AN OUTLINE OF METHODS PRACTICABLE IN MODIFYING THE POINT OF VIEW OF A GROUP
On the question of specific devices upon which the public relations counsel relies to accomplish his ends, volumes could probably be written without exhausting the subject. The detailed presentation is potentially endless. Pages could be filled with instances of the stimuli to which men and women respond, the circumstances under which they will respond favorably or unfavorably, and the particular application of each of these stimuli to concrete conditions. Such an outline, however, would have less value than an outline of fundamentals, since circumstances are never the same.
These principles, by and large, consist of fundamentals already defined, to which the public relations counsel has recourse in common with the statesman, the journalist, the preacher, the lecturer and all others engaged in attempting to modify public opinion or public conduct.
How does the public relations counsel approach any particular problem? First he must analyze
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 his client’s problem and his client’s objective. Then he must analyze the public he is trying to reach. He must devise a plan of action for the client to follow and determine the methods and the organs of distribution available for reaching his public. Finally he must try to estimate the interaction between the public he seeks to reach and his client. How will his client’s case strike the public mind? And by public mind here is meant that section or those sections of the public which must be reached.
Let us take the example of a public relations counsel who is confronted with the specific problem of modifying or influencing the attitude of the public toward a given tariff bill. A tariff bill, of course, is primarily the application of theoretical economics to a concrete industrial situation. The public relations counsel in analyzing must see himself simultaneously as a member of a large number of publics. He must visualize himself as a manufacturer, a retailer, an importer, an employer, a worker, a financier, a politician.
Within these groups he must see himself again as a member of the various subdivisions of each of these groups. He must see himself, for example, as a member of a group of manufacturers who obtain the bulk of their raw material within the United States, and at the same time as a member of a group of manufacturers who obtain
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 large portions of their raw material from abroad and whose importations of raw material may be adversely affected by the pending tariff bill. He must see himself not only as a farm laborer but also as a mechanic in a large industrial center. He must see himself as the owner of the department store and as a member of the buying public. He must be able to generalize, as far as possible, from these points of view in order to strike upon the appeal or group of appeals which will be influential with as many sections of society as possible.30
Let us assume that our problem is the intensification in the public mind of the prestige of a hotel. The problem for the public relations counsel is to create in the public mind the close relationship between the hotel and a number of ideas that represent the things the hotel desires to stand for in the public mind.
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The counsel therefore advises the hotel to make a celebration of its thirtieth anniversary which happens to fall at this particular time and suggests to the president the organization of an anniversary committee of a body of business men who represent the cream of the city’s merchants. This committee is to include men who represent a number of stereotypes that will help to produce the inevitable result in the public mind. There are to be also a leading banker, a society woman, a prominent lawyer, an influential preacher, and so forth until a cross section of the city’s most telling activities is mirrored in the committee. The stereotype has its effect, and what may have been an indefinite impression beforehand has been reënforced and concretized. The hotel remains preëminent in the public mind. The stereotypes have proved its preëminence. The cause has been strongly presented to the public by identification with different group stereotypes.
Here is another example. A packing company desires to establish in the public mind the fact that the name of its product is synonymous with bacon. Its public relations counsel advises a contest on “Bring home the Beech-Nut,” the contest to be open to salesmen and to be based on the best sale made by salesmen throughout the country during the month of August. But here again
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 it is necessary to use a stereotype to help the possible contestant identify the cause. A committee of nationally known sales-managers is chosen to act as judges for the contest and immediately success is assured. Thousands of sales............