PR's Origins
New names for public relations abound, such as "integrated communication." Old ones have become more prominent such as corporate "communication."
Arguments exist that not all public relations tasks provide the practitioner with an appropriate claim to the umbrella title of "public relations." Public relations, by that view, should be reserved only for management jobs that involve strategic planning.
Hades
Hades (/ˈheɪdiːz/; Ancient Greek: ᾍδης or Άͅδης, Háidēs) was the ancient Greek chthonic god of the underworld, which eventually took his name.
In Greek mythology, Hades was regarded as the oldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although the last son regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the air, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth—long the province of Gaia—available to all three concurrently. Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus and, in later mythological authors, associated with the Helm of Darkness and the bident.
The Etruscan god Aita and Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to the Greek Hades and merged as Pluto, a Latinization of his euphemistic Greek name Plouton.
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Given that the occupation of public relations continues to have difficulty defining itself, it should be no surprise that authorities disagree about where and when public relations started and how it got its name. Some historians credit Thomas Jefferson in 1807 with first combining the words "public" and "relations" into "public relations." Others say that the term was coined by lawyer Dorman Eaton in an address to the Yale graduating class of 1882. Regardless, "public relations" was not used in its modern sense until 1897 when it appeared in the Association of American Railroads' Yearbook of Railway Literature. The real success of the term can be attributed to Edward L. Berneys, whom Irwin Ross calls "the first and doubtless, leading idealogue of public relations" (This is PR: The Reality of Public Relations: by Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk and Dean Krukeberg, pg. 21).
Edward Berneys
Berneys was the first to call himself a "public relations counsel," which he did in 1921. Two years later, he wrote the first book on the subject, Crystallising Public Opinion, and taught the first college course on PR at New York University. Thus it was around the turn of the twentieth century that PR came into being as a term, as an occupation and as an academic discipline (This is PR, pg. 21). Name
The origin of Hades' name is uncertain, but has generally been seen as meaning "The Unseen One" since antiquity. An extensive section of Plato's dialogue Cratylus is devoted to the etymology of the god's name, in which Socrates is arguing for a folk etymology not from "unseen" but from "his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things". Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides ("unseen"). The earliest attested form is Aḯdēs (Ἀΐδης), which lacks the proposed digamma. West argues instead for an original meaning of "the one who presides over meeting up" from the universality of death.
Greeks started referring to Hades as Pluto (Πλούτων, Ploútōn), with a root meaning "wealthy", considering that from the abode below (i.e., the soil) come riches (e.g., fertile crops, metals and so on). Plouton became the Roman god who both rules the underworld and distributed riches from below. This deity was a mixture of the Greek god Hades and the Eleusinian icon Ploutos, and from this he also received a priestess, which was not previously practiced in Greece. More elaborate names of the same genre were Ploutodótēs (Πλουτοδότης) or Ploutodotḗr (Πλουτοδοτήρ) meaning "giver of wealth".
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Like his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Berneys devoted his career to the study of the human mind. His specialty was mass psychology - how the opinions of large numbers of people can be influenced effectively and honorably. When he arrived on the scene, public opinion was considered the province of philosophy. Sociology was in its infancy and Walter Lipman had just begun to define what Berneys called "the American tribal consciousness." Berneys' approach to psychology is exemplified in the advice he gave the Proctor & Gamble Company several decades ago when it came to him with a problem: a boycott of its products by black people. Berneys advised Procter & Gamble to eliminate its racist advertising campaign, to hire blacks in white-collar jobs and to invite black people to open-house gatherings at the plant (This is PR, pg. 22).
The Berneys style was often subtle. For example, he helped the Beech-Nut Packing Company sell bacon, not by promoting bacon itself but by promoting what all America could respond to, a nutritious breakfast. In 1918 Berneys even changed the course of history by convincing Thomas Masaryk, the founder of Czechoslovakia, to delay announcement of that country's independence for a day in order to get better press coverage (This is PR, pg. 22).
 Greek God of the Underworld
In Greek mythology, Hades the god of the underworld, was a son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. He had three sisters, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, as well as two brothers, Zeus, the youngest of the three, and Poseidon. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings. After their release the six younger gods, along with allies, managed to gather and challenge the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods. Following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad (xv.187–93), Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule. Zeus received the sky, Poseidon received the seas, and Hades received the underworld, the unseen realm to which the souls of the dead go upon leaving the world as well as any and all things beneath the earth. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with his turnout, but had no choice and moved to his new realm. The Underworld was Hades' eternal domain, meaning he would spend the majority of his time there .
Hades obtained his wife and queen, Persephone, through abduction at the behest of Zeus. This myth is the most important one Hades takes part in; it also connected the Eleusinian Mysteries with the Olympian pantheon, particularly as represented in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which is the oldest story of the abduction, most likely dating back to the beginning of the 6th Century BC. Helios told the grieving Demeter that Hades was not unworthy as a consort for Persephone:
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Berneys, who died in 1995 at the age of 103 adamantly believed that public relations is more than mere press agentry. However, he was not above staging events. In 1924, he helped President Coolidge counteract his aloof image by staging a White House breakfast, to which Al Jolsen and other movie stars were invited. In 1929 he publicized the 50th anniversary of the electric light bulb by having Thomas Edison reenact its discovery in the presence of president Hoover (This is PR, pg. 22).
On the other hand Berneys turned down an appeal through an intermediary to provide PR assistance to Adolf Hitler in 1933, just before Hitler came to power. A correspondent for the Hearst newspapers told Berneys, however, that during an interview with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, some years later he saw Berneys 1923 book Propaganda on the Nazi's desk (This is PR, pg. 22).
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