An average individual spends 60% of their income on non-essential items.

The act of society encouraging individuals to buy goods is called consumerism. Most of these purchased goods are usually goods that we do not need.

For example, buying the latest video game is not a matter of life and death. However, through advertisement and peer pressure, it might seem to many that not buying a video game will be the end of your life.

In his book, The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness, David Ramsey put it beautifully;

We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like David Ramsey

Industrial Era – The roots of consumerism

In the past, consumerism was a phenomenon only experienced by the super-rich.

During the 18th Century, with the discovery of many natural resources and invention of many machines such as the steam engine, the production of goods rose immensely. People started getting richer.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

Due to the terrible living conditions, as people got richer, most of their money was spent on purchasing necessities such as medication, plumbing, etc.

This is an advertisement for medicine in the 1790s;

Image Credit: Google

As seen, there is only a lot of text and it is highly factual.

Sigmund Freud and Edward Bernays – The true founder(s) of consumerism?

Up until the 1900s, most people thought of human beings as rational creatures; human beings were those who lived through numbers and facts.

Sigmund Freud

Australian neurologist Sigmund Freud changed this notion. Through intensive research, he came to the conclusion that humans are only rational consciously. However, subconsciously, they are highly irrational and emotional.

Freud had a distant nephew by the name of Edward Bernays. During World War I, Bernays was highly interested in propaganda and the influence it had on society.

Edward Bernays

In his mind, he was already forming a theory about how propaganda could be used outside of a war scenario. After the war was over, Bernays came across the works of his uncle. This was perhaps the moment where he realized how susceptible the human mind is to external factors.

Since “propaganda” had too much connotation of the war, Bernays decided to call himself “Public Relations Counsellor”. He revolutionized the world of advertisement by promoting products as emotion and symbol rather than promoting it with only facts.

The cigarette March – Bernays masterpiece

In 1929, George Washington Hill, president of the American Taboo Company, approached Bernays. During this era, it was a taboo for women to smoke cigarettes. Hill wanted this Taboo to be broken as he was losing 50% of his clientele.

During the annual Easter Parade in April 1929, Bernays asked a group of women to smoke cigarettes while marching. Before the protest, he secretly informed journalists that a few women will be smoking, and they will be referring to their actions as “The torches of freedom”.

Torches of freedom

You see, it was a taboo for women to smoke cigarettes because they were symbolized as power. When Bernays told the group of women to smoke, he was creating a symbol that women should also have equal power. That is what equality in the US is all about and even lady liberty carries a torch of freedom.

When the parade happened, hundreds of Journalists captured the women smoking and the headlines the next day were all about “The torches of freedom”. All throughout the USA, cigarette sales soared as women started purchasing them.

This was merely one of the hundreds of clever stunts Bernays pulled off.

His list of clients:

President Calvin Coolidge

Procter & Gamble

CBS

General Electrics

And many more…

Advertisement and Emotions

Bernays realized that an advertisement should sell an emotion rather than the product itself. He would often hire doctors to vouch for the product in order to attract customers. He would also hire celebrities to wear certain products as a method of promotion.

Although these advertisement tactics are well known today, and we are quite desensitized to it when Bernays implemented it during the 1920’s it would regularly take the market by storm.

Advertisement after Bernays influence on the market (It is extremely different from the one in the 1800s)

Although there were a few other, Bernays was the main man who really kickstarted the consumerism movement that fueled much of the 20th century. It has fueled much of this century as well.

When Bernays started his endeavour, Paul Mazur from Harvard Business Review had said the following;

We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs. Paul Mazur

Love Bernays or Lament him?

Even though I do deplore the act of consumerism, I think what Bernays did was right. I believe that most humans can be highly irrational. It is therefore wise to find a method to control their irrationality (consumerism).

Also, the act of consumerism allows for innovation and without it, I could not have gotten the opportunity to write this article today.

Edward Bernays died in 1995 at the age of 103. He was still a public relation councillor and was highly in demand. He charged $1000 an hour and just a few days before his death had met with a client.

So as you sip your champagne this New Years, give a toast to Bernays for leaving us with a blessing and a curse.