Com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fes­sion­als should have at least a cur­so­ry under­stand­ing of Edward Bernays’ work. Along with Ivy Lee, he’s con­sid­ered one of the fathers of the field of Pub­lic Rela­tions. He may have actu­al­ly coined the term. Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sig­mund Freud, but I’ll let the video [post­ed below] explain that.

“If we under­stand the mech­a­nism and motives of the group mind, is it not pos­si­ble to con­trol and reg­i­ment the mass­es accord­ing to our will with­out their know­ing about it? The recent prac­tice of pro­pa­gan­da has proved that it is pos­si­ble, at least up to a cer­tain point and with­in cer­tain lim­its.”
— Edward Bernays (Pro­pa­gan­da, 2005 ed., p. 71)

He called this prac­tice of per­sua­sion the “engi­neer­ing of con­sent.”

Edward Bernays and Sig­mund Freud are the main char­ac­ters in the video below. It is the first of a four part BBC doc­u­men­tary The Cen­tu­ry of the Self direct­ed by Adam Cur­tis.

The oth­er three parts can be found here: two, three, and four.