In short. Public relations as a profession is about 135 years old. Westinghouse opened the first corporate publicity department in 1889, the phrase “public relations” first appeared in print in 1897, Ivy Lee issued what’s considered the first press release in 1906 and set out the first code of practice for the trade, Edward Bernays wrote the first textbook in 1923, and the professional bodies followed: PRSA in the US in 1947 and CPRS in Canada in 1948. The tools changed every decade since. The job didn’t: get a true story in front of the people who decide what the public hears. In 2026 that includes the AI assistants that now answer buyers’ questions.
Historians usually start the clock in 1889, when George Westinghouse hired two men to publicize alternating current electricity, the first corporate PR department in the United States. The term “public relations” showed up in print eight years later, in the 1897 Year Book of Railway Literature, and the Publicity Bureau opened in Boston in 1900, commonly cited as the first PR agency (History of public relations, Wikipedia).
The craft got its founding document in 1906. Ivy Lee, working for the Pennsylvania Railroad after a train wreck in Atlantic City, issued what is widely considered the first press release, giving reporters the facts before rumour could. The same year he published his Declaration of Principles, the argument that a company should tell the press the truth promptly and openly rather than hide from it (Ivy Lee, Wikipedia). A century later, that is still the whole job.
Edward Bernays gave the field its theory. His 1923 book Crystallizing Public Opinion was the first textbook of PR, and his 1929 “Torches of Freedom” stunt for Lucky Strike, staged to attach cigarettes to women’s independence, is the standard example of how persuasive the craft can be and why it needs ethics.
Those ethics arrived with the professional bodies. The Public Relations Society of America was founded in 1947 and adopted its first code of ethics in 1950. The Canadian Public Relations Society was established at a meeting in Montreal in 1948 (Canadian Public Relations Society, Wikipedia). CPRS still accredits practitioners today; the APR after my name is theirs.
KFC and the slogan it couldn’t say (2020). When the pandemic arrived, “finger lickin’ good” went from harmless to tone-deaf overnight. KFC’s team didn’t pull the slogan or apologize for it. They blurred it out in their own ads, “It’s ∗∗∗∗∗∗ ∗∗∗∗∗∗∗ good,” and let the audience fill in the gap. A brand with that much recognition can play with its own message, and the move turned a liability into coverage. The lesson for any brand: when the world changes under your campaign, the honest, self-aware response is usually the best PR.
Sphero’s BB-8 (2015). The app-enabled BB-8 droid launched September 4, 2015, three months ahead of The Force Awakens, and Sphero’s CEO said the company sold its entire global stock within about an hour of launch (Wikipedia; socalTECH, October 2015). It became the season’s must-have toy.
We were Sphero’s PR and influencer agency in Canada for that launch, after three years leading its Canadian marketing. What made it work was the planning. Five months before launch, Sphero brought every regional agency to London for a week to learn the product and the character under strict Star Wars embargo, then built one global plan: same day, same hour across time zones, same story, with tactics tuned to each region. For us that meant Canadian media and creators had the droid in hand, briefed, before anyone could buy one. The launch is a case study in why a product this good still needs a story and a calendar. We went on to run the Canadian programs for Sphero’s later app-enabled droids.
The tools have turned over again. The releases Ivy Lee invented now feed AI assistants as well as reporters: Muck Rack’s analysis of more than a million AI citations found 89% point to earned media (Muck Rack, 2025). When a parent asks ChatGPT which baby monitor to buy, the answer is built from coverage someone earned.
So the 2026 version of the job looks like this. Get the product into the hands of the reporters and creators who cover the category. Give them a story with a named person, a date and a number. Time it to the windows when the category gets covered. And make sure the pages the coverage points to are worth quoting, because the next reader may be a model. That’s public relations as we run it for toy, baby and family brands, and it would have made sense to Ivy Lee.
No single person. Westinghouse built the first department (1889), Ivy Lee wrote the first press release and the first code of practice (1906), and Edward Bernays wrote the first textbook (1923). Lee and Bernays are the two names most histories start with.
Ivy Lee's statement for the Pennsylvania Railroad after the 1906 Atlantic City train wreck, issued to reporters before they could get the story elsewhere.
The Canadian Public Relations Society was founded in Montreal in 1948, a year after PRSA in the US.
More than before. AI answers are built from earned coverage, so the brands that get covered are the brands that get named.
About the author
Andrew Wagar founded Swerve Strategic Marketing in 2010 and runs it as President and CEO. He’s spent more than 30 years in PR and marketing, including PR Manager roles at Spin Master and the Canadian Standards Association.
He’s an Accredited Public Relations Professional (APR) with the Canadian Public Relations Society and has served on the Canadian Toy Association board since 2018, where he chairs marketing communications. Reporters covering the toy business call him when they need a source.
