March 31, 1929: This looks like a picture of a young couple promenading down Fifth Avenue in the Easter Parade. What you’re actually seeing is the first-ever public relations stunt.
Edward Bernays was hired by Lucky Strike cigarettes to enlarge its customer base by encouraging women to smoke. Bernays had his secretary, Bertha Hunt (pictured) and ten other women join the Easter Parade, all of them smoking. He had alerted the press as to what was going to happen, so there were plenty of photographers on hand to capture the moment. The photos received wide coverage and created a controversy—in those days, only “bad girls” smoked, and Bernays’s stunt went under the cover of women’s emancipation.
Edward Bernays was hired by Lucky Strike cigarettes to enlarge its customer base by encouraging women to smoke. Bernays had his secretary, Bertha Hunt (pictured) and ten other women join the Easter Parade, all of them smoking. He had alerted the press as to what was going to happen, so there were plenty of photographers on hand to capture the moment. The photos received wide coverage and created a controversy—in those days, only “bad girls” smoked, and Bernays’s stunt went under the cover of women’s emancipation.
It is often very illuminating... to ask yourself how you got at the facts on which you base your opinion. Who actually saw, heard, felt, counted, named the thing, about which you have an opinion? Was it the man who told you, or the man who told him, or someone still further removed? And how much was he permitted to see?
“What is good and evil no one knows yet, unless it be he who creates. He creates man’s goal and gives the earth its meaning and its future.”
—F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Part Three, “On Old and New Tablets,” §2 (edited excerpt).
—F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Part Three, “On Old and New Tablets,” §2 (edited excerpt).