Targeted Persuasion from Prohibition to Personalization: How Wheeler and Bernays Paved the Path for Firnal
- Abdullah "Adam" Syed
- 23 hours ago
- 31 min read
Introduction
In the early twentieth century, American society was twice shaken by sweeping campaigns of persuasion—first in the crusade to ban alcohol, and later in the rise of modern consumer advertising. In each case, master manipulators crafted messages that resonated deeply with different segments of the public, exploiting fears, desires, and identities to achieve their goals. This paper examines two emblematic figures of these eras: Wayne Wheeler, the political strategist of Prohibition, and Edward Bernays, the so-called “father of public relations.” We explore how Wheeler’s targeted propaganda during the Prohibition movement and Bernays’ psychologically astute advertising campaigns both relied on tailored messaging strategies that were startlingly effective for their time. We then consider the philosophical and psychological principles underlying their tactics—emotional appeal, cultural anxiety, aspiration, and identity construction—and how these principles form a blueprint for Firnal, a modern company leveraging data to hyper-personalize campaigns at scale.
The story of Wayne Wheeler and Edward Bernays is more than historical curiosity; it is a study in how influential communicators can “pull the wires that control the public mind”. By analyzing Wheeler’s and Bernays’ approaches in depth, we gain insight into the continuity between early 20th-century propaganda and today’s data-driven marketing. In doing so, we see that the core strategy—delivering the right message to the right audience in the right way—is timeless, even as technology has transformed the tools of delivery. The following sections provide a historically rich background of Wheeler’s Prohibition tactics and Bernays’ advertising philosophy, then connect these to modern personalized campaigning. Visual examples of period propaganda and campaigns will illustrate how strikingly these pioneers anticipated techniques that are now being supercharged by companies like Firnal.
Wayne Wheeler and the Prohibition Propaganda War
By the 1910s, the movement to outlaw alcohol in the United States had become a formidable political force. At its helm stood Wayne Bidwell Wheeler, chief lobbyist of the Anti-Saloon League, who earned a reputation as “one of the most feared men in American politics”. Wheeler was a tireless organizer and tactician; a contemporary biographer claimed that he “controlled six Congresses, dictated to two Presidents… and was recognized… as the most masterful and powerful single individual in the United States”. While this might be hyperbole, it underscores Wheeler’s outsized influence in achieving the ratification of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) in 1919. His success owed not only to political pressure tactics (like unseating “wet”) but also to a shrewd use of targeted messaging. Wheeler understood that Americans of different backgrounds had different fears and values; to mobilize a broad coalition for Prohibition, he and the Anti-Saloon League carefully tailored their propaganda to speak to each constituency’s deepest concerns.
“Tailoring Fear” – Wheeler’s Segmented Messaging Tactics
Wheeler’s genius was in molding the temperance message to fit the audience. He recognized that a one-size-fits-all moral appeal (“liquor is evil”) would not suffice to unite the disparate groups needed to support a nationwide ban. Instead, he crafted bespoke arguments for each demographic, turning alcohol into a personal threat to whatever each group held dear. Historical accounts describe how, under Wheeler’s guidance, Prohibition advocates would say one thing to one crowd and something quite different to another, all in service of the dry cause. As one commentary notes, “totally opposing groups found themselves agreeing on at least one thing: alcohol was bad,” thanks to skillful spin that made liquor the scapegoat for many social.
Exploiting Racial Anxieties: To white audiences—particularly those with racist sentiments—Wheeler’s propagandists stoked fear of the Black population by claiming that alcohol would “turn Black men into brutes” who threatened white. This rhetoric played on the pernicious “Black brute” stereotype, insinuating that a drunken Black man would become a rampaging menace. Such appeals resonated with white supremacists and xenophobes of the era, effectively linking Prohibition to racial “protection.” Conversely, when speaking to Black communities, the message was flipped: they were told that alcohol was “hindering [Black] progress” and was a tool of white. In other words, liquor was framed as a poison deliberately inflicted on Black neighborhoods to keep them impoverished and subjugated. By adjusting the narrative, Wheeler managed to align both racist whites and disenfranchised Blacks with the same policy. Each group came to see Prohibition as in its own interest, either as a shield against another race or as liberation from a social weapon. It is a stark example of how Wheeler manipulated cultural fears: he made alcohol the common enemy, whether the fear was of racial violence or of continued racial subordination.
Gender-Based Appeals: Wheeler’s campaign also targeted men and women with different moral warnings, tapping into the era’s gender norms and anxieties. Men were cautioned that alcohol imperiled the virtue and fidelity of women – essentially, that if society remained wet, their wives might become promiscuous under liquor’s influence. This claim played on a double standard in which female sobriety was equated with chastity; the subtext was that a drunken wife would stray or behave immorally, bringing shame to her husband. While such assertions were often whispered or implied rather than plastered on billboards, they dovetailed with broader fears about the loosening of sexual morals in the Jazz Age. Women, on the other hand, were presented with a mirror-image fear: alcohol would turn their husbands into degenerates – brutes who squandered wages, abused their families, or indulged in debauchery. Prohibition propaganda frequently depicted the tragic home life of a drinking man: in one popular image, a drunken father is shown assaulting his wife as their children cower. The message to women was clear – voting for Prohibition was necessary to protect homes and children from ruin. By emphasizing domestic violence, poverty, and “degenerate” behavior as inevitable outcomes of male drinking, Wheeler’s campaign galvanized countless wives and mothers to the dry cause. In effect, Wheeler exploited Victorian gender ideals: men were to be protectors of chaste wives and innocent children, and alcohol made a mockery of that protective role on all fronts.
Class and Economic Appeals: Another prong of Wheeler’s tailored strategy addressed class divisions between industrial capitalists and the working class. To laborers and farmers, dry advocates argued that alcohol was a tool of exploitation—“a capitalist ploy to keep them subjugated”. Saloons were portrayed as traps set by factory owners to entice workers into drunkenness, thus sapping their strength and resolve. As long as the working man drank, he would remain oppressed and poor, went the argument. Conversely, to factory owners and industrialists, the League warned that alcohol made workers lazy and inefficient. From this angle, booze was bad for business: it dulled the labor force, decreased productivity, and increased accidents and absenteeism. Both messages were manipulative half-truths that framed alcohol as the culprit behind labor strife and low output. By pushing these narratives, Wheeler successfully courted support from unlikely allies. Progressive labor unions, who saw banning alcohol as a step toward an upright, productive working class, found common cause with magnates like Henry Ford who backed Prohibition to enhance worker discipline. In one stroke, Wheeler managed to convince workers that Prohibition was pro-labor and bosses that Prohibition was pro-business – a remarkable feat of cognitive politics. As a historian quipped, “Wheeler was known to exploit people’s fears to get them to vote out alcohol”, deftly tweaking the fear to fit the listener.
Propaganda from the Prohibition era often personalized the danger of alcohol to its audience. In this Anti-Saloon League poster, the “Drunkard” is blamed for everything from disease to domestic ruin: it warns that the drunkard will suffer “Venereal Diseases, Delirium Tremens, General Debility,” and that his children are threatened with “Insanity, Epilepsy.” The tagline drives home a collective fear: “Alcoholism means death to the nation.” Such dire messaging appealed especially to women worried about their family’s fate and to patriots worried about national decay【63†】.
Through these tailored approaches, Wheeler and the Anti-Saloon League cobbled together a broad coalition that included pious churchgoers, nativist xenophobes, white and Black civic leaders, industrial tycoons, labor reformers, suffragettes, and Southern populists. It was a patchwork of unlikely bedfellows, united only by the belief that banning alcohol would address their particular grievance. As the National Endowment for the Humanities has noted, Prohibition became the first of America’s modern “culture wars,” an issue onto which myriad social anxieties were. Wheeler was the cartographer of those anxieties. By the time the U.S. entered World War I, he even tied alcohol to patriotism: “Booze or Coal?” asked one wartime League poster, arguing that grain used for liquor should be conserved for troops and food. In New York, a pro-dry flyer insinuated that continuing to drink was practically treasonous, since the biggest American breweries were owned by German-Americans. The charged wartime climate amplified Wheeler’s segmented messaging; suddenly even many beer-loving Americans felt it their duty to abstain for the flag’s sake.
Wayne Wheeler’s “pressure politics” were matched by pressure propaganda. He sold Prohibition as all things to all people, vilifying alcohol from every angle: as a threat to racial purity for some, to moral purity for others, and to social order and efficiency for all. The consistency was in the technique if not the content of his message. It was a consciously cynical approach—Wheeler knew full well that the real goal was simply to eradicate the saloon, yet he was willing to tell any tale that would motivate a given audience to that end. This flexible, fear-based messaging laid a foundation for later 20th-century propagandists. Even after the failure of Prohibition (the 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933), the lesson remained: a campaign can be won by manipulating group identities and fears more effectively than the opposition. That lesson was not lost on a younger contemporary of Wheeler’s who took the art of tailored persuasion in a new direction: Edward Bernays.
Edward Bernays and the Rise of Consumer Advertising
Where Wheeler practiced political propaganda in pursuit of a moral reform, Edward L. Bernays applied similar principles to the realm of commerce and public opinion in peacetime. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, is widely regarded as a pioneer of modern public relations and advertising. In the 1920s and 1930s, as mass consumer culture blossomed in America, Bernays developed and codified techniques to “engineer consent” – essentially, to manipulate public perceptions and habits to favor his clients’ products or causes. If Wheeler was an intuitive manipulator of crowds, Bernays was a deliberate student of psychology, drawing on Freud’s ideas about unconscious desires and Gustave Le Bon’s theories of crowd behavior. He unabashedly acknowledged the manipulative power of his craft. In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays wrote: “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind”. Bernays viewed society as a malleable mass and considered it legitimate—indeed necessary—for skilled communicators to mold public opinion “as a smoothly functioning society” required.
Bernays’ Philosophy: Creating Images and Engineering Consent
Bernays believed that emotional associations and symbolic imagery could trump rational argument in shaping people’s beliefs and behaviors. In contrast to earlier advertisers who simply touted a product’s features or quality, Bernays sought to transform products into idea carriers – objects that fulfilled psychological needs or represented abstract ideals. He argued that by connecting a product to an aspiration or a fear, one could stimulate desire where none existed before. As he observed, modern economies had reached a point where “supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand”. In practice, this meant advertising had to create new desires and shape habits (like persuading a nation to adopt a hearty bacon-and-eggs breakfast, as we’ll see) rather than just serve existing ones.
Bernays’ campaigns thus often revolved around reframing the public’s perception of an activity or product. His methodology was to find a deeper cultural or psychological lever to associate with the client’s message. He would identify, for example, a societal trend or tension and then position the product as a solution or a symbol within that context. In doing so, Bernays mirrored Wheeler’s insight that the same underlying thing (be it alcohol or a cigarette or food) can be cast in entirely different lights depending on the audience and moment. But Bernays took it a step further: he orchestrated events and stunts to make his point indirectly, rather than just issuing propaganda leaflets. If Wheeler mastered the fiery broadside, Bernays mastered the subtle publicity stunt and the media narrative.
Two of Bernays’ most famous campaigns illustrate how he used imagery and social psychology to change norms: one made it socially acceptable for women to smoke cigarettes, and another created the enduring American habit of bacon and eggs for breakfast. Along the way, Bernays also contributed to the association of cigarettes with masculine ruggedness and to numerous other marketing crusades. Below, we dive into these signature efforts.
“Torches of Freedom”: Marketing Cigarettes as Liberation
In the late 1920s, tobacco companies were keen to expand their market to women, but a strong taboo lingered: it was considered scandalous for a woman to smoke in public. Smoking was seen as a male habit; a lady with a cigarette risked being labeled unwomanly or of questionable virtue. Edward Bernays, working for the American Tobacco Company (maker of Lucky Strike), set out to shatter this taboo. He did so not by preaching equality in advertisements, but by staging a dramatic public spectacle that would encode cigarettes as a symbol of female emancipation.
Bernays orchestrated the now-infamous “Torches of Freedom” march in New York City during the 1929 Easter Sunday parade. First, he consulted a psychoanalyst (A.A. Brill, a student of Freud) about what smoking meant to women psychologically. Brill suggested that, for women, cigarettes could represent a challenge to male power—a sort of rebellious “torch of freedom” to assert equality. This was the insight Bernays needed. He then discreetly recruited a group of young female activists (including his own secretary, Bertha Hunt) to participate in the Easter parade. These women, dressed stylishly, mingled with the parade crowds on Fifth Avenue.
At a pre-arranged signal, they dramatically lit cigarettes in public, as cameras clicked. The press, primed by Bernays’ agents with a news tip, was told that a group of women’s rights marchers were protesting inequality by smoking in defiance of convention. Sure enough, newspapers the next day carried sensational headlines. “Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of ‘Freedom’” proclaimed The New York Times on April 1, 1929. Accounts reported that these daring women called their cigarettes “Torches of Freedom,” lighting them to demand the same right to smoke that men enjoyed. The stunt cleverly tied smoking to the burgeoning women’s liberation movement. By framing it as an act of protest, Bernays garnered sympathy and attention – and crucially, he did so without any direct mention of the tobacco company behind it. (In fact, Bernays insisted that Lucky Strike not be named; the press was to think this was a spontaneous feminist demonstration.)
The impact of the Torches of Freedom march was immediate. Overnight, the cultural taboo was weakened. Many ordinary women, seeing these images and reading these stories, felt a surge of empowerment and began to view smoking as a badge of independence. Sales of cigarettes to women rose thereafter. Bernays had changed the public image of the cigarette: from a vice or vulgar habit, it had been rebranded as a mark of freedom and modern womanhood. As one retrospective put it, “Bernays capitalized on the feminist movement” by making smoking appear to be an act of gender equality. It was a brilliant example of how a product was linked to a larger social narrative – in this case, women’s rights – to change behavior.
Notably, Bernays did more than just run ads with feminist slogans; he manufactured a news event that third parties (the women marchers, journalists, and a cooperating psychiatrist) carried forward. This gave the campaign a credibility and organic feel that traditional advertising lacks. It was an early case of a PR media blitz that feels like cultural phenomenon rather than advertisement, a technique commonplace today.
Selling Masculinity: From Lucky Strike to the Marlboro Man
Even as Bernays helped break one gender barrier by encouraging women to smoke, he and other advertisers were also busy shaping the image of cigarettes for male consumers. For men, who already smoked freely, the task was not making it acceptable but rather associating smoking with an ideal of manliness and power. Bernays understood that men, too, could be influenced by symbolic association. While working with tobacco clients, he supported campaigns that linked cigarettes to masculinity, strength, and even health (however misleadingly). For example, in the 1930s Lucky Strike ads (guided by Bernays’ counsel) featured endorsements from athletes and claimed that toasting tobacco made it less irritating, subtly implying a healthier smoke. But the most famous linkage of cigarettes and masculinity came a bit later, in the 1950s, with the rise of the Marlboro Man campaign – an effort not directly by Bernays, but clearly built on the foundations Bernays and his peers laid. It’s worth examining as an outgrowth of Bernays’ philosophy in the advertising industry.
Originally, Marlboro was introduced as a women’s cigarette in the 1920s (“Mild as May” was its slogan). By the early 1950s, however, Philip Morris (Marlboro’s maker) wanted to revive the brand for a broader market. They hired the Leo Burnett agency, which recognized that to sell filtered cigarettes to men (filters had a slight stigma of being “for women” or less macho), they needed to create an ultra-masculine image. The result was the Marlboro Man – rugged cowboys and other manly archetypes used in ads starting in 1954.
These advertisements were “single-mindedly masculine”, as a marketing analysis later noted: they showed “manly, rugged men doing manly, rugged jobs” tobacco. Cowboy imagery dominated, because the cowboy was (and remains) a potent American symbol of independence, self-reliance, and virility. By featuring cowboys, pilots, sailors, and construction workers – always tough, independent types – the Marlboro campaign successfully transformed the brand’s identity. Within months, Marlboro went from being thought of as mild and feminine to being “the epitome of masculinity” in cigarettes. In these campaigns, visual imagery was paramount: photographs and later TV commercials depicted sun-weathered cowboys on horseback, often with few words except the jingle and tagline. The pitch was entirely image-based and emotional. Smoking a Marlboro was implicitly equated with being as free and strong as a cowboy on the range.
Television, a new medium in the 1950s, greatly amplified this messaging. By the late 50s, dozens of Western-themed shows were on TV, and Marlboro ads often sponsored them or ran during sports broadcasts. On TV, Marlboro reinforced its masculine image with another layer: sex appeal. Commercials featured the popular singer Julie London crooning a seductive song as the Marlboro Man rode horses on screen. The “clear implication,” as one analysis put it, was that “if one smoked Marlboro, one could obtain a woman like Julie”. In other words, Marlboro didn’t just give men rugged individualism; it ostensibly made them attractive to beautiful women. This echoes Bernays’ insight that people often buy things not for the product itself but for the identity or status it confers. Here, the identity was the Uber-male – strong, silent, desirable to women – encapsulated by a simple cigarette.
Bernays was not the creator of the Marlboro Man (that credit goes to the Leo Burnett Agency), but the campaign was a fulfillment of Bernays’ approach: identify the target audience’s self-image or aspirations and then forge a link between the product and that ideal. Just as Bernays had linked Lucky Strikes to liberated womanhood, the advertisers linked Marlboro to rugged manhood. Both are cases of image-based persuasion, trading on emotional symbolism. The Marlboro Man campaign became one of the most successful in history, and it was essentially a large-scale exercise in identity construction through advertising. What Wheeler had done with political identities (the good mother, the patriotic worker, etc.), Bernays and his successors did with consumer identities (the sophisticated woman, the rugged man, etc.).
Bacon and Eggs: “Engineering” a National Habit
Beyond tobacco, Edward Bernays applied his techniques to food, fashion, media, and more. One oft-cited example of his influence is the creation of the bacon-and-eggs breakfast as an American norm. This case is particularly illuminating because it shows Bernays using expert authority and public opinion research to change behavior, rather than emotional imagery alone.
In the 1920s, the Beech-Nut Packing Company (a producer of bacon) came to Bernays with a simple problem: they wanted to sell more bacon. At the time, Americans mostly ate light breakfasts—coffee and a roll, perhaps some fruit. Bacon was not a staple of the morning meal. Bernays devised a campaign not to directly advertise bacon, but to change the medical consensus about breakfast. He asked the company’s physician, Dr. Milton Rosen, to gather opinions from other doctors about whether a heavier breakfast might be healthier. Bernays suspected people could be persuaded to eat a bigger breakfast if it was endorsed by doctors as beneficial. Rosen sent letters to thousands of physicians. About 4,500 doctors replied confirming that, yes, a protein-rich, hearty breakfast was advisable for health.
Bernays then turned this into a sensational news story: he released to newspapers the findings that “4,500 physicians urge Americans to eat heavy breakfasts to improve their health,” with bacon and eggs specifically recommended as an example of such a meal. Newspapers across the country ran headlines about the study, and the idea of bacon and eggs being the “doctors’ choice” for a wholesome start spread rapidly. The campaign did not explicitly advertise Beech-Nut bacon; instead it indirectly boosted it by creating a nationwide impression that a real American breakfast included bacon and eggs. Sales of bacon rose significantly as Americans adjusted their habits, many concluding “if doctors say so, we should eat a big breakfast.” In a sense, Bernays manufactured a new tradition. Indeed, to this day, bacon and eggs remain iconic in American breakfast culture – “all thanks to Edward Bernays,” as one business account flatly states.
This bacon campaign highlights a few of Bernays’ key tactics: using third-party authorities (doctors) to deliver the message, using the press to disseminate the idea as news (rather than paid ads), and aligning the product with a public’s existing belief (concern for health) to spur a change in routine. Instead of fear or desire, here he tapped trust in medical authority and the power of social proof (“everyone is reading that doctors recommend this”). Bernays wrote that the public could be influenced by leaders and experts without even realizing it, noting that “men do not need to be actually gathered together… to be subject to the influences of mass psychology” – even alone reading a newspaper, a person feels the weight of the “group” opinion. By making “doctors recommend bacon” the group opinion, Bernays created demand out of thin air.
Other Notable Campaigns and Legacy
While the scope of this paper focuses on Bernays’ work with cigarettes and bacon, it’s worth mentioning that his repertoire was far broader. In the 1920s, he promoted ivory soap for Procter & Gamble by organizing soap-carving competitions for schoolchildren (to associate the brand with creativity and cleanliness), and he helped fashion industry clients by popularizing trends (such as a campaign to make green a fashionable color to match Lucky Strike’s packaging – convincing women that “Green is the new black”). He even worked on political campaigns and international propaganda; during the Cold War, Bernays consulted for the U.S. government and corporations to manage public opinion in foreign interventions (famously, he was involved in the overthrow of Guatemala’s government on behalf of the United Fruit Company, shaping American media narratives of the event).
Across all these efforts, the philosophical underpinnings remained consistent: people could be guided to think or do something by associating it with something they already value or fear. Bernays treated the public mind as pliable. “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of,” he observed. Unlike Wheeler, who operated with a moralistic fervor (genuinely believing in the sinfulness of alcohol, even as he used dubious means), Bernays was more detached – even cynical – about the process. In his view, this manipulation was simply an instrument that could be used for good or ill. He was proud of calling himself a “professional propagandist” rebranding propaganda as “public relations.”
Importantly, Bernays systematized what Wheeler had done more by instinct. Bernays gave a formal language and theory to persuasion: concepts like “the group mind,” “crystallizing public opinion,” and “engineering of consent.” He drew direct lines from psychological theory to practice, making him a foundational figure for the advertising and PR industries that exploded in the mid-20th century. Every time a modern advertiser conducts focus groups, A/B tests a message, or crafts an image for a target demographic, they are (knowingly or not) following the path Bernays charted. To illustrate this continuity: Bernays’ work set the stage for marketing that sells lifestyles and identities rather than products. The Marlboro Man, the aspirational car commercials, the beauty ads promising empowerment—all these owe a debt to the groundwork of emotion-driven, targeted messaging that Bernays exemplified.
Emotional and Psychological Underpinnings of the Strategies
Despite working in different domains, Wayne Wheeler and Edward Bernays both rooted their messaging strategies in fundamental principles of human psychology. Their success was not random; it flowed from a keen grasp of what moves people. In analyzing their techniques, several common philosophical and psychological underpinnings emerge:
Appeal to Emotion over Reason: Both men understood that emotions – fear, anger, desire, hope – are more motivating than rational arguments. Wheeler rarely won converts by citing alcohol consumption statistics or theological debates; instead, he aroused fear (of violence, of social decay) and anger (at saloon-keepers, at corrupt politicians, at brewers supposedly allied with the Kaiser during WWI). The emotional intensity of a message like “alcohol will make monsters of your men” hit far harder than any sober lecture on temperance. Bernays, similarly, sold products by stirring feelings: the pride and rebellious thrill of a woman smoker, the rugged confidence of a cowboy, the comforting security of a doctor-approved breakfast. He knew from Freud’s work that human choices are often driven by unconscious yearnings and anxieties. Logic and facts were secondary. As Bernays put it, if you can identify the “mental processes” of the masses, you can control them by triggering the right emotional response. Modern psychological research supports this emphasis – decision-making is indeed heavily emotion-driven. Wheeler and Bernays intuitively exploited this long before terms like “emotional marketing” existed.
Exploiting Cultural Fears and Desires: The content of the emotional appeal often drew on prevailing cultural fears or aspirations. Wheeler operated in an era of racial tension, immigration waves, shifting gender roles, and class conflict. He plugged alcohol into each of those fault lines, making it the culprit or catalyst for whatever people feared most at that moment. This is a classic use of scapegoating: a single issue is blamed for diverse anxieties. Bernays, in a time of consumerism and changing social norms, tapped into aspirations – the New Woman’s desire for equality, the average man’s desire to be virile and admired, the public’s desire for health and modernity. They both practiced a kind of cultural jiu-jitsu, taking the momentum of a social force and redirecting it toward their ends. For example, the fear of social decline in Wheeler’s audience was turned into crusading zeal against alcohol; the aspiration for social rise (to be seen as liberated or manly or sophisticated) in Bernays’ audience was attached to cigarettes or fashion or food. These tactics demonstrate what could be called identity appeal: linking the message to the audience’s sense of who they are or want to be.
Personalization and Group Identity: A key psychological insight was that people are most effectively persuaded when the message feels personally relevant to them – and one way to ensure relevance is to target their specific group identity. Wheeler did this by segmenting audiences (by race, gender, class, etc.) and customizing the pitch. He made Prohibition a personal matter: your family, your community, your race is at stake. Bernays did similarly, albeit in consumer terms: you, modern woman, can express independence by smoking; you, modern man, can affirm your masculinity with this brand. In both cases, they avoided generic one-size-fits-all messaging. This anticipates the importance of market segmentation in advertising and indeed the hyper-personalization of digital marketing today. As we will discuss in the Firnal section, this idea of tailoring messages to individual or micro-group traits is the direct precursor to modern data-driven targeting. Bernays articulated that “vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner [of mass persuasion] if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society”, acknowledging that influencing subgroups was part of maintaining the larger social order. Essentially, both men practiced early forms of “personalized” communication, long before computers and big data, by keen observation of social divisions and tailoring accordingly.
Use of Symbolism and Narrative: Both Wheeler and Bernays were master storytellers in a sense. They didn’t just offer policy or product – they offered morality tales and symbols. Wheeler turned the struggle against alcohol into a saga of good versus evil, often casting the dry supporters as saviors of American civilization. His propaganda used vivid symbols: the bottle became a demon, the saloon a sinister place of iniquity, the drunkard a fiend or pitiful victim, the dutiful wife a martyr, and the teetotaler a hero. Bernays likewise wrapped products in rich symbolism: a cigarette became the “torch of freedom,” bacon became a pillar of health, a color (Lucky Strike’s green) was cast as the height of fashion to tell a story that if you smoked Luckies you were en vogue. The use of metaphor and image allowed complex social messages to be conveyed at a glance. A classic example from Wheeler’s time is the Anti-Saloon League’s posters that showed Liberty Lady (a symbol of America) being crushed under the weight of beer kegs, or a giant octopus of alcohol enveloping the nation. In Bernays’ case, think of the Marlboro cowboy silhouetted against a sunset – no words, but an iconography of freedom and strength. Humans are story-driven creatures; a symbolic narrative sticks in the mind far more than dry facts. By embedding their appeals in symbols and stories, these strategists ensured memetic success – their ideas propagated widely and lodged in the public consciousness.
Authority and Bandwagon Effects: Another underpinning was the clever use of social proof and authority. Wheeler leveraged authority indirectly by aligning with trusted institutions like churches, or patriotic authority (linking to the U.S. war effort, as in “fight booze to support our boys”). When respectable community leaders (e.g., pastors, teachers) repeated Wheeler’s tailored messages, it lent them credence. Bernays was even more explicit in using authority: he actively involved doctors, academics, and celebrities in his campaigns to serve as authoritative voices. The bacon campaign is a textbook example of authority bias – people changed their eating habits because the authority of 5,000 doctors said so. In addition, Bernays played on the bandwagon effect: making it seem that “everyone” fashionable or smart or patriotic was already doing X, so you should too. For instance, after the Torches of Freedom event received national news, many women felt that a shift had occurred and they didn’t want to be left behind by this new wave of emancipated smokers. Similarly, when the newspapers touted the doctors’ consensus on breakfast, one imagines families not wanting to be the odd ones out still eating a skimpy breakfast. Both Wheeler and Bernays understood that people are influenced by what they perceive others (especially others they respect) are doing. This social herding instinct is a strong psychological force that they weaponized for their causes. As Bernays noted, “if you can influence the leaders, with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group they sway”. Wheeler influenced community leaders and politicians; Bernays influenced trendsetters and experts, but the principle was analogous.
Invisible Manipulation and Ethical Gray Zones: Philosophically, an underpinning of both men’s work is a rather paternalistic view of society – the idea that the masses needed to be guided (or even deceived) for their own good or for the greater good. Wheeler was a true believer that banning alcohol would vastly improve society, and that end justified the manipulative means. Bernays had fewer illusions about altruism (often working for corporate profit motives), but he too argued that an “invisible government” of mental manipulators was a necessary feature of democracy. Both operated in ethical gray zones: Wheeler’s race-baiting and fearmongering were deeply divisive and built on prejudice; Bernays’ campaigns often blurred truth (e.g., suggesting health benefits or masking corporate sponsorship of supposed grassroots events). They relied on the public not fully realizing they were being manipulated. In that sense, their work raises enduring ethical questions about propaganda and advertising – questions that are extremely salient today as we consider the power of Big Data and AI-driven persuasion.
In sum, the tactics of Wheeler and Bernays, for all their differences in context, share a psychological DNA: target the heart, tailor to the person, and trust that the head will follow. Their approaches demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of mass psychology that was ahead of its time. They were effectively early practitioners of what we now call “psychographic targeting” – addressing people’s psychological profiles (values, fears, desires) to influence behavior. It is no coincidence, then, that their strategies are studied as foundational blueprints for modern persuasive campaigns, including those of companies like Firnal that promise to bring personalization to a whole new level.
From Wheeler and Bernays to Firnal: The Evolution of Hyper-Personalized Campaigning
Standing on the shoulders of figures like Wheeler and Bernays, today’s marketers and political communicators have vastly more powerful tools at their disposal. Firnal, a modern company with a mission to leverage data for hyper-personalized campaigning and imaging at scale, represents the cutting edge of this evolution. The core idea that Firnal operates on—that messages should be tailored with granular specificity to each individual or micro-segment—is a direct inheritance from the principles we have discussed. What has changed is not the why of targeted messaging, but the how and the degree.
In the 1920s, Wheeler could segment by broad categories (white vs. Black, men vs. women, etc.) based on observation and social intuition. Bernays in the mid-20th century could refine targeting somewhat (appealing to “young urban women” or “men concerned about image”), using market research techniques available then. But Firnal and its ilk in the 21st century can segment down to the individual, using algorithms that parse innumerable data points – from one’s browsing history and purchase records to social media likes and even personality traits inferred from online behavior. This is hyper-personalization, essentially Wheeler and Bernays on digital steroids. One recent definition puts it plainly: “Hyper-personalization is one-to-one personalization taken to the next level using AI, customer data, and behavior patterns… to deliver content that feels specifically designed for each individual.” In practice, Firnal might send out tens of thousands of different ad variations, each calibrated to resonate with a particular person’s profile.
Firnal’s Strategy as a Technological Blueprint of Proven Techniques: If we break down how Firnal likely operates, we can map almost each element to a historical antecedent:
Data-Driven Audience Segmentation: Firnal collects and analyzes data to identify niche audiences and even segments of one. This is the digital age successor to Wheeler canvassing neighborhoods or Bernays commissioning surveys. The goal is the same: know your audience intimately. Where Wheeler relied on community gossip and Bernays on small-scale surveys and intuition, Firnal uses big data analytics to discern what each person cares about. Does a certain voter respond to economic issues or cultural issues? Does a certain consumer click more on images of adventure or images of luxury? Firnal can know this and adjust accordingly. In essence, Firnal’s algorithms fulfill Wheeler’s role of the astute observer and Bernays’ role of the researcher – but faster and at scale.
Message Customization and A/B Testing: Just as Wheeler could pivot his talking points depending on his crowd, and Bernays could test out different slogans or angles in select markets, Firnal dynamically tests and optimizes messages. Using A/B testing on digital platforms, Firnal might find that one individual reacts better to a fear-based message and another to a humor-based one, and then lock in on the effective approach for each. Over time, the system learns the emotional triggers and cultural cues that work best for each slice of the audience, refining the segmentation further. This is very much in the spirit of Wheeler’s experimentation (he learned by trial what scared people most) and Bernays’ empirical approach (gauging public reactions to his stunts and adjusting tactics). The difference is automation and speed: a process that took human persuaders months or years of feedback now happens in minutes with online metrics.
Hyper-Personalized Content Delivery: Equipped with detailed profiles, Firnal can craft content that feels eerily personal. For example, a modern political campaign using Firnal might show one voter (say, a suburban mother) an ad about how Candidate X will protect families from crime and immoral influences – a digital echo of Wheeler’s message to women about protecting children from drunken fathers. Another voter (perhaps a young working-class man) might see an ad emphasizing how Candidate X will bring jobs back and stop big corporations from exploiting workers – reminiscent of Wheeler’s pitch to labor about sobriety boosting worker empowerment. Meanwhile, a high-income investor type might get messaging about stability and growth – analogous to Wheeler telling industrialists that Prohibition improved efficiency, or Bernays telling consumers that Product Y is the key to a prosperous modern life. The content differs per individual, but the practice of hitting their specific hot-button issues is the same. Firnal’s personalization can also incorporate identity cues: the imagery and language can be tuned to mirror the target’s identity (using their region’s slang, showing people who look like them, referencing their favorite sports team, etc.), which deepens the resonance. In marketing, this is seen in personalized email greetings, product recommendations, and even website experiences that adapt to the user. The idea is to recreate the effect of a one-on-one persuasive conversation – which is exactly what Wheeler did in small town halls and Bernays did in focus groups – now delivered through technology to millions concurrently.
Emotional and Psychographic Targeting: Firnal explicitly leverages what are known as psychographics – attributes like personality, values, and interests – going beyond demographics. This aligns perfectly with the emotional/psychological approach of Wheeler and Bernays. If a subset of users exhibits anxious tendencies in their online behavior, Firnal’s system might learn that fear-based framing works best on them (just as Wheeler played on fears). Another subset might be very achievement-oriented, so aspirational positive messages (the Bernays style of offering status or liberation) might be deployed. Modern data science can even bucket people by Big Five personality traits or other psychological models, and tailor advertising accordingly (this was, for instance, the premise behind the controversial Cambridge Analytica tactics in the 2016 election, where voters were micro-targeted based on personality profiles). Firnal, presumably, employs such methods ethically for marketing or campaigning, but the mechanism is the same: know the psyche, then design the message. Essentially, Firnal provides a platform to implement at scale what Bernays preached: “harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world”libquotes.com – in other words, use the existing psychological buttons (like fear of social exclusion, desire for status, need for security) and press them systematically.
Multichannel Storytelling and Imagery: Just as Wheeler used sermons, print cartoons, songs, and rallies, and Bernays used newspapers, events, and endorsements, Firnal uses every available channel – social media ads, video content, influencer partnerships, tailored news articles, etc. The omnipresence of media today means a narrative can be reinforced everywhere a person looks. Firnal might ensure that a target sees consistent thematically-tailored messaging in their Facebook feed, their YouTube pre-roll ads, their email inbox, and even their streaming TV ads. This creates a powerful bandwagon and confirmation bias effect: when multiple sources echo a message that fits your inclinations, you are far more likely to accept it. This is the modern form of what Wheeler achieved when the town’s minister, newspaper, and women’s group all echoed the same anti-alcohol sentiment – or when Bernays had multiple newspapers independently cover his “Torches of Freedom” event, making it seem like a widespread movement. Firnal’s coordinated, cross-channel approach ensures that personalized messaging doesn’t happen in a vacuum but as part of a coherent narrative experience for the individual. Moreover, Firnal can use visual AI to even tailor images – for example, showing a coastal backdrop to Californians and mountains to Coloradans in an ad, or altering the apparent ethnicity of people in an image to match the viewer’s. Such dynamically generated visuals are a high-tech extension of the principle that the audience should see itself (or its ideals) in the message.
It becomes clear that Firnal’s capabilities are the logical next step in the trajectory started by Wheeler and Bernays. The blueprint they laid out – segment, tailor, appeal emotionally, and deliver through trusted channels – is very much the blueprint Firnal follows, now enhanced by machine learning and ubiquitous data. In effect, Firnal is Wheeler’s and Bernays’ dream (or perhaps nightmare) realized: a system that can scientifically and almost infallibly push the right buttons for persuasion.
Benefits and Risks: Firnal’s approach, like its prototypes, promises tremendous efficacy. Personalized campaigns can dramatically increase engagement, conversion, and persuasion metrics. Studies show that when marketing is hyper-personalized, consumers feel a deeper emotional connection and respond more favorably. A recent survey found 80% of consumers believe personalized campaigns improve their experience, and business leaders are investing in personalization because it boosts ROI. These outcomes mirror the successes of Wheeler (passage of Prohibition, albeit short-lived) and Bernays (shifts in consumer behavior and norms that lasted generations). However, the potency of hyper-personalization raises serious ethical questions – the same ones implicit in Wheeler’s demagoguery and Bernays’ manipulation. At what point does persuasive personalization become pernicious propaganda or invasive influence? Algorithms, could – if left unchecked – reinforce prejudices or exploit vulnerabilities in a way even Wheeler could only dream of. For instance, an algorithm might find that a certain voter has latent racial biases and then serve them increasingly extremist content to leverage that for a political end. This is not hypothetical; critics have noted how social media algorithms (not even as finely tuned as Firnal’s are) have led users down radicalization rabbit holes by feeding them content that triggers their fears or anger. Thus, while Firnal’s mission is to use data for campaigning “at scale,” we must also grapple with the responsibilities that Wheeler and Bernays largely set aside. Transparency, consent, and avoiding deception are modern ideals in communications that were not priorities in the Prohibition or early advertising eras.
Firnal as the Heir: If one imagines explaining Firnal to Wayne Wheeler or Edward Bernays, they would likely be astonished by the technology but instantly grasp the strategy. Wheeler might marvel, “You mean you can individually whisper a different promise in every voter’s ear, simultaneously?!” Bernays might say, “With this, one could truly mold public opinion to an unprecedented degree.” Indeed, Firnal stands as the heir to their legacy – a testament to the enduring blueprint of targeted psychological messaging. The company’s very premise validates the historical insight that persuasion is most powerful when it feels personal. What began on the stump speeches and newsprint of the 1910s and 20s has culminated in algorithmic personalization in the 2020s.
To illustrate with a hypothetical: Consider a modern public health campaign run by Firnal to, say, encourage vaccination. Using Wheeler-like segmentation, Firnal could craft a multitude of messages: to religious conservatives, it frames vaccination as loving thy neighbor and protecting children (morality and family); to minority communities, it addresses historical distrust and frames it as empowerment and equity (echoing a bit how Wheeler told Black audiences that temperance was empowerment); to young adults, it might use Bernays-style aspiration, portraying vaccination as the cool, responsible thing that lets you party and travel safely (appealing to freedom and enjoyment). Each person receives the nuance that is most compelling to them. The historical lineage is evident – only the execution is digital. And likely, such a campaign would achieve higher uptake than a generic one-size-fits-all announcement. That is Firnal’s value proposition: precision targeting honed by data to achieve results that broad messaging of the past could not.
In the era of big data, hyper-personalization has become the cutting-edge approach to influence. Modern marketers use AI algorithms to analyze individual behavior and tailor content accordingly. As this illustrative chart explains, hyper-personalized campaigns boast higher engagement and conversion by delivering the “right message to the right person at the right time.” This technique is essentially an automated, large-scale implementation of Wheeler’s and Bernays’ insight that personalized appeals (whether to fear, ambition, or identity) yield the greatest.
Conclusion
From the temperance halls of the 1910s to the marketing dashboards of the 2020s, the art and science of persuasion have continually advanced, but the fundamental blueprint remains recognizable. Wayne Wheeler and Edward Bernays, in their own contexts, discovered that the key to winning minds is to address people’s hopes and fears in a way that feels tailored just to them. They pioneered the techniques of targeted messaging, emotional appeal, and identity-based framing that have become standard practice – now supercharged by data and technology through companies like Firnal.
Wheeler’s Prohibition crusade demonstrated the power of divide and conquer in messaging: by slicing the public into constituencies and speaking to each in its own emotional language, he built a broad, if uneasy, coalition that achieved a radical constitutional change. Bernays, operating in a consumerist democracy, demonstrated the power of seduce and conquer: by wrapping products and ideas in the mantle of desire, freedom, or scientific credibility, he could subtly seduce the public to adopt new habits and beliefs without them feeling coerced. Both men, implicitly or explicitly, treated society as malleable clay – to be shaped by those skillful enough to understand its contours. As Bernays famously wrote, “we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses”.
Firnal’s emergence in the modern landscape confirms that this understanding is more relevant than ever. The tools may have changed – algorithms instead of pulpits, social media feeds instead of handbills – but the strategy of precision influence is a straight line from Wheeler and Bernays to now. By leveraging vast troves of personal data, Firnal can personalize at a granularity that the early pioneers could only approximate. In doing so, it validates the blueprint: when a message aligns perfectly with an individual’s identity or fears, it can be profoundly persuasive. In marketing jargon, it “converts”; in Wheeler’s and Bernays’ terms, it “convinces.”
This continuity is as cautionary as it is impressive. The stories of Wheeler and Bernays remind us that persuasive power can be used for noble ends or nefarious ones – often a mix of both. Prohibition, enacted via Wheeler’s tactics, arguably overrode individual freedoms and ultimately failed, yet it was driven by genuine social ills and reformist zeal. Bernays’ campaigns improved sales and broke taboos, but also contributed to consumer manipulation and even geopolitical meddling. Today’s hyper-personalized campaigning holds similar duality: it can educate, empower, and efficiently match people with what they need, or it can mislead, exploit, and reinforce divisions. The ethical dimension of this “invisible guidance” of the public remains a pressing concern. Transparency and truth are the recommended antidotes – principles often sacrificed by Wheeler and Bernays in their pursuit of victory.
Ultimately, examining the targeted psychological strategies of these historical figures gives us a deeper appreciation for the mechanics of influence that surround us. Next time we encounter an ad that uncannily speaks to our situation, or a political message that feels like it “gets us,” we might recall Wayne Wheeler’s tailored speeches or Edward Bernays’ Torches of Freedom, and recognize the playbook in action. The medium is new, but the message has a century of history behind it. As we navigate an age of information saturation and personalized media, the stories of Wheeler and Bernays serve as both a guide and a warning: they show how effective and far-reaching targeted messaging can be, and they challenge us to ensure that this power is wielded with wisdom and integrity in the service of truth.
