Last Thursday, I stopped by The Change You Want To See Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to hear Stewart Ewen speak about “Symbols, Branding, and Persuasion”. Stewart has written many books on media and politics, one of them being PR! A Social History of Spin.

Though I haven’t read this specific book, I was familiar with the BBC series “loosely” based on it titled The Century of The Self. In The Century of The Self, director Adam Curtis draws connections between the history of political power and execution, propaganda, and Freudian psychoanalysis (amongst other things).

And while Mr. Ewen clearly wanted to remove Freudian connotation from his own work (he was much more interested in theorists Bernés and Gustave Le Bon), the topics at hand were equally heavy and entertaining. Case in point, at the end of his lecture Mr. Ewen played the opening from the popular children’s show Bob The Builder. All I can say is, what does the message remind you of? (By the way, I apologize if the theme song gets stuck in your head for at least the next couple of days.)

Check out some of the other programming at The Change You Want To See Gallery: here.