But let’s talk about the Revolution’s real heroes: the mass communicators

Who would’ve thought must-see TV for 2025 would be a 12-hour PBS documentary on the American Revolution. Yet, here we are: American history without the backing of a staged, fast-paced battle rap and pop musical. Who knew?

Everyone seems to be watching Ken Burns’ latest oeuvre that blends Hollywood A-listers (Claire Danes, Meryl Streep, and Kenneth Branagh among them), America’s youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, and a deep bench of the world’s most knowledgeable historians and writers.

What unfurls over the 12 hours is the unsanitized, un-Disneyfied reality of a lengthy, bloody, starvation-rife, disease-infested, and often morally ambiguous civil war that changed the course of global history.

It all makes for compelling television.

The documentary’s meticulous account of battles and military logistics, politics and personalities is noteworthy, too, for its focus on the revolution’s non-military heroes: its authors and communicators.

One is Samuel Adams. The other, Thomas Paine.

Samuel (“not Sam”) Adams: Not just a guy you’d grab a beer with

Samuel Adams, best remembered today as John Adams’ cousin and eponymous beer, was a giant in the public opinion influence game of the American Revolution. He was, says the Burns documentary, a master of propaganda. Stacy Schiff, in her 2022 biography of Adams, The Revolutionary, describes him as the revolution’s “indomitable master of public opinion.”

And just how did he come to earn this reputation?

Adams is largely credited for the formation of the standing Committees of Correspondence in 1772, created to organize public support for the Patriot cause and share vital information to coordinate resistance across the colonies. The first such Committee, the Boston Committee of Correspondence, was formed when Adams grew furious about a proposal to pay the salaries of the colony’s governor and judiciary from the royal treasury. Adams proposed its creation to rally opposition to the proposal among other Massachusetts towns. Within six months, 118 towns had such a committee, which accounted for what might have been every incorporated town in the colony at the time.

The first formal communication from the Boston Committee was a printed pamphlet outlining 12 specific grievances against the Crown and Parliament. It clearly listed a summarized, articulate perspective and gave shape to a nascent and inchoate resentment and hostility.

It turned anger into action.

Committees took hold across the Colonies, providing an organized forum for the Patriots to coalesce, plan, and make their case. Across the 13 colonies, the Committees cemented relationships and bonds among once-disparate colonists, essential to forging a singular nation with a shared identity. Burns reveals the genius in the organization and design of the colonial information economy and how it was used to forge, and organize, the revolution’s call to action.

Often lost in our gauzy understanding of the revolution is the fact that it began with 13 different micro-states, all with varying strengths and autonomy. Their respective economies, cultures, politics, distrust and prejudices toward the other 12 formed a potential barrier that could have otherwise prevented a formula for today’s democracy. The revolution would not have succeeded had groups of engaged people across the vast expanse of the British colonies not coalesced around a common ideal, a common purpose, and a common understanding of events. It’s easy to recall the punchy, pithy notes of democracy’s conception and assume their inspirational tones were as effective then as they are today. In fact, it took much more to get the message to stick. It took diligence, information networks, and message discipline.

The Committees of Correspondence were integral to that cohesion.

Also integral was shared public opinion.

Adams was not just a network creator. He was also a public opinion creator. He himself described his role, “to remove old prejudices, to instruct the unenlightened, convince the doubting, and fortify the timid.”

His enemies, naturally, had a different take on that role. Loyalist and royal Governor Thomas Gage, for example, held Adams responsible for “poisoning the minds of Americans, ripening them for insurrection.”

Whether his goal was insurrection or instruction, Adams doggedly pursued his role as creator and shaper of public opinion, writing some of the most influential pamphlets and columns in the colonies’ most widely read newspapers (using more than 30 pseudonyms) to build a case for rebellion and eventually argue, “is not America already independent? Why then not declare it? Can nations at war be said to be dependent either upon the other.”

His intuitive grasp of the significance of the Boston Massacre and, four years later, the Battle of Lexington, combined with his ability to whip the events into consumable narratives with moral urgency are credited with cementing public opinion in the Patriots’ favor. Adams’ narratives went viral – taken up by preachers in the pulpit, engravers, and ordinary people — all outraged at the injustices that occurred at the hands of the British and willing to spread the word.

He “muscled words into deeds,” summarized Schiff.

Thomas Paine: A royal pain

Independence from Britain was not the original goal of the colonial rebellion. Rebellion began with a demand for reform. For respect. For acknowledgment of the colonists’ rights as true British subjects. For reconciliation. Not for separation.

Enter Common Sense.

An unassuming, 47-page pamphlet originally published anonymously, Common Sense put into words what some, but certainly not all, Patriots were thinking in 1775 and early 1776: Full independence from Britain is the only path forward for the Colonies.

Written by Thomas Paine, an Englishman and relative newcomer to the Colonies, arriving in November 1774, Common Sense grounded the radical, seditious, and likely impracticable concept of independence from the British Empire in the Enlightenment’s universal ideals  of equality and freedom. He made independence something morally worthy of aspiration and attainment.

Paine also used clear, simple, and direct language that was easily understood, remembered, and repeated. His plain language to describe lofty philosophical and political concepts made it accessible to colonists from all walks of life. Common Sense almost immediately became a best-seller, with 120,000 copies reported to be sold in a territory of about 2.5 million people in just three months.

Adams’ Committees of Correspondence helped spread Paine’s message to the far corners of the colonies, and there were live readings in taverns and public meeting places from Georgia to Massachusetts.

Its almost-overnight popularity also likely benefited from a public, high-profile quarrel between Paine and his publisher and a heavy advertising spend.

Whether the result of high-minded idealism, simplicity of language, a publicity stunt, shilling-driven marketing, or a combination of all four, Common Sense changed the trajectory and focus of the rebellion to outright revolution with the sole aim being independence.

You say you want a revolution?

Bring in the communications professionals.

That may not be the main lesson Burns wants to teach with this documentary, but it’s clear that Adams’ and Paine’s ability to shape narrative and opinion, to build and refine collective understanding, to leverage current events, and to speak to relevant audiences were as indispensable to the outcome of the American Revolution as General Washington’s leadership and foreign aid from Britain’s ancient enemies.

Today’s hospital and health system C-suites probably don’t want a revolution. But, they do want influence and, often, disruption of old ways of thinking and entrenched behaviors. Getting there means bringing communications as a discipline to the forefront and not treating it as an 11^th hour or last-mile function.

Professional communications:

• Depends on a professionalized system and design with organization.
• Builds shared understanding.
• Creates, not just follows, public opinion or sentiment.
• Crafts and deploys consumable, repeatable messages.
• Identifies trending opportunities for storytelling and piggybacking.
• Uses all available channels to disseminate messages and makes new ones if existing ones aren’t sufficient.
• Distills complexity into understanding.
• Motivates action.

Your communications teams might not change the course of history, but the right ones will change the course of your brand, your reputation, your marketing, and your advocacy.

If you’re not already watching Ken Burns’ American Revolution on your local PBS station, it’s worth making the time for. If you are watching (or have finished it), email me and share your thoughts.