There is an old advertising slogan that says, ‘‘to the man who has never heard of you, you do not exist.” Certainly there can’t be many citizens of this country that have never heard of the Navy, but just as certainly there is only a very small percentage that has any clear conception of its purpose, its workings, or its tremendous scope, especially during times of peace. If a man has never heard of the relief of disasters, the government of Guam, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands, the ocean surveys, the aids to navigation of the Hydrographic Office, and other such peace-time activities of the Navy, to him they do not exist.
Except in the comparatively few localities that are largely supported by naval activities, the Navy is very hazy to most of our people; their knowledge being chiefly confined to rotogravure and news film pictures of ships. That the Navy realizes this is evidenced by its co-operation in the celebration of the annual Navy Days, its press releases from Washington, which lacking any local significance are not reproduced in most papers, and the little local squibs that appear at infrequent intervals emanating from the recruiting offices. That these things have done good is not denied, but the efforts arc spasmodic and clearly lacking a background of a definite publicity policy. They fall far short of what could be accomplished.
As one who has been a salesman for many years, I see the education of the country as to its naval needs as a problem of selling. We salesmen are fond of thinking that we influence the customer’s mental journey along the route of attention, interest, and desire which leads to action.
No need to worry about “attention” and “interest.” No governmental agency has greater attention-getting possibilities than the Navy. Interest can also be aroused very easily, too. The difficulty in the past is that interest has not been maintained.
Most big and successful corporations, that depend upon continuous good will of the public, employ as one of their most important executives a man generally called a public relations counsel. He has been defined as follows:
The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media of communication and the group formations of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public. But he is a great deal more than that. He is concerned with tangible things such as manufactured and raw products. He is concerned with public utilities, and with large trade groups and associations representing entire industries.
He functions primarily as an adviser to his client, very much as a lawyer does. A lawyer concentrates on the legal aspects of his client's business. A counsel on public relations concentrates on the public contacts of his client's business. Every phase of his client's ideas, products, or activities which may affect the public or in which the public may have an interest is part of his function.1
To get attention, create sustained interest, and to awaken an enlightened desire for the proper kind of a Navy, the employment of a public relations counselor is a desirable first step.
Probably the ideal place for such a counselor would be as an assistant to the Secretary of the Navy and reporting directly to him. He should be a member (not necessarily with voting power) of the General Board. Many of the results of the studies of the General Board are not secret, could be given to the public, and citizens would have more confidence in them if they knew a civilian were on the board.
Of course, the counselor should be a man whose background and training have been essentially civilian. The very qualities and acquired traits that enable a naval officer to succeed as a naval officer are quite apt to be a hindrance to him in selling the Navy to the people. He learns to concentrate, specialize, and analyze, paying more attention to the fact than to the spectacular. He is the reverse of the salesman; and he deliberately shuns those attributes that are so largely a salesman's stock in trade. There is also the fact that, until he gets to a fairly high rank and very responsible position, the naval officer is largely out of touch with civilian attitudes and psychology and he has been during all his adult years. That is why naval officers many times fail to put over ideas with congressional committees; ideas that have everything to recommend them except adequate salesmanship.
The Assistant to the Secretary having to do with public relations would, on the other hand, be selected because of his skill in the fields of advertising and selling. In fact, he would be the applied psychologist in the development of good will. He would for instance, that the broad distinction between intellectual and emotional desires leads advertisers to classify their advertisements as "reason why" and "human interest," and that the latter far outnumber the former because people are influenced more easily by stimulating their emotions than by persuading their intellects through logic. He would take full advantage of that knowledge in his presentation of the Navy to the public, and he would know how to do it.
There immediately comes the thought that enemies, or rather those not friendly to the Navy, will say "propaganda." Probably they will; but it is well to remember that propaganda itself has received a great deal of propaganda in this generation. It is a convenient word behind which to hide when rebutting or refusing to believe any statements that we do not like. It has become very easy to satisfy a closed mind against any unpleasant ideas by calling them propaganda. Nevertheless, as the old Yankee said, “He who tooteth not his own horn, same will not be tooted,” and many of our largest corporations seem to find it desirable to keep the public constantly informed of their good qualities and services even at the risk of its being called “propaganda.” The Navy will never get the good will it is entitled to unless it does likewise.
The Office of Naval Intelligence “is the department’s medium of communication to the press and public of items of naval interest.”2 The supervision and direction of that particular duty of the Office of Naval Intelligence should be in the hands of the public relations assistant secretary.
As before stated, many of the press releases from Washington are not reproduced in papers throughout the country because they have no appropriate local significance. This can be overcome to a great extent by utilizing the Naval Reserve in the publicity scheme. There are 149 seagoing and 31 aviation weekly drilling divisions located in about 90 cities; all intensely loyal to and willing to do a lot of things for the Navy in addition to their regular drills. The members of these divisions are all home-town boys and men, and ways could easily be found to tie in naval news with their organizations and them so that local papers would be glad to give free publicity. This would also result in the local people taking a more personal interest in the Navy and, incidentally, would be very beneficial to the reserve units themselves.
No trouble should be experienced in finding a man in each unit who could personally contact the newspapers. Personal contact can do much towards having the papers print news. Let such items as are not for quick release come to this man instead of to the paper direct.
If each Naval Reserve unit were encouraged by the Navy Department to have a publicity man, they would take a pride in acquiring a good one. With the proper instructions, they would manage their contacts with the press, radio, and other mediums so as to be in accord with the department’s policies as laid down by the director of public relations. They would arrange their parades, reviews, and other public ceremonies so as to tie in with almost any publicity the Navy wanted. In this way the Naval Reserve could be a much-gazed-at shop window through which the Navy could be sold and kept sold to the country.
There are in the Volunteer Intelligence branch of the Naval Reserve about 300 officers. Presumably they are familiar with all the functions and duties of the Office of Naval Intelligence. They could be indoctrinated with the department’s publicity policies and encouraged to further the “communication to the press and public of items of naval interest.” Some of those in the same locations as the reserve drilling units would, no doubt, be glad to act as the units’ publicity officers. Many others would be ingenious enough to establish friendly contacts with local avenues of publicity and insure that the Navy’s messages would come before the public eye.
I believe that with the institution of a trained public relations counsel in a high position in the Navy Department, one of his major activities would be to search out ways and means for greatly increasing the circulation of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. No argument is necessary to readers of the Proceedings as to the desirability of this. Beyond question it is well worth its small cost to every officer in the Navy and Marine Corps, regular and reserve; it should be in every public and school library of any consequence and probably thousands of civilians would read it regularly if they only knew about it perhaps it is not in keeping with the dignity of the Institute and its publication to hire a professional circulation manager and embark on the practices of offering subscription inducements of one kind or another, as other magazines do. On the other hand, isn’t there the possibility that the increased good will and knowledge of the Navy that larger circulation (and I mean much larger circulation) would insure would compensate for the possible loss of dignity?
Such a public relations man as is visioned here would probably also set up in the Office of Naval Intelligence the mechanics of a system whereby important and interesting things happening to or about the some hundred thousand people in the Navy and Marine Corps would get to the local papers concerned. For instance, the recent flight of Commander McGinnis' squadron to Hawaii which was played up probably in every newspaper in the country. Presumably every marl in that squadron has a home town somewhere. It would be seen to that his hometown papers received the information that he was a member of the squadron and some details about his naval career.
Finally and most important, officers in executive positions on all ships and stations of the regular service would be exposed to a course of instruction on publicity given by the department after being approved by the public relations counsel. How to contact the press and make it easier for reporters to get their stories, how to speak in public and over the radio, and many other such instructions would be included. Big national corporations encourage their executives to appear and speak in public. The conclusion of all these thoughts is that the Navy needs a definite public relations policy.
1 Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda.
2 Congressional Directory.