Ivy Lee
1877 – 1934 American publicist, public relations pioneer
American publicist often called a founder of modern public relations, who reshaped the image of the Rockefeller interests and later drew censure for advising a German chemical combine tied to the Nazi state.
- Affiliations
- Parker and Lee, Rockefeller interests, Standard Oil of New Jersey
Ivy Ledbetter Lee was a former newspaper reporter who helped invent the corporate public relations business. His Declaration of Principles argued that companies should give the press accurate information rather than hide from it, and he pioneered the press release. He is best known for managing the public image of John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, especially after the deadly 1914 Ludlow Massacre at a Rockefeller-owned Colorado coal mine, work that critics dismissed as whitewashing. Late in life he advised the German dye and chemical combine IG Farben and had contact with figures in Nazi Germany; a 1934 congressional committee questioned him about it, and detractors nicknamed him Poison Ivy. He died soon after.
Connections
- rival of Edward Bernays — The two are jointly credited as founders of public relations and competed over its ideas and its history.