Ivy Lee - Effect On Public Relations

Effect On Public Relations

Many historians credit Lee with being the originator of modern crisis communications. His principal competitor in the new public relations industry was Edward Bernays.

In 1914 he was to enter public relations on a much larger scale when he was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr to represent his family and Standard Oil, ("to burnish the family image"), after the coal mining rebellion in Colorado known as the "Ludlow Massacre". Upton Sinclair dubbed him "Poison Ivy" after Lee tried to send bulletins saying those that died were victims of an overturned stove, when in fact they were shot by the Colorado militia.

From then on he faithfully served the Rockefellers and their corporate interests, including a strong involvement in Rockefeller Center — he was in fact the first to suggest to Junior (against his reservations) that he give to the complex his family name — even after he moved on to set up his own consulting firm.

He became an inaugural member of the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S. when it was established in New York City in 1921.

His supposed instruction to the son of the Standard Oil fortune was to echo in public relations henceforth: "Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want". The context of the quote was said to be apocryphal, being spread by Lee as self promotion, making it both famous and infamous.

Lee is considered to be the father of the modern public relations campaign when, from 1913–1914, he successfully lobbied for a railroad rate increase from a reluctant federal government.

Lee espoused a philosophy consistent with what has sometimes been called the "two-way street" approach to public relations, in which PR consists of helping clients listen as well as communicate messages to their publics. In practice, however, Lee often engaged in one-way propagandizing on behalf of clients despised by the public. Shortly before his death in 1934, the US Congress had been investigating his work in Nazi Germany on behalf of the controversial company IG Farben.

Lee also worked for Bethlehem Steel, in which capacity he famously advised managers to list their top priorities and work on tasks in that order, not proceeding until a task was completed. For this suggestion company head Charles M. Schwab paid him $25,000. Over his career he also was a public relations advisor to the following: George Westinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, John W. Davis, Otto Kahn and Walter Chrysler.