Western Europe: P.R. Goes Continental

Once, twice, three times, 102-year-old Silvano Faenza trotted around the vast perimeter of St. Peter’s Square. Finally, after six suspenseful laps, he braked to a halt—smack in front of waiting newsmen. He had a startling message: the secret of his longevity, he said, was a lifetime of drinking beer. Beer in wine-loving Italy? Such gimmicks, virtually unheard of in the country until a few years ago, have doubled Italian beer consumption since 1958. The St. Peter’s stunt is only one of many brought about by a new figure in European business: the public relations man.

Born in the U.S. before World War I, public relations went to Europe with American companies right after World War II, but the Europeans at first regarded the art as beneath them. The new eagerness of European companies to grab a bigger share of the growing consumer market and their desire to emulate efficient American business methods have considerably changed that attitude. Today, some 5,400 P.R. men operate in Britain, another 2,000 in France, 1,000 in West Germany and 850 in Italy. Two schools of public relations have opened in Paris, and P.R. courses are now offered at Heidelberg, the City of London College and Rome’s Institute of Labor Research.

Names Make Money. Europe’s public relations men have adopted basic U.S. techniques, but have translated them into their own national idioms, frequently adding style and flair in the process. To convince Englishmen of the merits of regular dry cleaning, the P.R. division of the Smith-Warden advertising agency put two of its executives in white suits, had them tramp to work through dirty London streets for a month, showing vividly how much dirt a suit can collect in normal wear. Reaching ahead to generations of new passengers, the public relations staff of Germany’s Lufthansa Airlines helps a TV network put on a teen-age show about a Lufthansa copilot, collaborates on aviation books for young people, circulates a free library of 60 films on flying to schools and libraries.

To call attention to the progress of a new management team, France’s Bull-General Electric, the giant computer maker, last week arranged a rolling press conference aboard a special Paris-Angers train, brought along President Henri Desbrueres, who answered questions while pretty hostesses plied 93 reporters with smoked salmon, pheasant and wine. Seeking publicity for the Lido nightclub, flamboyant French P.R. Man Georges Cravenne last year invited a chic crowd to an otherwise ordinary première, asked the women to wear evening pajamas.

Many members of European nobility find their names and high-level contacts profitable in the P.R. line. Count Rodolfo Crespi, who was responsible for the beer stunt, also managed to place Muratti cigarettes prominently in Italian films and boosted Vespa scooters with a worldwide campaign that prominently featured starlets. In Germany, Count Georg-Volkmar Zedtwitz von Arnim represents the sprawling Krupp industries, and in Spain Don Iñigo Alvarez de Toledo, member of one of the country’s oldest families, handles P.R. for the house of Urquijo, the leading industrial bank. When visiting Du Pont executive W. Sam Carpenter III casually mentioned that he enjoyed hunting, Alvarez de Toledo just as casually arranged a partridge hunt on an estate outside Madrid, brought along 100 servants to wait on the guests, who included Juan Carlos, son of the Pretender to the throne, and Minister of Commerce Alberto Ullastres.

Taboos at Lunch. The almost universal passion for secrecy still cherished by European business is the Continental P.R. man’s biggest problem. He is rarely permitted to sit in on policy discussions, frequently spends as much time selling the public to his bosses as he does selling the company to the public. Often he has to get permission to release even the most trivial information, and sometimes he is treated as a necessary evil. “Some people,” says Count Crespi, “still regard us about the same way they do manicurists who advertise in the want ads”—in Italy such ladies are often prostitutes.

By necessity, European P.R. men are often quieter and subtler than their U.S. colleagues. In France, and in some other parts of Europe, the big expense-account lunch is taboo, largely because most European P.R. men have nothing like the expense accounts of their American counterparts; P.R. men are apt to go to modest restaurants, give their companions every opportunity to pick up or split the check. In Germany, it is considered bad form to talk about money—costs, profits, salaries—or to use colorful language in press releases. Italian P.R. men will talk only about products, practically pretending that managers and owners of companies do not exist. Reason: Italian businessmen are so afraid of attracting the eye of the tax collector that they will do almost anything to avoid personal publicity.