Introduction

Today I want to write some of my thoughts about an essay written by Edward Bernays in 1947, titled The Engineering of Consent". Edward Bernays is also known as The Father of Public Relations.

Unsurprisingly, as a Public Relations Professional myself, I have always treated Bernay's works like a consolidated PR bible of sorts.

And in Bernay's words, the engineering of consent relies on the--

"use of an engineering approach—that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs....Their dispassionate approach and methods may be likened to those of the engineering professions which stem from the physical sciences."

So, I am going to commit a possible sin of blasphemy by adding the word "sustainable" to Bernay's title. In today's post, I will expound more on the idea of how to engineer consent in a sustainable manner, and why it is important to consider things in the longer term.

Subjective Vs Objective Value

Very often, people in the masses get terribly confused over the idea of subjective and objective value. Sometimes, some people cannot even differentiate between what is verifiable and what is not verifiable.

As a rule of thumb, a value is subjective when you cannot measure it, or when it cannot be verified by a 3rd, 4th, 5th party. In other words, it becomes a "he says/ she says" situation.

A value however, is objective when you can measure or verify it. You force a value systematically from the subjective quadrant to the objective quadrant when you can somehow make it in black-on-white.

There is therefore profound truth in mathematics and the written word.

Let me further illustrate the difference with an example that is easy to understand. Consider the concept of beauty .

You may have heard so many times that beauty is subjective. You might meet a person who is nothing society defines as outwardly beautiful, yet he/she is beautiful to you. To some aesthetics doctors, beauty can also be objective, in accordance to the golden ratio of "1.1618". Our human psyche naturally and quickly accesses everyone according to this ratio that we are not even conscious that we are doing this.

Because so few important things in life can be measured accurately with numbers, consent then becomes very important.

Let's talk about prices and feelings.

If you are craving for Mint Ice Cream now, you might be willing to pay a premium for it.

Assume that the Mint Ice Cream takes USD$0.50 to prepare--who cares though, you are willing to pay USD$10 for it. To your friend who's going to eat this ice cream with you however, he might think you are crazy to be willing to pay such a high sum for it.

As long as there is a willing buyer and seller, who is to say that this transaction is a "scam"? Oh wait--your friend might, even though you are perfectly willing, because USD$10 is 2000% above the cost price of the Mint Ice Cream.

To the seller who knows your feeling, he might decide to charge you USD$10, because he can and because you are willing. And to sustain your positive emotion in addition to fulfil your craving, he might even have you seated with your friend at the best seat in his cafe-- exclusive seats in a quiet Japanese room facing a tranquil forest.

This is what I mean by the engineering of sustainable consent. It is taking note of sensitivities in any given context and keeping emotions positive and sustainable.

Sustainable Consent Is About A Keen Respect Towards Context: The Known/Unknown Matrix

The next concern relates to ignorance. Using the same Mint Ice Cream example, what if you have the false impression that the ice cream costs USD$9 to make instead of USD$0.50, and you therefore find USD$10 reasonable? This false impression of course is due to your own ignorance.

Because you found out the huge difference in prices later, you felt so cheated, even though you were willing then. However, technically the seller did not lie to you and the seller might even regard it as common sense that Mint Ice Cream takes USD$0.50 to produce. How can the PR person engineer sustainable consent taking into consideration that in most situations, there will always be some people who are ignorant in some areas?

Very often, human beings cannot see reality as is. We all have cognitive biases inherently.

Perhaps it is here that a conceptualization of the unknown/known matrix is useful. Can you blame a member of the public for not knowing what you know? Many times, we also operate in the unknown-unknown.

So how should you deal with such sentiments? Perhaps the answer lies in the insistence to pursue a sustainable series of positive emotions and consent towards your chosen audiences.

And as PR professionals we can do that via patience, the choice to prioritize people of similar values, the respect towards people who wish to continue staying deluded.

Seriously, how many years do we have to live--to waste time trying to impose our values on the deluded, or people with different visions and values?

Develop a set of tools to spot deluded people or people with different visions. This could be via a strong vision or brand, so vivid and clear that the more you put effort and resources into this branding, the more you polarize and keep unsuitable people at bay.

Deluded people are the worst sort of people to deal with--deal with them only if they pay you well, and even then, you still have to consider if they are worth your time as they don't add value to your legacy.

Observe The Discrepancy Between Vision And Actions

Curiously, as a social scientist, Edward Bernays was aggressively neutral about how his manual will be used. He obviously decided that there is no point talking about subjective stuff like "ethics", and intelligently left it out of his PR manual. Observe his life however, and you will know that he died a really rich man who engineered various PR campaigns that resulted in extremely huge profit margins for tobacco companies.

For--when is it "unethical" to engineer consent?

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that ethics is unimportant--ethics in fact concerns the soul of your legacy and will affect the sustainability of consent in your masses. But ethics can neither be measured easily nor accurately, and many people lie all the time.

A friend has once pointed out that whenever you scream that something is "unfair", it means that you want the benefits the other party have for yourself, too. The fact that you label an experience "unfair" unveils such intense and personal feelings, which again reveals highly subjective values.

Instead of focusing on ethics, why not focus on whether you can identify with the vision of any said project or cause? Of course leaders or influencers can lie incessantly about their respective visions over time, but that would then lead to a terribly inconsistent branding for their projects and themselves. Following the vision and comparing the vision with actions is infinitely a more valuable matrix than trying to track adherence to a more abstract sort of "ethics".

As PR professionals it might be wise to remind ourselves from time to time to engineer consent towards projects with honourable visions as well, because life is so short.

Will You Join Me In Engineering Sustainable Consent?

We live today in an era with unprecedented freedom and power to the masses. I feel privileged to be standing with you in this age of glory, where everything has never been clearer or more transparent.

It's crazy and it's exciting.

In my previous post, I put to you that is the beginning of an exciting era of cryptocurrency . Ever more importantly, I wish to put to you that this is also an important time in history when public relations has never been more important. As more and more masses in various parts of the world have increased access to internet and the technology, blockchain is now changing how money, knowledge and capital flow.

Truth be told: I don't want to be someone who merely engineers consent. As a PR professional, I want to be someone who engineers sustainable consent. In other words, I want your future series of sustainable positive emotions too.

And I humbly invite you to stand with us.