Carl Robert Byoir (1886 – 1957) founded and managed Carl Byoir & Associates, one among the world’s largest PR firms in 1930. He began his career quite young; he was just in his teens, a fourteen-year old when he started as a reporter for The Des Moines Register. He was good enough at his job and by 17, he was appointed the editor of the Waterloo Times-Tribune. He studied at the University of Iowa while simultaneously holding a title as the circulation manager for Hearst Magazine’s publications.
He got a prestigious assignment as Associate Chairman of the Committee on Public Information during the World War I. This helped him direct the U.S. government’s propaganda effort. He crafted a campaign to draft-eligible non-English speaking Americans and this made an enormous impact as over 70,000 men joined the U.S. troops.
One of the big assignments that he signed up was a five year $300,000 contract with the Cuban government to improve American tourism. This also served to get him a government PR job. A huge campaign was done promoting Cuba as a premier vacationing spot. His campaign was a great success as tourism increased by over 200% within the first year. But on the other side, he was often at the receiving end of criticism from the US as he worked closely with Cuba’s President Gerardo Machado.
Byoir was very successful in generating results even against the powerful. for example in 1938, he was the PR consultant to the great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, a grocery chain. He worked for them and commenced a PR campaign that led to defeating the Congress over a tax bill that chain-store owners found disastrous.
The Freeport Sulphur Company was Byoir’s first big industrial account. The corporate posessed large sulfur deposits in Louisiana and Texas. Sulfur severance tax in Louisiana surged high by over 200 percent. Carl Byoir was hired to assist stop something like this happening in Texas. How this was handled was remarkable. Large groups in Louisiana were organized, they represented key segments of common people opinion. They were taught on how the tax not only was against the economic interests of the corporate , but also the state. Louisiana legislators began getting this information from various opinion leaders and therefore the result was that tax increase was lowered.
Another powerful lobby he signed up for his clients Eastern Railroads was the Pennsylvanian Truckers. The truckers in Pennsylvania proposed to boost the load limit on trucks to 60,000 pounds which might help them increase their business manifold. Knowing that this could cause their business to drop, Eastern Railroads hired Byoir’s firm to handle this. This became a bitter common people opinion battle referred to as “The Railroad-Trucker’s Brawl.”
To fight the truckers, he created negative ads and content about truckers to the media. He also issued an advance copy of Maryland’s State Road Commission’s test which stated the negative effects of differing truck axles on highways. The result was that the bill was vetoed and he was victorious.
What one really learns from Carl Robert Byoir is that the importance of getting deep into a topic and examining it from various viewpoints to catch an ingenious angle and also being bold and decisive. this will even make history as he has proved.
