Hacker News Reader

Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

The whole industry of advertising as we understand it today was created by those who had done propaganda during the first and second world war, and realised they could apply their skills in the field of business.

To learn the history of propaganda, advertising and how it is embedded deeply in our current political machine, watch The Century of the Self, a 2002 documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

View on HN

I haven't watched the documentary, but I assume you're familiar with the impact of behaviorism on the advertising industry, before WW2?

John B. Watson[0] (founder of the behavioural psychology school) pivoted to advertising in the beginning of the 20th century.

For those who are not familiar with the subject or his research methods, I recommend reading up on the Little Albert experiment[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment

The Century of the Self does cover advertising being born from early 20th century psychology:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self#Overvi...

I don't remember if Watson is explicitly mentioned though (it's possible he is, it's been a while since I've seen it).

Kinda but advertising was called propaganda in some places before the term was marred by WWII and was afterwards rebranded as advertising.

In some languages it was never rebranded (I believe the Portuguese word for "advertisement" is just "propaganda")

In spanish too. Although depending on region and context you might also use publicidad.

It was rebranded "public relations", as noted in the referenced documentary. A central figure in the film is Edward Bernays, who was referred to as "the father of public relations".

A very interesting character he is

It was the 1920s after WWI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com