The Rebel Yell PR Strategy: Picking a Fight To Get Recognised

The rebel yell PR strategy is one of my favourites.

There are some brands we love a little bit more than others.

We love the brave. We love the rebels. We love the mis­fits. We love the under­dogs. We love the smart minor­ity. We love those who dare stick their neck out and risk their business. 

The rebels we cel­eb­rate man­age to come out in front of a sig­ni­fic­ant shift in our soci­et­al value sys­tem. Yes, it’s a ques­tion about tim­ing — and some­times blind luck.

Sparking con­tro­versy as a PR strategy is often frowned upon. It’s seen as a cheap trick to attract atten­tion.

Still, brands can reap sig­ni­fic­ant bene­fits; con­tro­versy cre­ates a rift in pub­lic opin­ion between them and us. 

Rock and roll were con­sidered dev­il music by the late major­ity for quite some time. Unethical, even. It was push­ing the bound­ar­ies of what was socially accept­able. And more import­antly, rock and roll are still around today.

After all — Elvis Presley was a rebel.

If being con­tro­ver­sial is a power­ful PR strategy, what’s the catch? Because there must be a catch, right?

In 1928 George Washington Hill, the pres­id­ent of the American Tobacco Company, hired Edward Bernays, today known as the fath­er of pub­lic rela­tions, to help him recruit women smokers. 

The Father of PR: Edward Bernays

Edward Bernays (1891 – 1995) is con­sidered the fath­er of pub­lic rela­tions. His uncle was the fam­ous psy­cho­lo­gist Sigmund Freud, and Bernays, too, was inter­ested in beha­vi­our­al psy­cho­logy. ¹Edward Bernays. (2023, November 13). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​E​d​w​a​r​d​_​B​e​r​n​ays ²Olasky, M. (1984). Retrospective: Bernays’ doc­trine of pub­lic opin­ion. Public Relations Review, 10, 3 – 12. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​S​0​3​6​3​-​8​1​1​1​(​8​4​)​8​0​088 – 0

Edward Bernays’ wife, Doris Fleischmann, was also a PR con­sult­ant who sig­ni­fic­antly con­trib­uted to the PR industry.

Bernays cer­tainly was some­thing of a char­ac­ter: His most fam­ous book is titled “Propaganda” — in which he out­lined how to man­age the per­cep­tions of crowds, much like mod­ern Niccolo Machiavelli or Sun Tzu. ³Propaganda. (2023, November 10). In Wikipedia. https://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​P​r​o​p​a​g​a​n​d​a​_​(​b​ook)

“The con­scious and intel­li­gent manip­u­la­tion of the organ­ised habits and opin­ions of the masses is an import­ant ele­ment in demo­crat­ic soci­ety. Those who manip­u­late this unseen mech­an­ism of soci­ety con­sti­tute an invis­ible gov­ern­ment which is the true rul­ing power of our coun­try.”
Source: Propaganda ⁴Bernays, E. L. (1928). Propaganda. New York, NY: Horace Liveright.

PR Case Study: Torches of Freedom

When help­ing Lucky Strike, Bernays real­ised that cigar­ette smoking was mostly a male habit. From a busi­ness per­spect­ive, there was a golden oppor­tun­ity to add half the pop­u­la­tion to Lucky Strike’s list of poten­tial customers. 

No one had done this suc­cess­fully, not because no one ever had that idea, but because it was a tough nut to crack. But Edward Bernays suc­ceeded by tap­ping into anoth­er pre­vail­ing trend in soci­ety: The eman­cip­a­tion of women. 

Bernays posi­tioned cigar­ettes for women as “Torches of Freedom.” He placed the idea in art­icles, news­pa­pers, celebrity endorse­ments, and events. He planted the pub­lic per­cep­tion of women smoking not because it was enjoy­able but as a sym­bol of female independence.

PR Case Study: Eggs and Bacon

Have you ever had eggs and bacon for break­fast at a hotel? Well, you can thank Bernays for that idea.

Another PR legend is how Bernays helped the farm­ing industry con­vince people to eat more eggs and bacon. To make this hap­pen, he wanted to change people’s per­cep­tion of when it’s okay to eat eggs and bacon. 

Bernays cooper­ated with food sci­ent­ists to estab­lish that eggs and bacon should be part of a healthy break­fast for every American. And to mani­fest this, he col­lab­or­ated with chains of hotels to have them serve eggs and bacon for break­fast. ⁵Later in life, Bernays became a veget­ari­an and advoc­ated for a meat­less diet, which was unusu­al at the time, espe­cially giv­en his work pro­mot­ing products like bacon.

Learn more: Edward Bernays — The Father of PR

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As a way of dis­play­ing a bur­geon­ing move­ment of women’s rights in the US, female celebrit­ies and influ­en­cers star­ted smoking cigar­ettes out in the open as a sign of eman­cip­a­tion since smoking cigar­ettes in pub­lic was some­thing only “fallen” women did.

Bernays hired women to march while smoking their “torches of free­dom” in the Easter Sunday Parade of 1929, a march tra­di­tion­ally well-covered by the media. Of course, this con­tro­versy sparked lots of pub­li­city for the cause.

The cam­paign helped push the women’s move­ment for­ward. That’s good. But it per­suaded more people to take up smoking. That isn’t good.

Don’t get me wrong. Someone might think that smoking is good or that grown-ups should be allowed to decide what’s best for them­selves. I respect that. 

But the crit­ic­al point here is that it’s pos­sible to spark con­tro­versy for controversy’s sake. It’s pos­sible to scare people sense­less. It’s pos­sible to shock or gross people like American Apparel, who face lots of pub­lic out­rage for their sex­ist ads. 

Yes, it’s con­tro­ver­sial, but there’s noth­ing rebel­li­ous about rein­for­cing old ste­reo­types or mak­ing people feel bad about themselves.

I could argue that American Apparel is deploy­ing a con­tro­ver­sial PR strategy. They want to piss off an estab­lish­ment of prudes that we shouldn’t be so afraid of sexu­al innuendo.

Such argu­ments don’t hold up; women have been objec­ti­fied in the media for as long as mass media have been around. 

Rock and roll was a step for­ward. Objectifying women — isn’t.

This is espe­cially regret­table since there are thou­sands and thou­sands of mean­ing­ful rebel­lions for brands to par­ti­cip­ate in.

Why not come out before gay mar­riage — because the com­pany doesn’t even want money from homo­phobic cus­tom­ers any­way? The middle class is tak­ing over everything, from liv­ing to think­ing. Why not rebel against this?

There’s con­sumer­ism to rebel against. Capitalism. Communism. Climate. Religion, even. Heck, you could even rebel against tech­no­logy tak­ing over our lives. Whatever.

But here’s the key to using con­tro­versy as a power­ful strategy:

You fight with someone stronger than you to cre­ate your desired future. Not by exploit­ing what’s already wrong with society.

PR Resource: The Rebel Yell Statement

Brand Positioning: The Rebel Yell Statement

Copywriter Kevin Rogers pub­lished this simple yet effect­ive script to improve your storytelling, the Rebel Yell state­ment, named after the legendary rock anthem by Billy Idol.

Here’s the rebel yell state­ment script for you to try: 

My name is _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​, I love _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ but was fed up with _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​. So I cre­ated _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​ that _________.

Here’s an example by Rogers on Steve Jobs:

My name is Steve, I love com­puters but was fed up with the snail’s pace of com­mer­cial tech­no­logy. So I cre­ated a user-friendly com­puter that pro­cesses inform­a­tion faster than any­thing else out there today.

Here’s the rebel yell state­ment I wrote for this blog, Doctor Spin:

My name is Jerry, I love PR, but was fed up with “social media experts” giv­ing cli­ents bull­shit advice. So I cre­ated Doctor Spin to share action­able insights based on aca­dem­ic research, hands-on exper­i­ence, and passion.

Learn more: 3 Ways to Improve Your Storytelling (in 15 Minutes)

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PR Resource: How To Identify a Good PR Strategy

How To Identify a Good PR Strategy

Your PR strategy should answer one simple question:

• Does this strategy provide a guid­ing prin­ciple for how our organ­isa­tion should win the war for atten­tion, trust, and sup­port in our com­pet­it­ive landscape?

Whenever your PR strategy fails to answer this ques­tion, it also fails to provide a roadmap to success.

Learn more: Your Bullshit PR Strategy is Cringe, Sorry

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PR Resource: More PR Strategies