The Only Thing That Works
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The man who put bacon on your breakfast table also got women smoking. Then he wrote a book explaining exactly how he did it.
In the 1920s, a bacon company went to a young PR man and asked him to sell more bacon.
That young man surveyed 5,000 doctors, and—what do you know—about 4,500 agreed a big, hearty breakfast was best for your health.
Newspapers across the country ran with it. Bacon came along for the ride.
A few years later, American Tobacco came to the young man with a problem: women weren’t smoking enough. So he attached cigarettes to the women’s rights movement and made smoking a form of political resistance.
His name was Edward Bernays. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, and he built modern marketing by applying his uncle’s psychology to the masses.
Around the same time, Bernays put the whole playbook in a book he proudly titled “Propaganda.” He argued that manipulating the opinions of the masses was a necessary part of democratic society. He later called it “the engineering of consent.”
Bernays’ playbook never went away. It’s running in every ad, every sales page, every countdown timer, every news story you’ll see today.
And, terrifyingly, research says being aware of manipulative tactics barely protects you from them.
But there is one evidence-based defense that actually works against manipulation. It’s been mostly ignored for 50 years, and it costs about $0.05.
In our most recent podcast, Drew Birnie and I break down the manipulation machine and how to inoculate yourself against it, since knowing the tricks alone won’t save you.
See you Monday,
Mark Manson