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THE PUBUC RELATIONS REVOLUTION
Corporations are now spending large amounts of money on carefully crafted public
images. Highly skilled PR firms work to shape what the public thinks of their corporate
clients.
. In 1983 the Public
Relations (PR) industry in the UK earned £32 million ($35m). Of the top 50 companies in
the country 90% used PR consultants to sell their image.
. In Canada there are 400 PR firms employing between 5 and
6 thousand people.
THE DREAM MERCHANTS
Each one of us is bombarded daily with hundreds of advertising messages. It’s no
secret that advertising is big business. But who pays the price of companies selling their
wares?.
. In the UK
advertising is a four billion pound business. 1.96% of each pound spent is passed on to
the consumer in advertising costs. On average everyone in the UK paid an extra £66 ($72)
a year to pay for advertising.
. In Australia advertising is a $3 billion business
. Newspapers earn 75% of their revenue through the
advertising that takes up 65% of their column space.
. The average child in the US has seen 350,000 commercials
by the time they are 17.
. In the US the advertising industry grossed 60 billion
dollars costing each household an average $691 (1980)
. Each year cigarette companies in the US spend $4 per
person on advertising. The government spends 1/4 cent per person to show the health
hazards of smoking.
THE NATIONAL
SECURITY STATE
Govemment
is becoming increasingly involved in the surveillance of its own citizens.
The reasons vary from the collecting of taxes to law enforcement and outright
political monitoring and spying.
. Each
US citizen appears on the average in 1 8 different federal computer data
bases
. The
Canadian government admits holding security files on 700,000 citizens:
about one in 35 Canadians.
. Between
1955 and 1975 the US Central Intelligence Agency stopped 28 million letters
and opened 215,000.
. Between
1 958 and 1 979 there was a 300% increase in the number of officially acknowledged
phone taps by the government of the UK.
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THE PRIVATE SECTOR
Private companies too keep track of people to establish credit ratings, detect fraud or
track our spending habits.
. The US Telephone
company listened in on 1 .8 million conversations in order to detect fraud over a five
year period.
. In Australia there are 26,000 people employed by private
security companies.
. One credit-reporting company, TRW, sells 35 million
credit reports (including arrest records, sources of income, bankruptcies) to 24,000
subscribers.
THE HARD SELL
When normal management fails, the state and employers rely on the police or a large
private security industry to make sure rules are obeyed.
Military and police per 100,000 people
| UK |
720
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| USA |
1,200
|
| CANADA |
510
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| AUSTRALIA |
800
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Private Security
. In Canada
employment in the private security industry has grown by 33 1/3% over a ten year period.
. In the US it has become a $21 .8 billion business
employing 1.1 million people.
THE
SOFT SELL
There
has been a dramatic growth of those professions whose primary task is to
manage the behaviour of others.
 
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