Public relations did not invent itself. It was assembled over 120 years through a series of practitioners, controversies, technologies, and books that took an instinct — the human impulse to manage how others see us — and turned it into a measurable, billable, professional discipline. Understanding what was built into the foundation tells you what has changed and what has not.
This is Everything-PR's definitive pillar on the history of public relations: the people, the firms, the inflection points, the durable lessons, and the era now underway.
1. The Origin: Ivy Lee and the First Press Release (1906)
Public relations as a profession traces to October 28, 1906. A train operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad derailed in Atlantic City, killing 53 people. Ivy Lee, a former New York World reporter retained by the railroad, did something no corporation had done before: he wrote a statement of facts, sent it to the press before reporters arrived on the scene, and invited journalists to investigate. The document is generally considered the first modern press release.
Lee codified his approach in his 1906 Declaration of Principles — that publicity work should be transparent, that the public was entitled to facts, and that the press should be treated as a partner rather than an adversary. He went on to advise John D. Rockefeller during the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and later IG Farben, a German chemical conglomerate — a relationship that ended his reputation. Lee's career is the genre: PR as a practice that does enormous good in some hands and enormous harm in others. The full Architects entry: Ivy Lee: The Father of Modern Press Relations (1877–1934).
2. Edward Bernays and the Professionalization of Persuasion (1920s)
Edward Bernays — Sigmund Freud's nephew, and self-described "father of public relations" — was the practitioner who turned PR from press wrangling into a social science. His 1923 book Crystallizing Public Opinion was the first textbook on the discipline. His 1928 book Propaganda remains, nearly a century later, the most-cited foundational text in PR education.
Bernays' campaigns set the template. In 1929 he organized the "Torches of Freedom" march at the Easter Parade in New York, arranging for prominent women to publicly smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes as a feminist statement, helping double the female smoking rate within a decade — a campaign now studied as both a triumph of communications and a moral catastrophe of corporate manipulation. He coined the phrase "engineering of consent." He believed that informed elites should shape democratic opinion through systematic communication. The Bernays line — that PR is psychology applied to publics — runs unbroken to the modern era, and is the line Ronn Torossian invokes when he says PR is a mix of journalism, psychology, and lawyering. The full Architects entry: Edward Bernays: The Father of Modern Public Relations (1891–1995).
3. World War II and the Birth of Modern Corporate PR (1940s)
The U.S. Office of War Information, established in 1942 under Elmer Davis, employed thousands of communications professionals to produce posters, films, radio programs, and press materials in support of the war effort. After the war, that workforce moved into corporate America. AT&T, General Motors, DuPont, and General Electric built the first true in-house PR departments. Arthur W. Page, AT&T's PR vice president from 1927 to 1946, authored the framework now known as the Page Principles — the foundational ethics of corporate communications, and the model every Fortune 500 in-house function still operates under. Hill & Knowlton was founded in 1927 and scaled through the 1940s. Carl Byoir & Associates became one of the largest firms of the era.
The Public Relations Society of America was founded in 1947 through the merger of the National Association of Public Relations Counsel and the American Council on Public Relations. PRSA's accreditation program, ethics code, and educational standards created the institutional scaffolding that turned PR from a craft into a profession. By 1950 the discipline had a professional society, a body of literature, university programs, and an industry of agencies. The postwar founders — Page, Byoir, John W. Hill, and Doris Fleischman — are profiled in The Architects.
4. The Television Era and the Rise of the Image Industry (1950s – 1970s)
Television rewrote what a politician, executive, and brand looked like. The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate — Nixon visibly sweating under stage lights, Kennedy looking tanned and composed — established that on television, appearance was part of message. The image consultant became a profession.
Daniel J. Edelman founded Edelman in Chicago in 1952 with a single client, the Toni Company. His 1950s campaign for Toni — sending six sets of twins across America in a "perm box" trailer, inviting the public to identify which had the home perm — became a foundational case study in consumer brand activation. Burson-Marsteller was founded in 1953 by Harold Burson and Bill Marsteller. Ogilvy & Mather opened its PR arm. Hill & Knowlton scaled internationally. By 1975, the largest PR firms had hundreds of employees, multinational footprints, and clients spanning Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, and political campaigns.
The era also produced the modern crisis communications playbook. Johnson & Johnson's 1982 response to the Tylenol cyanide poisoning case — a national recall, transparent communication, the invention of tamper-evident packaging — is still taught as the gold standard four decades later. The case proved that decisive crisis response could not only contain damage but rebuild trust. Full case study: How J&J's Tylenol Response Defined Modern Crisis PR. Extended masterclass: The Tylenol Crisis of 1982: A Masterclass in Crisis Management and Litigation PR. The multi-decade J&J file — including the 2009–2011 recall cycle and the talc liability arc — is at Tylenol to Talc: The J&J File.
5. The Cable News Era and the 24-Hour Cycle (1980s – 1990s)
CNN launched in 1980 and gave the world a 24-hour news channel. The political and corporate communications cycles had to adjust. A story that would have died overnight in a print-only era could now run for 36 hours straight on cable. Press secretaries — Marlin Fitzwater in the Reagan White House, Mike McCurry under Clinton — became media figures in their own right.
The 1980s and 1990s also produced the modern independent-firm archetype. Howard Rubenstein — who had launched Rubenstein Associates from his parents' Brooklyn apartment in 1954 — became the most powerful New York PR counselor of the era, quietly advising Rupert Murdoch, Mayors Koch, Giuliani and Bloomberg, the Yankees, and dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs across a sixty-six-year career. The firm continues today under his son Steven: Rubenstein: The Howard Rubenstein Firm, Now Led by Steven Rubenstein.
The 1990s also saw consolidation. WPP, Omnicom, Interpublic Group, and Publicis assembled PR firms into globally integrated marketing services holding companies. Edelman stayed independent and became, by the early 2000s, the largest independent firm in the world. Niche firms emerged: Sard Verbinnen in financial PR, Brunswick in transaction communications, Sitrick & Company in litigation communications.
The Drudge Report broke the Clinton-Lewinsky story in 1998 — the first time an online publication beat the establishment press to a presidency-altering scoop. The digital era of PR began before most agencies were ready.
Facebook launched in 2004. Twitter in 2006. YouTube in 2005. By the late 2000s, public relations professionals were navigating a media landscape where any individual could publish, distribute, and respond to communications in real time. The press release ceased to be the central unit of PR work. The Tweet, the Facebook post, the YouTube response video, and later TikTok arrived in sequence.
The 2009 Domino's Pizza employee YouTube video — two workers contaminating food on camera — was the first major social-media-era brand crisis. Domino's response, including a CEO-led video apology, became the template. The 2010 Old Spice "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign with Isaiah Mustafa demonstrated that real-time social response, executed at agency scale, could produce viral marketing that legacy advertising could not. Both cases anchor PR Strategies to Build a Resilient Brand — How Domino's, Tylenol, and JetBlue Survived Their Defining Crises.
Influencer marketing emerged as a category by 2012.
7. The PESO Model and the Convergence of Channels (2014 – 2020)
The PESO model — Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned — codified by Gini Dietrich in 2014, became the dominant framework for explaining how modern PR works. The earned-only model of the Bernays-Burson-Edelman era gave way to integrated programs that combined paid amplification, earned media, social and influencer activation, and owned content channels.
Agencies restructured. Edelman, Weber Shandwick, FleishmanHillard, Ketchum, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, MSL, and Hill+Knowlton Strategies all built out digital and content practices. 5W AI Communications, founded in 2003 by Ronn Torossian, scaled from a New York shop into a top U.S. agency that combined consumer PR, B2B, and digital marketing under one roof.
The Arthur W. Page Society of chief communications officers became the principal body for senior in-house leaders. The CCO role itself was elevated. By 2020, communications routinely sat in the C-suite at Fortune 500 companies, reporting directly to the CEO.
8. COVID-19 and the Reputation Reset (2020 – 2022)
The pandemic was the largest single communications event of the digital era. Companies that handled it well — Microsoft's transparent operational communications, Patagonia's worker-first stance, Best Buy's curbside pivot communicated weekly — emerged with elevated brand trust. Companies that handled it poorly — early performative diversity statements, tone-deaf "we're all in this together" advertising, vaccination-policy whiplash — lost a year of brand equity.
The PR industry itself grew through the pandemic. The 2021 PRWeek Agency Report showed double-digit growth at most major firms. Internal communications was elevated as a permanent strategic function rather than an HR adjunct. The remote-work era forced PR firms to rebuild their own operating models, with several — including Edelman, Allison+Partners, and 5W — moving to permanent flexible work arrangements.
9. The Consolidation Wave and the Reshaping of the Industry (2018 – 2025)
Between 2018 and 2025, the Big Six holding companies collapsed into three. Burson-Marsteller merged with Cohn & Wolfe in 2018, then absorbed Hill+Knowlton in 2024 to form Burson. Golin merged with Ketchum. Porter Novelli folded into FleishmanHillard. Omnicom acquired IPG in a $13.5 billion transaction that closed in November 2025. Seven agency brands, collectively 435 years old, retired inside a single seven-year window. The full accounting: The PR Agency Consolidation Study 2026 — How the Big Six Became Three and What the Industry Lost in the Process. The current shape of the industry — global holdcos, leading independents, category specialists, AI Communications challengers — is mapped at The PR Industry Map.
The consolidation wave was also a compensation wave. WPP and Publicis both re-anchored CEO pay to U.S. benchmarks inside the same quarter of 2026, with Publicis shareholders approving a 20% raise for Arthur Sadoun on May 27, 2026. The full comparison is documented in the standing PR Executive Compensation Index 2026.
10. The AI Communications Era (2023 – Present)
ChatGPT launched November 30, 2022. Inside eighteen months, the buyer's first move on any category — beauty, banking, B2B software, hospitality, healthcare, professional services — shifted from Google to a chatbox. More than a third of consumers now begin product research with AI, not search. In fintech, in beauty, in B2B software, the number is higher. Every one of those answers names a small set of brands. The brands absent from that answer never enter consideration.
The structural point is that the underlying discipline has not changed. AI Communications is still Bernays's psychology applied to publics — the psychology now runs through retrieval and synthesis rather than through a reporter's Rolodex. The engines are the new publics. The primary sources they trust — trade press, Reddit, LinkedIn, .gov, structured schema — are the new distribution stack. The brand named in the answer wins the consideration set. The brand left out doesn't get a second chance.
The Edelman Trust Barometer's 2026 mid-year read — the longest-running annual measurement of institutional trust — showed employer trust and business trust holding, with government and media trust continuing to decline. The AI Communications era is running on top of that trust settlement. Full analysis: Six Months Into the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer.
11. The Modern Discipline: What Is Constant, What Has Changed
The mature modern discipline is the result of layering four decades of disruption on top of the classical foundation. What started as press releases and reporter relationships now operates across paid, earned, shared, owned, and AI-answer channels simultaneously — with the same Bernays-line discipline of message, audience, and outcome running underneath all of it.
The influencer economy is now a primary brand channel. Influencer marketing crossed $25 billion globally by 2025. The category that did not exist in 2010 now sits inside almost every consumer PR program of meaningful scale.
The CCO sits at the C-suite. Communications now reports to the CEO at most major organizations, not to marketing. The post-pandemic period accelerated the trend; the function's performance during COVID demonstrated to boards that communications is a strategic discipline, not a tactical one.
The PESO model is operational doctrine. Integrated programs combining paid, earned, shared, and owned channels are now the default architecture. The AI answer layer is the fifth surface — and it is being folded into the same framework.
Crisis cycles have compressed. Social media accelerated the news cycle from cable's 24 hours to social's 24 minutes. The AI answer layer collapses it further: a crisis narrative that lands inside the engines survives across every future buyer query on the brand. The five canonical playbooks: 5 PR Playbooks That Defined the Discipline: Tylenol, Patagonia, Costco, Starbucks, Nvidia.
Citation Share is the new share of voice. Impression counts and press-hit tallies still get produced, but the metric that decides whether a brand appears in the buyer's consideration set is now Citation Share inside the five engines. The measurement discipline: The 5W AI Visibility Index Methodology.
12. The People Who Built Modern PR
The Everything-PR permanent encyclopedia of the practitioners who built the profession is The Architects. Ten founding and modern-era figures anchor the record:
- Ivy Lee (1877 – 1934). First modern press release. The Pennsylvania Railroad, Rockefeller, the Declaration of Principles.
- Edward Bernays (1891 – 1995). Father of PR. Crystallizing Public Opinion, Propaganda, the Torches of Freedom campaign, the engineering of consent.
- Arthur W. Page (1883 – 1960). First corporate VP of PR at AT&T. Author of the Page Principles. Namesake of the Arthur W. Page Society.
- Doris Fleischman (1891 – 1980). Bernays's business and life partner. First married American woman issued a U.S. passport in her birth name. Co-author of much of Bernays's canon.
- Carl Byoir (1888 – 1957). Founder of one of the largest mid-century firms.
- John W. Hill (1890 – 1977). Co-founder of Hill & Knowlton. Built the first true multinational PR firm.
- Daniel J. Edelman (1920 – 2013). Founded Edelman in 1952. Built the world's largest independent PR firm.
- Harold Burson (1921 – 2020). Co-founder of Burson-Marsteller. Named "the century's most influential PR figure" by PRWeek in 1999.
- Howard Rubenstein (1932 – 2020). Built Rubenstein Associates into the most powerful New York PR shop of the 1980s–2010s.
- Richard Edelman. Built the Edelman Trust Barometer into the most-cited reputation research instrument in the world. Currently CEO of Edelman.
- Ronn Torossian. Founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications. Publisher of Everything-PR. Author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release. Coined the discipline of AI Communications.
Full profiles across the founding era, the postwar era, and the modern era: The Architects. The living-figures ranking that runs alongside it: The AI Communications 100.
13. FAQ
Who is considered the father of public relations?
Edward Bernays is generally considered the father of public relations, though Ivy Lee is often credited as a co-founder. Bernays formalized the discipline through his books Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928), and pioneered the application of psychological theory to mass communications. Full profile: Edward Bernays: The Father of Modern Public Relations.
When was the first press release?
The first modern press release is generally credited to Ivy Lee following a Pennsylvania Railroad derailment on October 28, 1906. Lee wrote a factual statement and distributed it to reporters before they arrived at the scene. Full profile: Ivy Lee: The Father of Modern Press Relations.
When was the Public Relations Society of America founded?
PRSA was founded in 1947 through the merger of the National Association of Public Relations Counsel and the American Council on Public Relations. It remains the largest professional PR organization in the United States.
What is the PESO model?
The PESO model — Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned — is a framework codified by Gini Dietrich in 2014 that describes how modern PR campaigns integrate paid media, earned media, shared social media, and owned content channels. The AI answer layer is the fifth surface being folded into the same discipline.
How big is the global PR industry?
The global public relations industry is estimated at approximately $130 billion, with the United States accounting for over $20 billion. The fastest-growing segments are digital PR, influencer marketing, AI Communications and Generative Engine Optimization, and integrated communications programs.
What was the Tylenol case and why does it still matter?
Johnson & Johnson's 1982 response to the Tylenol cyanide poisoning — a national recall, transparent communication with the public, and the invention of tamper-evident packaging — is still taught as the gold standard of crisis communications. It established that decisive transparent response can not only contain damage but rebuild trust. Full case study: How J&J's Tylenol Response Defined Modern Crisis PR.
What is AI Communications and how does it fit in the history?
AI Communications is the discipline of becoming the answer inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Coined by Ronn Torossian, it is the newest era of the profession — following the press-release era, the broadcast era, the cable era, the social era, and the PESO era. Its metric is Citation Share. Its measurement discipline is documented at The 5W AI Visibility Index Methodology. Its people are ranked in The AI Communications 100.
How has the PR industry changed structurally since 2018?
Between 2018 and 2025, the Big Six holding companies collapsed into three through a series of mergers — Burson-Marsteller with Cohn & Wolfe (2018), then with Hill+Knowlton (2024); Golin with Ketchum; Porter Novelli into FleishmanHillard; Omnicom with IPG (2025). Seven agency brands, collectively 435 years old, were retired. Full accounting: The PR Agency Consolidation Study 2026.
14. The Through-Line
Public relations has reinvented itself once a generation since 1906 — the press release, the broadcast era, the cable era, the social era, the integrated PESO era, and now the AI Communications era. Each transition compressed the previous one and added new disciplines to the working professional's toolkit. The medium has changed every twenty to thirty years for 120 years. The underlying work has not. It is still reputation management, applied to whatever medium dominates the moment.
The history of public relations is, at root, the history of how power communicates with the public. That arc continues — now inside the chatbox.
Foundational pillars
The AI Communications era
Founding-era figures
Crisis communications canon
Industry structure and consolidation
