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 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 salesmen compete for the prize. The stereotype has bespoken the value of the contest.
The public relations counsel can try to bring about this identification by utilizing the appeals to desires and instincts discussed in the preceding chapter, and by making use of the characteristics of the group formation of society. His utilization of these basic principles will be a continual and efficient aid to him.
He must make it easy for the public to pick his issue out of the great mass of material. He must be able to overcome what has been called “the tendency on the part of public attention to ‘flicker’ and ‘relax.’” He must do for the public mind what the newspaper, with its headlines, accomplishes for its readers.