“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 have been entirely consumed. […] Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.” (Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker)

A change has come over our democracy. It is called Consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to its country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer. (American Journalist, 1927)

It is obvious. We all want thing we do not actually need, we manage to buy them eventually and we find ourselves at the exact same place where all has started. Wanting something else. Something new. So after some documentaries and readings on the topic, I have decided to share with you some of my findings. 🙂

Ever questioned yourself about the roots and methods of modern consumerism? Or how was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests? Ever thought about how this consumerist era has started? Or PR? Or marketing? How politicians and business learned to create and manipulate the society?



I will tell you. You will be surprised to hear that the work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed,‭ dealt with, and controlled ‬people over time.

You all know Sigmund Freud. He was the founder of psychoanalysis. The man who managed to change the perception about the human mind and the way it works. Freud postulated in “Civilization and it’s discontents” that civilization itself was constructed merely to control the dangerous, animal forces inside human beings. Freud believed that individual freedom was both dangerous and impossible. He believed that human beings can never be allowed to fully express themselves and so, they must always be controlled to some extent.

But what does this have to do with marketing, PR and consumerism? Well, everything. To sell something – a product, an idea, anything – you have to know who you are selling to. And Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the people, of the masses to be exact. Without knowing or wanting, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors and marketing moguls. The people in power – Western governments and corporations have utilized Freud’s theories to try to control the crowds. The business and political world uses psychological techniques to read, create and fulfil our desires, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to us.

Edward Bernays, was actually the first one to use psychological techniques in public relations. After he received a copy of his uncle Sigmund writings he started wondering how can he make money by manipulating the unconscious. He understood from his uncle that is a lot more going on in the human decision making. Not only among individuals, but even more important, among groups. He pioneered the ways in which business can make us want what we don’t need by linking mass produced goods to our hidden, unconscious desires and fears. And that was what made him different than others in his field. He understood you don’t have to hit people with factual information to make them buy things. That was not the way the world worked or works. He originated the idea that people don’t purchase something, but they were engaging themselves emotionally and personally. It’s not that you need the new piece of clothing, but it’s the way it makes you feel wearing it.

Bernays was enlisted to help with the first world war, in the committee for public information. It was then when he learned how to use propaganda and it was probably around that time that he began to see how propaganda could be used in peacetime to make money as well as during a national conflict. So at the end of the war, he went into business. He called itself ‘council on public relations’. The first time ever when the ‘public relations’ phrase was used. He knew from his uncle’s theories that man has deep, hidden and often dark impulses and that he uses these impulses often more than rational information to make decisions. So he appealed to the unconscious motives in his work for companies and eventually politicians.

He started experimenting with the masses. The most dramatic experiment was I think to persuade women to smoke. One of his early clients, the president of the American Tobacco Corporation asked him to do something about the fact that they were losing half of their market because men were invoking a taboo against women smoking in public. So he first hired a psychoanalyst and tried to find out what smoking and cigarettes meant to women in the first place. He found out that cigarettes were a symbol of the penis and of the male power and that if he could connect cigarettes with the idea of challenging this male power, women will start smoking again. Because they would have their own penises. 🙂 You may smile but this idea sticks till the present even if you are not consciously aware of it. So he managed to do it by calling cigarettes ‘Freedom Torches’ and having a bunch of suffragettes/debutantes light them up at an Easter Day Parade. The meaning was more powerful than the act itself. It meant that anyone who actually believed in this equality between the sexes has to support the cause. Just think about it, it was all so American…You have the torch, the freedom, the liberty. There’s memory, a rational phrase plus a symbol. So from that point forward he made cigarettes sociable acceptable and the sales to women rose. With a little help from the press, all over the world not only in America.

He pioneered the idea of linking products to emotional desires and irrational needs. Through this manipulation, he enabled meaningless objects to become powerful symbols of personal identity. People nowadays express themselves not by their actions, words or ideas – but through the things they buy. And we no longer buy a product because of it’s properties, we buy it because of the way it makes us feel. Because maybe it makes us feel more powerful, more beautiful, more secure, more important, more, more, more. So there you have it – the giant shift from a culture that was need-based to one that is desire-based.

Bernays also brought the idea of linking products to celebrities. Linking beauty products to celebrities he also represented, or dressing his client celebrities with cloths or jewellery from other clients he represented. This is where the idea of product placement came from also. Product placement refers to all the products you see in movies, tv series, tv shows and so on. He was the first one who told car companies to sell cars as symbols of male sexuality. And the first one who paid celebrities to repeat the new and essential message: you buy things not just for need but to express yourself to others.

The great wave of consumerism helped to create a stock market. And yet again Bernays was involved. Promoting the idea that ordinary people should buy shares from banks he also represented. And millions of people followed his advice. He became famous as the man who can understand the mind of the crowd. So in the 1924 the president contacted him. The press thought of him as a taciturn and dull figure. So Bernays did exactly what he had done with products before. He persuade famous movie stars to visit the White House and have a talk with the president. Evidently the front pages all wrote about this with headlines like “the president nearly laughed”. Everybody was happy. 🙂 And for the first time in history politics was involved with public relations.

The funny thing is that eventually, Sigmund Freud – who lived in Vienna at that time – lost his fortune with some bad investments during the war and it was his nephew, Edward Bernay’s that came to his rescue. How? By regurgitating, re-packaging and re-marketing his ideas to the United States. He arranged that his books would be published in the USA and he did it really smart. Because maybe not everyone would have normally accepted his uncles writings (because of some controversial topics he touched). But he brought first the idea, than made it acceptable and only then capitalized it. And he started sending precious money back to his uncle.

So this is how it all started…