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In the mid-1920s, most Americans ate light breakfasts. Edward Bernays, who would eventually be considered the father of public relations, was hired by a company that sold bacon to promote the idea that a hearty meal including bacon and eggs was more scientifically beneficial. Bernays conducted interviews and then carefully framed the results that led to a shift in public opinion. Americas iconic breakfast is now bacon and eggs. In the 1950s, the Keep America Beautiful campaign was launched by a coalition of corporations whose products were often littered (soda bottles, plastic packages, etc.). Their iconic moment was 1971s commercial with actor Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American shedding a single tear about litter and pollution. Both of these campaigns were carefully crafted propaganda designed to focus on individual decisions and actions. They relied on imagery, symbolism, and emotion, not raw facts. And they werent designed to explicitly sell bacon or guilt. Public relations storytellers shaped public opinion like artists and nudged enough behavior change that the entire culture was impacted. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Artful vision and the power to reframe Propaganda is an idea or allegation crafted not to inform neutrally, but to influence behavior and belief. Art is an object or image shaped with skill and imagination to evoke emotion and meaning. Its useful to learn from people who create art and propaganda. In my workplanning transportation systems with a bias toward human flourishingI often say I create propagandart to save the human race. prä-p-gan-därt (noun): ideas, allegations, and aesthetic objects produced with the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, spread deliberately to further ones cause or to damage an opposing cause The people best equipped to influence behavior arent just marketers or policymakerstheyre propagandartists. The photographer who shapes what you notice. The muralist who reclaims public space. The meme creator who distills frustration into a punchline. Each is practicing a form of strategic persuasion. Each is shaping not just what we see, but how we feel about it. Whether youre pitching a startup, selling a product, or reshaping a city, you’re competing with ads, reels, renderings, memesall designed to influence perception before youve said a word. To win the room, you dont need new tools nearly as much as you need to master an old one: the art of influence. Consider a fine art photographer and a meme lord. One crafts a single frame with obsessive care; the other floods the internet with viral punchlines. Both are propagandistsstorytellers who deliberately shape how we see and feel. If I want to create walk-friendly, bicycle-friendly places that increase the smile density in my city, Im only going to reach that goal through persuasive storytelling. Every photograph is a lie. Photography isnt objective. Ansel Adams didnt just capture Yosemite; he framed it to evoke awe. Gordon Parks didnt just document injustice; he gave it emotional gravity. Whats left out of the frame is as important as whats inside it. Thats the lesson: direct attention with intention. Dont pitch the product. Show the life it makes possible. The relieved parent, the joyful commuter, the profitable small business, etc. Great art doesnt just showit sells a version of reality. Remix culture and the new public square For urbanism innovators, shaping imaginations is a vital part of the playbook. Launching a new cargo bike, pitching a housing policy, or designing a bus transfer hub requires persuasion. If you cant shape public imagination, your product, policy, or vision will be dead on arrival, no matter how brilliant the data behind it. Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, 1979 on display at the Brooklyn Museum, ca. 2007. [Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images] Artists reframe the past, present, and futuresometimes in an effort to change culture in some way, sometimes just to be irreverent or entertaining. From Shepard Faireys Hope poster to Judy Chicagos The Dinner Party, art can create appetites for ideas the mainstream hasnt developed yet. A speculative rendering of a car-free downtown is an example of a prompt for belief. The High Line in New York began this way: a vision, illustrated and circulated, that turned an abandoned rail line into a civic treasure. Applying lessons learned from the art world doesnt require training to become a great artist yourself. Memes are fast, cheap, and culturally potent. Theyre the digital ages most accessible form of propagandart and we all know they can sometimes look sloppy and haphazard. A meme doesnt explainit distills. The Distracted Boyfriend image reshaped debates about loyalty. Bernie Sanders in mittens became a viral fundraiser. Memes bypass logic, persuading with speed, irony, and emotional friction. For builders and changemakers, memes offer a strategy. Want to communicate the absurdity of legacy infrastructure or bloated software? A meme can do in seconds what a slide deck does in 30 minutes. Memes can help energize a movement or reframe a dull category. The trick is to stop thinking of them as fluff and start using them as signals. Organized persuasion Weve been taught to fear the word propaganda. But propaganda, at its root, is organized persuasion. And in an environment of infinite messages, intentional persuasion is a competitive edge. Propagandart blends arts emotional pull with strategys clarity. A viral video about your mission is propagandart. A campaign calling out industry greenwashing is propagandart. A cartoon satirizing the way zoning keeps Americans trapped in cars is propagandart. Decide what belief or point of view youre trying to implant, or what behavior youre trying to shift. Then use facts to create stories that move markets. From canvas to camera to meme, the artists role has never changed: shape what people seeand how they feel about it. This is true for shipping code, designing buildings, or launching a movement of kids biking to school. Your work and your legacy lives or dies by stories. With artistic tools in every pocket and publi platforms a click away, were in a golden age of propagandart. If you want your idea to stick, it needs more than a data pointit needs to be seen, felt, and shared. Just ask the campaigners behind Barcelonas Superblocks. Before reconfiguring traffic patterns or drafting ordinances, they shared speculative renderings of tree-lined streets, kids playing in former intersections, and cafes spilling into quiet roads once dominated by cars. Those images didnt just illustrate the plan. They created public appetite for changeturning skepticism into support. The power of propagandart is shaping not just what people know, but what they want. Picture a better world. Frame the story. Share it. If you can shape how people feel, you can shape what they demand. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"","headline":"Urbanism Speakeasy","description":"Join Andy Boenau as he explores ideas that the infrastructure status quo would rather keep quiet. To learn more, visit urbanismspeakeasy.com.","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.urbanismspeakeasy.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
New Jersey Transit urged riders to reach their destinations before the end of the day Thursday or risk being stranded, as last-minute talks continued in a bid to avert a rail strike by train engineers that would affect some 350,000 commuters in New Jersey and New York City. The labor dispute is stressing out some Manhattan commuters and already disrupting travel to Shakira concerts Thursday and Friday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Amid the uncertainty over whether the strike would happen, the transit agency canceled train and bus service at the stadium. The system’s advisory provided riders with details on contingency plans that would take effect if engineers walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. ET Friday. The agency plans to increase bus service, saying it would add very limited capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and will contract with private carriers to operate bus service from key regional park-and-ride locations during weekday peak periods. However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengersonly about 20% of current rail customersso it is has urged people who can work from home to do so if there is a strike. NJ Transitthe nations third largest transit systemoperates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. A walkout would halt all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York Citys Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark Airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently. Wages have been the main sticking point of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen. The union says its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and that an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000. NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the unions data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000. If the walkout happens, it would be the states first transit strike in more than 40 years. It comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management. The parties met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the dispute, but both sides and the board have declined to comment on whether any progress has been made in subsequent talks this week. Bruce Shipkowski, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
If brands want to reach the shoppers of the future, theyll need to meet them where they already are: playing video games. For this youngest generation, the coolest places to hang out arent the local mall or park but inside virtual worlds. While millennials had Sega Mega Drive and Mario Kart, and Gen Z grew up on The Sims and Angry Birds, Gen Alphaborn between 2010 and 2024 and still younger than 17is coming of age in a world even more seamlessly integrated with technology. Gaming is no longer fringe culture; its where they socialize. Analysts at investment bank UBS recently found that while older generations still spend about two more hours per week on social platforms than on games, Gen Alpha splits their time evenly between the two. Their engagement with digital platforms goes far beyond passive scrolling. For them, gaming is a medium for creativity and self-expression. If Gen Z and millennials were the social generationsraised on MySpace, Facebook, and InstagramGen Alpha is the gaming generation. Now, brands are stepping further into these virtual spaces. Just today, Roblox announced its opening its Commerce APIs to eligible creators and brands, with Shopify as the first integrated partner. That means Shopify merchants can now sell physical goods directly within their Roblox experiences. It also works the other way. Through Robloxs new Approved Merchandiser Program, users can buy physical items in the real world that unlock digital content in-game. Among popular gaming platforms, Roblox reaches one of the youngest audiences, with 60% of its users under the age of 16. These digital worlds have replaced group chats and casual hangouts with avatars serving as extensions of personality and style, Liv Burke, associate director of social at social media agency Superdigital, recently wrote in an op-ed for Variety. In these spaces, Gen Alpha is building and personalizing virtual worlds with limited-edition skins and viral emotesand inviting their friends to join. For a generation that grew up with iPads in hand, their entertainment ecosystems exist largely beyond the reach of traditional advertising. As a result, advertisers investment in gaming is projected to nearly double over the next five years, according to Futurescape. After all, this generation already accounts for an estimated $50 billion in annual spendinga figure expected to reach $5.5 trillion by 2029. For brands looking to connect with the next wave of consumers, its game on.
Category:
E-Commerce
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