Photograph by Richmond LamFrom left: Anna Post, Cindy Post Senning, Peter Post, Daniel Post Senning, and Lizzie Post
“Who would like to tell me I have body odor?” Anna Post asks a group of nine people at the Burlington Country Club in Vermont. There’s an awkward silence, everyone hoping someone else will politely inform the great-great-granddaughter of etiquette expert Emily Post that she smells.
Karen Cooley, an entrepreneur from Seattle, raises her hand. “Anna, if the tables were turned, I would want you to tell me,” she says. “So … I’m concerned, and have heard others comment, that you have some body odor.” Cooley puts her hand on Post’s knee. “Do I really?” Post asks. Cooley nods and gives Post a hug.
It’s the first day of a $5,000 weeklong business etiquette seminar run by the Emily Post Institute. Anna’s leading the session, and her sister, Lizzie, is observing. Their father, Peter, is also helping out. “I like that Karen just came out and said it without a big spiel. The faster the better,” Anna says to the group. “I would have held short on ‘We’ve all noticed.’ And I would advise against touching in the workplace.” Peter chimes in: “And don’t expect the person with body odor to thank you.”
Nine decades after the publication of Etiquette: In Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, a book regarded as one of the great civilizing forces in modern America, six Posts from the fourth and fifth generations are working to keep the family brand relevant. They write books, conduct training programs in Burlington (in addition to business etiquette, there are classes about teaching manners to children), give daylong corporate seminars, and serve as spokespeople for companies such as Bank of America (BAC) and Intel (INTC). Lizzie and her cousin Dan Post Senning recently started a podcast. They’d love to do a television show, too.
Some brands can easily outlive a founding family’s participation. Not this one. “Part of the Posts’ strength is their authenticity,” says Allen Adamson, the North American chairman of branding consultant Landor Associates. People trust the clan’s etiquette advice the same way they trust the Rockefellers’ money management. “We’ve learned that to maintain credibility there has to be at least one Post involved,” Anna says. “But it doesn’t seem much to matter which one.”
Photograph by Richmond Lam
Emily Post was raised among New York’s gilded elite. The debutante of the season in 1892, she married—unhappily and briefly—a Wall Street financier. She produced five second-rate novels and many magazine pieces, and then, at the age of 49, wrote a 619-page book about etiquette that revealed society’s secret code. Full of characters and stories, a bit of satire, and many very specific rules—“Allow a space 24 inches wide, 15 inches deep per person when setting your table”—it was an immediate bestseller.
Post died in 1960 at the age of 87. Her successor was Elizabeth, her granddaughter-in-law, who faithfully revised the book several times and extended the brand as best she could. Among the new volumes were Emily Post’s Wedding Etiquette and Emily Post on Second Weddings. Elizabeth wrote a column for Good Housekeeping and was a favorite of Johnny Carson.
But in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s it wasn’t easy to sell convention and civility. “People didn’t want to be told what to do,” Anna says during a break in the training. “Then there was the disaffected irony of the 1990s,” Dan says. “We’re so not that. We’re so earnest.” He pauses. “It’s actually sincerity more than anything else that defines us.”
Peter and his sister Cindy joined their sister-in-law Peggy at the institute at the end of the 1990s. (Peggy, Elizabeth’s daughter-in-law, had been running the company alone since the ’80s.) Peter already had a career in marketing; Cindy, in education. Peter’s book, Essential Manners for Men, hit the New York Times bestseller list in late 1999. The success of The Etiquette Advantage in Business by Peggy and Peter, which also came out in 1999, led to requests from companies for speeches and training seminars. Peter created the Emily Post Institute principles—consideration, respect, and honesty—and its five-step, foolproof process for handling awkward situations. “You can’t stump us,” he says.
Photograph by Richmond Lam
With the business growing, Peter brought in his daughters when they were in their 20s. Anna helped on the 17th edition of Etiquette (new topics include cell phones, online dating, and road rage); Lizzie’s first project was a book for young adults called How Do You Work This Life Thing? Dan had been a contemporary dancer in Los Angeles for almost a decade when he got an e-mail in 2008 from his uncle Peter about a job opening at the institute for an office administrator. He moved up quickly, most recently writing Emily Post’s Manners in a Digital World: Living Well Online.
The Posts work out of a small office in a former red-brick schoolhouse in Burlington. A covered bridge links the parking lot to the building. Inside the institute there’s an oil painting of Emily Post from her society days. The place is neat and unfussy; the Posts are, too. The conference table they’re sitting around is made from Vermont granite, and they put their elbows on it. (But only when no one’s eating lunch.)
The Posts are happy to report that their sincerity resonates with millennials. “They’re very collaborative, and we believe that etiquette is the fuel that powers relationships,” says Anna, who’s 35 and looks a lot like Emily. Posts don’t like to be critical or judgmental or too stern, Dan says. “We do scold,” says Lizzie, 32 and the loosest of the three. She’s the one who posed with the Jersey Shore girls for a Harper’s Bazaar photo shoot.
Although the Posts all write books, the most popular one remains Etiquette, now in its 18th edition. Published in late 2011, that version has sold 61,000 print and e-book copies, according to Post royalty statements. The wedding etiquette books also do well: There have been three editions of each since 2000, and together they’ve sold almost 165,000 copies. The business etiquette book has sold 85,000 print copies since it was first published in 1999.
In 2013 the Posts gave seminars at two dozen companies, and in recent years they’ve been hired by Wal-Mart (WMT), Microsoft (MSFT), ESPN (DIS), and Barclays (BCS). They charge $10,000 for a full day and $6,500 for a half-day. An important source of income for the institute is brand partnerships. “You find etiquette anywhere you have an interaction with another person,” Anna says. “Usually you find commerce there, too.”
Photograph by Richmond Lam
She did a campaign about mobile manners for Intel, letting people know that including “please excuse any typos from my phone” at the bottom of an e-mail isn’t courteous, it’s lazy. She also did television interviews for Colgate about how to tell colleagues they have food caught between their teeth. (Quickly—and try Colgate’s (CL) new slim toothbrush!) Peter has talked about sneezing etiquette for Puffs (PG). Lizzie has given money advice to brides and grooms courtesy of Bank of America and American Express (AXP).
At the end of the week, the nine students at today’s session will be certified Emily Post instructors, able to pass on their knowledge to youth groups, college students, local businesses, and nonprofits, making $2,000 to $5,000 per seminar. Kymberli Parker, a former stationery business owner who completed the training last year, offers etiquette sessions to companies such as Qualcomm (QCOM). “I’ve built my business with the Post name behind me,” she says.
Anna presents difficult situation No. 4: “A colleague gives a horrible presentation to a client but thinks it went well. What do you do?” One woman speaks up: “You could say, ‘The audience asked great questions,’ to be positive without lying,” she suggests. “Then you could ask to talk to your colleague privately to tell him the truth.” Anna nods and says, “But you don’t want to leave the message that his performance was OK.”
“We give people confidence more than new ideas,” Peter says of the institute’s mission. “Most people know what to do,” Anna adds. “We just say, ‘Yes, that’s right.’”