon to the more popular dish of eggs and created the phrase you likely use today: “bacon and eggs”
Bacon and Eggs originates from the social media tricks of Edward Bernays
In 1929, Bernays placed article in newspapers from his Middle America Information Bureau featuring quotes such as “Doctors recommend that Americans start the day with a hearty breakfast such as bacon and eggs.” Before that, this popular phrase didn’t exist.
Today, one might question the health benefits of that statement, we won’t discuss that here. What’s important to our study of marketing messages is that the simple idea of attaching bacon to the more popular eggs and creating a short, memorable, easily repeatable phrase has worked over an over again.
Twentieth Century new media was broadcast. Companies with money to buy enough advertising would use it to create the popular slogans and products we talked about. In the Twenty-first Century, we’ve got a fragmentation of the old media and many channels that connect person to person without a centralized middleman (ie the publisher or broadcaster) and everyone can create and choose their own messages. It’s much, much more expensive to try to buy your way into popular culture, which makes crafting your sound byte more important.
Today, more than ever, it’s vital that you distill your message into a short meme that can be shared. A sound byte version that is consistent and repeatable.
Once you have a sound byte, you next work on finding groups of people who are already having a conversation about your topic. In the past 15 years, millions of web sites, special interest forums, niche blogs and personal web sites have been created and recently, Facebook and other social media have allowed anyone with any interest to connect and identify themselves. The cost of connecting is essentially zero, so there is no longer a need to trust a centralize authority (big media) to decide what message gets spread.
You can create your own community from scratch, but the leverage of connecting with thousands of existing groups and communities will work faster. Their structure will be stronger and is now the best means to share your sound byte.
Once you have a sound byte and engage with the conversations online, the third step is one that often frustrates marketers trained in the 20th Century… you must count on serendipity to succeed.
Serendipity is not “wishing for good results”… rather, it is the essence of tapping into the market power of trillions of individual conversations going on right now.
The science of chaos theory tells us that random events are extremely difficult to predict on an individual basis, but very dependable when grouped together.
You use serendipity every day.
One example of our dependence on chaos and serendipity is a water faucet. It would be impossible to predict the flow of one drop of water from the faucet into your glass (will this be the drop that splashes onto the counter top?) but you can count on the majority of the drops winding up in your glass.
Thanks to the extremely low costs of producing and sharing media today, you can share your meme (sound byte) over and over, through text, video, audio on blogs, social networks and media sharing sites where conversations are already happening.
When your message resonates with the reader, they can easily share it with others in that group, and groups that you don’t even know about. While you can’t predict which message unit will resonate with any of the groups, once you build relationships with these groups and learn their desires, you will begin to improve your odds of resonating and serendipity will kick in.. bringing you success well beyond anything you could have predicted for one campaign.
There are still many opportunities to buy your way into a conversation. Advertising a meme that resonates will speed up the chance that it will succeed. (advertising a message that does not resonate will not. It just adds to the noise at best and could even create an backlash).
The work of Edward Bernays shows us that the principles of marketing that work best are not new. The media has changed, and the days of multi-million dollar launches over loading us to break into the conversation are pretty much over. The playing field is a level as it’s ever been.
You Are Better Off Without Social Media Tricks
Use this simple three step process in any media for effective promotion:
- Distill your message into a sound byte
- Join the conversations. Add value while using your sound byte
- Expect serendipity
My own sound byte version of today’s marketing is “Listen and Love” When I speak about marketing, I tell businesses that the conversation is already going on, then encourage them to listen. Once they really listen to people, they find things they can do to add value and do it (the “love”).
Using this approach to creating a meme, then sharing it, is “Listen and Love” on steroids. Once you begin to see the value of listening and responding as you would to help a friend, you will find your sound byte gets picked up and repeated. People don’t want to be sold. They do want to do business with someone they know, like and trust. You can build this trust with an authentic sound byte you spread while you listen and love.
The story of bacon and eggs is just one of many case studies from the work of Edward Bernays that we’ll be sharing in a book soon. Let me know if you see value it this method, or would like to know more about marketing this way.
I hope you’ll think of Edward Bernays next time you order bacon and eggs. That’s my social media tricks.
This is wonderful advice and guidance, Warren, thank you. It doesn’t get better than “Listen and Love…” people love it when you add something more that enriches their experience. And the more you can give, the more you’ll receive.
The “sound byte” technique has been used by corporations and politicians for decades. Now we can use it to get out messages out too.
The “Love” part is critical. Many companies and organizations condense their message to a meme, but never make an impact. Why? Because they miss out on the connection. Their is usually a fine line between you and your customer. The meme must come from this fine line; to clearly articulate this line in a compelling and consise manner that resonates with emotional and personal appeal. It is then that “love” shines through and people respond. The response is a clear representation of that mirrored line. The line is not one way; it is reciprocal in nature.
Good point Ed. Bernays studied the desires of his audience and developed his meme to fit that.
One could say that he wasn’t authentic. In those times, with corporations growing bigger and taking advantage of one way communications technologies, authenticity (love) could be set aside with great success.
Today, anyone who sees you aren’t sincere owns their own broadcasting.. word spreads fast.
The “Love” of “Listen and Love” is actually the easy part. When you listen, really listen, you’ll know what to do. Just treat people the way you’d treat a friend.
The “New Age” and positive energy we’ve heard so much about might be as simple as learning to “listen and love”
To be clear about it: Edwards Bernays is the father of public relations, NOT the “greatest marketer of all time.”
I assume that both titles are subjective, but I’m open to see the official ranking of great marketers.
Warren: Edward Bernays literally coined the term “public relations.” He was very careful to make the distinction between public relations and marketing. He considered marketing to be an inferior approach to communication, and would have been horrified to have been considered a marketer. Read his first book, “Crystallizing Public Opinion” or Larry Type’s biography, “The Father of Spin.”
I’ve read Bernays. That label certainly applied then, perhaps today.
“Marketer” has a lot of meaning. I tend to agree with you and Benays here, but also speak to audience that look at “marketing” as what I would call something else.
I’ve learned to tailor the message to my market. My market is NOT public relations academics…. When I talk to them, I ask “why don’t you guys talk about Bernays?”
My market isn’t academics either. I’m a practicing PR counsel, and I agree with you on one point: We should all be talking about Bernays more often, especially when it comes to social media. But words means things. “Marketing” means to sell things to prospects through a mass medium. “Public relations” means to detect where an organization’s actions are misaligned with the attitudes of its stakeholders, and to use a variety of methods to bring them into alignment. Social media should not be about selling things; they should be about changing things.
Good point.
Alas, I group PR counsel in with “not my market”
Readers of a book are often called a market here. While I go along with that.. I do get your point and would prefer it was always as you say.
Funny story. As a communications major in college, I started with broadcasting, dabbled in organizational communications and would up fitting in best with the advertising crowd. Actually finished up on the Ad sales track.
Back in the day, we called PR “watered down advertising” and it’s the one part of communications that I stayed away from.
Sold ads for 8 years and became an entrepreneurs.. Early on I discovered “you can get anything you want if you help enough other people get what they want” and stopped trying to sell. Orders went up 300% in a month and I’m never looked back.
I’ve learned my PR joke was way off base, and that MOST marketing is anything but what I like to do.. Direct marketing is cool because it focuses on process to take the order.. but the more I got into copywriting, influence and psychology, the more I realized that it’s profitable for a transaction, not a relationship.
Ogilvy knew this. He used DM testing but created much bigger campaigns from what he learned. Most Internet era practitioners don’t get this and laugh when I tell them how much time I spend on networking, social media and even READING 🙂
I found Bernays and knew I had a home more my philosophy. Social media is not ads, it’s not marketing, but it’s not just idle chit chat or customer service, crises response stuff.
Frankly, I’d just as soon drop “marketing” as too broad to mean much.
I hang out with people who call what they do “Internet Marketing”.. when they try to add me to that group, I respond “I’m not limited to the net, and I like what Jay Conrad Levinson said about marketing.. everything that touches a costumer.. guess that makes me an entrepreneurs”
My personal opinion of Bernays.. a genius at inception to a mass audience. Wasn’t always commerce, but like many of us, found that commerce pays well 🙂
You quoted me saying “world greatest marketer” (I usually say “greatest marketer of the 20th Century” but it has the same problem). I believe his method are the best way to “sell stuff”.. especially if you remember that “good marketing doesn’t look like marketing”
Still, I’m thinking what Dr. Bernays would say if he heard me call him a “marketer” and will keep that in mind next time.
Yes, “DR Bernays” http://callmedr.com <– what Bernays thought about words
Once I walked into a KFC. On a whim, I asked the clerk if she was interested in a bacon and egg sandwich. She asked what I was talking about. I went back to my truck and brought in my day old piglet and three day old chicks for her to look at.
Sounds like you had a point to make
When people think of a bacon and egg sandwich, they don’t think of the animal those products came from. I am not a complete vegan. I do eat meat. I have eaten animals I raised. BUT they were treated with respect and love up till the time came for them to go on the table. I do not condone abusing animals. I also raised meat rabbits. I get so sick of people saying they cannot eat rabbits because they are so cute. I usually ask them if they have ever seen a three day old hamburger. Look in the beautiful eyes of a calf, or a piglet that wants to be cuddled and have his back scratched and tell me they are not beautiful also.
Whatever message you are trying to share, the 3 steps will help. The will NOT make it “moral” or “right” or agree with your opinions.. just a tool
Wanna ‘bring home the bacon’? Do it sunny side up or over easy when you …discover ME, love ME, engage ME. The Key is ME. 🙂
Well you got our attention. We’ll be listening to you, you, you.
Great message.
Bernays also made famous: Lucky Strike cigarettes, Ivory soap, bananas, and books.
–Dan Poynter
Right Dan, Bernays was able to do so much because he focus this method. Once he got a message out, the public amplified his work.
Warren, wonderful post. Leads me to believe I need to read Bernays’ work. Roxie
Yes, that, and makes sure your message fits in a soundbite
This article has brought out your best Warren. I love the simplicity of “Listen and Love” and enjoy the “Support and Synchronicity” that occur as a result.
Then the article is like you my friend. Bringing out the best
A nice piece, Warren. My own sound bite is: Start a CHANGE reaction in your life! I have it on tote bags, t-shirts, my mouse pad, my web site, and any and all literature that I put out. I look forward to hearing that phrase being repeated everywhere.
I adore the serendipity reference!
I admit that it’s not just serendipity that the word is there.. I love the word
Ooooo This was a great article Warren – It’s nice to see that word LOVE in there – it’s something that comes naturally if we only allow ourselves to let it through! So enjoying being in your circle!
Love LIGHTS us!! Peace is in you….
Amethyst
Love is the answer
This is a great article Warren! Not ‘wishing’ but ‘tapping into’ that which already is! It has been a perfect approach for me to connect, listen and love!
Thanks for your own continued good work helping so many 🙂
Anita
Thanks, warren
I never knew that.
It all sounds so (over) easy.
JL
with bacon of course
Hi Warren
Found this in my “junk mail”. Excellent material – full of value and suffused with caring. I suspect this is a key to success.
Robert
Glad to know the post was more that junk to you
Brilliant insight Warren. I would add to your broadcasting. . .the mental impact of a million tweets upon the collective conscious:
http://www.mentalinfluenceblog.com
Great stuff. .. thanks for sharing.
Doug Johnson
http://www.snowshoepublishing.com
Well Social Media Marketing is become a great source of advertising for online business, today people use social media to advertise their business and attract large number of customers. Thanks for this post.
BACON’S WORLDLY DESIRES AND HIS PHILOSOPHY
BY Allama Muhammad Yousuf Gabriel
Macaulay has expressed his opinion that Bacon unworthy employed his time in woolsack and the council board, and that if Bacon had employed all his time in study, and that his civil ends had been moderate, he would have fulfilled a large part of his own magnificent predictions. He would have led his followers, not only to the verge but, into the heart of the Promised Land. He would not merely have pointed out, but would have divided the spoil. And above all, he would have left not only a great, but a spotless name.
Now this is a very difficult postulate, and it is not easy to at once assent to it. Bacon would have been only, what he was. Sir James Jeans in his great work, “The Mysterious Universe”, tells us and very truly that, “life of the kind we know can only exist under suitable conditions of light and heart; we only exist ourselves because the earth receives exactly the right amount of radiation from the sun; upset the balance in either direction, excess or defect, and life must disappear from the earth. And the essence of the situation is that the balance is very easily upset”.
(The Mysterious Universe page 10)
Applying this proportion to Bacon’s case, it may be concluded, that “philosophy can emanate from a mind in a suitable atmosphere of particular circumstances. Bacon formed his philosophy because his mind received the exact direction from the conditions in which it found itself. If the situation had been changed, the philosophy in the mind of Bacon, if it had not completely died out, at least its form would have been greatly affected”.
Had Bacon renounced his worldly ambition, and had he repaired to the university of Cambridge or some monastery, to devote his life to mere study, it appears highly probable that he would have renounced the thought of writing a philosophy of the world, for, the fire of worldly ambition having been quenched, the exclusive philosophy of the world would have appeared to him in a form not so pleasant to any self-abnegating convert, and he therefore might probably have undertaken instead the reform of Christian Church which at that time stood in great necessity of purgation. If, however, the thought of his worldly philosophy was too strongly fixed in his mind, and he inspite of the changed state of his mind, as well of environment had intended to write his philosophy of the world, he might have written five or six or seven volumes instead of the two which he could have written in the atmosphere of his professional drudgery. But what different the addition of volumes would have made to his philosophy, which had been completely and fully treated in those two volumes, which he had produced. And it is hardly probable that his philosophy written in the cloister would have had the same gusto and the same intensity of thought and expression as is to be met with in his two volumes written in a state of mind which could only be likened to alive volcano of worldly ambition, hissing, sizzling, puttering, smoking and belching fire, and recording its agonies as a philosophy. Hungry souls cry, and Bacon’s soul convulsed with sever pangs of hunger for wealth and power, and its terrible cries assumed the forms of worlds which Bacon’s had printed on paper, and lo, it was Bacon’s philosophy of the world.
All these, however, are mere conjectures. The fact only is that Bacon did produce a philosophy. A philosophy which completely changed this world, and reversed the order of man’s mind.
The Question arises, why Bacon could not complete his new Atlantis, just as Plato before him had not been able to complete his CRITIAS. Reasons of time or circumstances may be attributed to their failure in completing these works, but it is to be wondered how Bacon would have described his city in his new Atlantis. Merely the house of Solomon, and the brew houses, the perfume houses and the dispensatories would not do. These things did even exist in pre-Bacon and pre-modern days. Bacon would have been executed to describe his city as it appeared as a result of the changes produced by his philosophy of science and progress. How Bacon could have been expected to describe and portray the London of modern times in its mechanical and electrical perspective. Electric lights, motor cars, aeroplanes, factories, ships, railways, trains, trams, and all its distinctively characteristic features of modernity. It is for the prophets of God to see far if in future with surety, and a prophet of God surely Bacon was not.
The disquieted mind of the West, disgusted with the unbearably hypocritical, tyrannical, world-loving hierarchies, despotic monarchies, tortuous poverty, superstition, ignorance and disease, Smouldered, yearning impatiently after the luxurious and sumptuous feast of nature, tired of the long Christian fast, sighed, groaned, and bewailed. Millions of souls, in the western Christendom, sighing, moaning, groaning, wailing day and night in misery for relies, till their sighs, and groans mingling and mixing in a continued process, eventually assumed a form of an apparition, that appeared as an elfish child, called Francis Bacon and endowed with precociously mature and strong intellect, delicate health and unusual gravity of carriage.
It was known that nothing in the heart of this apparition existed but a burning desire of wealth, and power and ostentation, so that all the three, that is the desire of wealth, and of power and of ostentation vied with each other in his heart for precedence. Religion being susceptible of superstition and feared as a handicap to the attainment of worldly wealth and power and ostentation was to be expelled from such a heart, though denied not by the pen or the tongue. The philosophy which emanated from such a heart was essentially to be a philosophy such as the Baconian philosophy is, namely a philosophy of dominion over nature for material exploitation, and wealth accumulation and physical comforts, and renunciation of moral philosophy. A philosophy therefore certainly as an antithesis to the philosophy of revealed religion. No compromise, no reconcilement is thus possible between the philosophy of revealed religion and the philosophy which Bacon formed. Machiavelli (1469-1527) appears to be the model of Bacon in the attainment of his object that is wealth and power. Anything which appeared as adverse to the attainment of the worldly object was to be sacrificed, even if it were personal honour, moral obligation, or the sacred obligation of friendship and gratitude, or religious values nothing would count when the worldly objects were at stake.
Bacon, his philosophy, and his followers are all at one with each other in almost every feature. Moral, spiritual and religious values as were considered by the pre-modern people were to be cast away as detrimental to progress. Fruit and utility as was taught by Baconian philosophy was the sole aim and the object of man’s life and exertions. Man’s purpose was to accumulate riches of the world, and no honour was in anything except riches, or in those values which helped in gaining the riches, and maintaining the riches and multiplying the riches. Bacon’s heart and his followers’ heart and the heart of Bacon’s philosophy, throbbed together for wealth, and burned together for power, and yearned together after ostentation. Together, and indeed together with their hearts throbbing in unison, will they go into the flames of the atomic hell, the terminus of the road of Bacon’s philosophy of atomism. Greed of wealth was inherent in the very nature of Bacon, and was naturally inherent in the philosophy of Bacon, and the secret hand of providence helped Bacon by throwing him into a career of poverty and obscurity as incentive for a struggle out of the dungeon in which he had found himself fallen, and subsequent entry into the paradise of wealth, power and ostentation.
Of all the philosophies of life that were ever given, the philosophy of Bacon it is that is exclusively based on this world and its wealth, excepting perhaps the philosophy of Epicurus etc., thus the philosophy of Bacon stands in direct opposition to every other philosophy both of revealed religions, and others given by philosophers like Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. The philosophy of Budha and the philosophy of Hindu religion also basically differ from the philosophy of Bacon. All the philosophies, whether they are based exclusively on spiritualism. E.g. Christian, or whether they have formed a balance between the spiritual and the material e.g. Islamic. Are opposed to Bacon’s philosophy, since the philosophy of Bacon is exclusively based on materialism. People in this world belonging to every religion consider that if the element of religion is inserted in the philosophy of modern progress, the resultant form is quite compatible with their respective religion. If such people, and they comprise the entire population of the world, will not try to clear their misunderstanding, and will not realise the truth that there is not a revealed religion in this world which can go parallel to this abominable creed that is this system of modern progress, time will teach them a lesson in the flames of the atomic hell which they will never forget, and that will be their first and their last lesson in their life, and therein they will be broiled in the fire of atomic bombs and the atomic radiations, and not only they themselves but they shall see their children, their relatives, friends, cattle, pets and all, being broiled in the agonising fires of atomic nature but what we want to point out here is that if this creed of wealth-accumulating and lechery and its consequences are evil in the sight of God, Bacon shall receive a share of every man’s evil and will stand with a huge load of crime and evil on his back on the day of judgement. One philosopher, however, in the history of philosophy who gave a philosophy of the physical pleasure, namely Epicurus in Ancient Greece seen to stand with Bacon in the love of worldly pleasures, but his creed disappeared after a spell of disgraceful existence. Individually, the lust of pleasure may be seen distributed in the world, particularly in this modern age which basically is an age of lust for worldly pleasure and physical comfort.
Allama Muhammad Yousuf Gabriel
Gabriel Communication Quaid e Azam Street Nawababad Wah Cantt
Distt Rawalpindi (Pakisotan)
[email protected]
http://www.oqasa.org
http://www.soonvalley.com
http://www.soonvalleypakistan
http://www.awans.com.pk
Wish I could share this on G+ without it appearing only as a hypertext reference anchor. Great post. Worthy of a few shares.
Never mind. Works with a bit.ly link. Link now loads. Perfect!
Listen and Love. Very nice!