How Edward Bernays’ propaganda and his concept of engineering consent are seen in the tactics and methods used by modern influencers to persuade their followers.
The Propaganda Influencer
Edward Bernays is often introduced as “the father of public relations,” but in today’s language you could just as easily call him the original architect of influencer culture.
His starting point was blunt: in mass society, people do not make up their minds on their own; their habits and opinions are shaped, often quite deliberately, by those who understand how to work with symbols, emotions and media.
Bernays called this “the engineering of consent.” Instead of arguing with people using facts and logic, you work with their existing desires, identities and anxieties, then build campaigns that make certain choices feel natural, even inevitable.
Modern influencers operate on exactly this understanding. They compress complex decisions into lifestyle cues, stories and endorsements, guiding followers towards a particular outcome, while making it all feel like personal preference.
This is part 3 of a three-part series exploring how modern influencer culture reflects the ideas of early thinkers Gustave Le Bon, Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays.
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How Edward Bernays Propaganda Built Influencer Culture
- By Patrick
- Everyday Persuasion Articles, Real World Examples, The Theory
- Reading Time 8 Minutes
Table of Contents
If you like this type of material, you can read more with our collection of books looking at influence and persuasion.
Influencers as Consent Engineers
Bernays changed the game from simply pushing a product to shaping people’s desires.
Instead of using traditional advertising techniques to sell something that already exists, he asked how to make people feel like they needed or wanted it in the first place.
Instead of convincing someone by using hard sell tactics, his method involved playing on their emotions to encourage reasons for wanting to.
Influencers operate in much the same way.
Instead of simply recommending a product or idea or belief, influencers build a world in which that choice feels like the natural next step — part of a lifestyle, an identity or a solution their audience recognises as their own, or one they want to be a part of.
Influence and persuasion begin before a decision is made. By shaping what looks desirable, influencers help define what their audience comes to want in the first place.
Leaders and the Unconscious Crowd
Bernays was the nephew of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, and was deeply interested in both crowd psychology and Freud’s ideas about the unconscious.
He believed that the public is moved less by rational debate and more by deep‑rooted desires, such as a need to belong, to be admired, to be modern, to feel safe, to feel sexy, to feel virtuous.
His campaigns were designed to hook into those desires to steer consumer choices.
Influencer culture is built on that same relationship with the “unconscious crowd.”
Creators don’t just inform their followers; they give shape to vague wants and anxieties by offering scripts: “this is what success looks like,” “this is what attractiveness looks like, “this is what virtue looks like.”
Followers don’t recognise this as manipulation. Instead, they naturally start to act in ways that satisfy those feelings, often via the products or message the influencer happens to be promoting.
Bernays drew heavily on the ideas of his uncle Sigmund Freud, focusing on the hidden emotional drives that shape behaviour.
Influencer content often works in a similar way, appealing to identity, desire and belonging rather than purely rational thought.
Contagion and Social Proof
Influencers operate in much the same way. They don’t just reflect what is popular; they help create the appearance of popularity in the first place.
When the same product, idea or belief appears repeatedly across multiple creators, backed by high engagement and constant exposure, it begins to feel established and normal.
People follow not just because they are persuaded, but because it looks like it’s already popular.
Bernays was fascinated by social proof: the way people look to others before they make their decisions and choices.
He deliberately manufactured signs of popularity—crowds, queues, newspaper coverage—to make behaviours appear widely accepted before they actually were.
Once something looks popular, people join in partly to avoid missing out and partly because they assume so many others can’t be wrong.
Social Proof
Popularity often appears before it fully exists.
When the same message shows up repeatedly across different creators, it begins to feel widely accepted — encouraging more people to follow.
Influencers perform a modern version of this. They don’t just sell products, they redefine what people want, and who they desire to be.
A routine, aesthetic or belief can spread across platforms until it feels like the default way to live.
People adopt it not only for its practical benefits, but because it represents what is currently seen as modern, successful or desirable.
Bernays worked hard to make certain desires feel modern, desirable and inevitable.
He used the media to show the public that a “real” breakfast should include bacon and eggs, that sophisticated women smoked cigarettes, and that public events should be celebrated in a consumer‑driven way.
His campaigns didn’t just sell products; they redefined what members of the public should want and desire as part of their everyday life.
Viral Desire
Edward Bernays staged the Torches of Freedom campaign on behalf of tobacco companies in 1929, and made sure it was heavily publicised in order to promote the idea of women smoking in public.
The On-Line Invisible Hand
One of Bernays’ most provocative ideas was that modern societies are guided by an “invisible government” who manage the flow of information that citizens rely on.
Contrary to what Conspiracy leaders such as David Icke tell their followers, Bernays wasn’t talking about a secret cabal of rulers, he was talking about the role of PR and marketing professionals.
(This statement marks the opening lines of Bernay’s famous book, which you can read more of here).
In influencer culture, much of the orchestration also happens out of sight.
There are agencies brokering deals, platforms adjusting recommendation logic, brands setting talking points, and creators cross‑promoting in ways that look spontaneous but are carefully negotiated.
The follower sees only the front‑stage performance: creators “just sharing what they love,” trends “just happening,” campaigns that “just went viral.”
Behind that surface, there is often a web of planning that Bernays would instantly recognise as the machinery of modern persuasion.
Much of modern influence happens behind the scenes and out of sight.
What appears spontaneous is often supported by coordination between creators, brands and platforms working quietly in the background.
Edward Bernays’ campaigns were designed to look like natural expressions of public feeling: a march for freedom, an expert committee’s recommendation, a new fashion.
The same logic applies to many influencer pushes.
A coordinated release across several creators, all telling slightly different but harmonious stories about the same product or cause, can pass as an organic wave of enthusiasm.
Each post looks like a personal choice; taken together, they form a pattern of saturation that is anything but accidental.
Followers experience this as the culture “moving” in a certain direction, when it is often the result of a carefully designed back‑end campaign.
This type of organised campaign, which is made to look like a natural organic movement is the basis of the modern day conspiracy movement, as told in Will Camden’s novel here.
The Wider Campaign
Individual posts may appear personal and spontaneous, but are often part of a wide-ranging co-ordinated marketing campaign.
Prestige as Manipulation Power
You can reads more about modern-day propaganda here.
Influencers accumulate prestige in visible, quantified ways: follower counts, engagement numbers, mainstream coverage, collaborations with other high‑status creators and brands.
That prestige dramatically increases their ability to direct attention and desire.
When a creator at that level frames a product, a lifestyle or a political stance as the correct choice, many followers will adopt that framing as their own.
In Bernays’ terms, this is propaganda in its modern, normalised form: the systematic shaping of habits and opinions, delivered in the disarming packaging of relatable content and parasocial friendship.
Bernays never hid the fact that his methods concentrated influence in the hands of those with access to media and organisational resources.
Prestige—being seen as important, respectable, authoritative—made it easier to steer opinion. People are far more likely to accept a message from someone they already see as successful or admirable.
Prestige as Credibility
Prestige shapes perception.
When someone appears successful, recognised and widely followed, their views and opinions often carry authority which hasn’t been earned.
Edward Bernays’ “engineering of consent” did not disappear; it evolved. A century on, the language has changed, but the mechanism remains.
Influencers may not describe their work as propaganda or consent engineering, yet they operate within the same system Bernays outlined — shaping desires, framing decisions and making certain ways of living feel like a natural next step.
The result is a culture where persuasion and influence are constant, and often unnoticed.
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These ideas are explored further in our ebook, Trust Me: The Secret Life of the Third Party Technique
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