It might surprise many to know that PR has been around for a long time. What are just a few examples of public relations’ colourful history?

Answer: Hollywood swashbuckler Errol Flynn played a public relations consultant in one of his early movies. When asked what he did, Flynn jauntily replied: “My clients have more money than reputation and I’m here to redress the imbalance.”

Julius Caesar, when campaigning, sent runners back to Rome to let the citizens know he was winning, to keep them on side, an early PR technique.

Oil titan John D Rockefeller was loathed by many in the late 19th century until he hired PR pioneer Ivy Lee. He advised him to hand dimes to small children on the street, thus transforming the business ogre into a kindly old gent.

Early PR mastermind Edward Bernays wrote ‘The Engineering of Consent’ and was instrumental in persuading American women to take up smoking.

In World War Two, Douglas MacArthur’s personal PR man would put out press releases saying the general had brilliantly won a particular battle, which was news to his men still fighting it.

President John F Kennedy’s immortal words ‘ask not what you can do for your country’, were actually written by his Yale educated PR man.

Today there are more PR people than journalists. Many would be saddened to hear British intellectual Malcolm Muggeridge’s description of public relations as ‘organised lying’.

Source: The Engineering of Consent by Edward L Bernays

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