The Use Of Propaganda In Advertising

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

In her essay, “Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled”, author Donna Woolfolk Cross explains the different types of propaganda and how it is used in the United States. The essay was first published in Speaking of Words: A Language Reader (1977). Cross defines propaganda as “simply a means of persuasion and so it can be put to work for good causes as well as bad” (247). In her article she discusses how propaganda works and explains how propaganda is used with thirteen different devices to manipulate people’s thoughts, opinions, and ideas. She uses this essay as an informative piece, giving advice on how not to be manipulated by propaganda.

“Introducing the lasted, newly improved widget… anyone whose anyone has one… it is a must have!” These words sound familiar? This is due in part, because advertising today has taken such extreme measures to persuade the American public; materialism has become the most prominent and universal mentality. The need to have the newest and best has become an instilled characteristic of the average citizen. How, you may wonder, has the advertising industry become such a powerful entity? The answer is that propaganda has always played a vital role in society; this is not a new concept. Throughout history propaganda/advertising has been to entice, elude, and manipulate people.

Propaganda takes many forms, the most aggressive example in society is political campaigning for powers in office. A prominent

When was the last time you were exposed to propaganda? If you think it was more than a day ago, you are probably unaware of what propaganda really is. According to Donna Woolfolk Cross in “Propaganda: How not to be Bamboozled,” propaganda is “simply a means of persuasion” (149). She further notes that we are subjected daily to propaganda in one form or another as advertisers, politicians, and even our friends attempt to persuade us to use their product, vote for them, or adopt their point of view. Propaganda is usually considered in a negative sense. However, when viewing propaganda as mere persuasion, one can readily appreicate that it is

In “Propaganda Techniques in Today 's Advertising” by Ann McClintock, the author discusses how Americans are being brainwashed by advertisements and the different techniques they use to catch our attention. Ads are simply everywhere we look, it is impossible to get through the day without seeing one. All advertising companies put tons of research into how consumers spend money or even vote. Once these companies finish their research, they create advertisements that appeal to the masses. The basic propaganda techniques that McClintock writes about are Name Calling, Glittering Generalities, Transfer, Testimonial, Plain Folks, Card Stacking, and Bandwagon. Each one of these propaganda techniques is used in specific ways by advertisers to sell their product or service to consumers. I have selected a political ad which uses the Glittering Generalities technique, a coffee ad that uses Transfer technique, a soda ad that uses the Testimonial technique, and a soup ad that uses the Name Calling technique.

Advertisements are a part of our everyday lives and we encounter thousands every day on television, in newspapers, on the radio, on the internet. Advertisements use three basic tricks to persuade the people as listed by Aristotle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is used to convince the viewer of the credibility. Pathos is an appeal to emotion and is used to convince the viewer by creating an emotional response. Logos is an appeal to logic and is used to persuade the viewer by logic. An advertisement may use one, two or a combination of all three. They have the power to persuade us into buying things that we might or might not want. Not every advertisement aims at materialistic things. Some advertisements want to educate us on a persistent issue, some might want to raise awareness and even aid funding, some try to remind us of important events that might be taking place in our county. The advertising agencies try to be as creative as possible in order to grab utmost attention. But sometimes, in doing so, they end up hurting sentiments of a community of people. I will discuss one such advertisement in my journal below.

Propaganda is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as ‘the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person’.

We live in a world of technological innovation where mass media is a major part of us today. People make assumptions on what they hear. They do not try to analyze the situation to see who is right and who is wrong, and mass media is the main source of manipulating one's mind. The concept of propaganda has changed over time. Propagandists create ideas stereotypically through the use of propaganda and use media to promote it and target people's minds to have influence on their views towards a certain group of people. These ideas create negative or positive images in the intended audience's minds. However, it is notable that the information is only the one that is exemplified through media and therefore, can be

First, one must define propaganda and since many have done so already, I shall use the Sheryl Ross model. Her model defines propaganda as “an epistemically defective message designed with the intention to persuade a socially significant group of people on behalf of a political institution, organization, or cause.”

Propaganda is performed through print, audio, and visual mass media. It is used for the promotion of the public’s activities in their life such as purchasing goods through market propaganda, and it is also found in politics, foreign affairs, and in many other fields. Most importantly propaganda is depicted in the informercialization of the news, which is connected with subliminal advertising and commercialization of public events and individual promotion such in communication websites. However, there is great debate over propaganda and persuasion that is casted in the media, which I will be elaborating in this essay.

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down

Advertising is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce one’s prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes for which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object, or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to ‘persuade’ to consumer in order to generate new markets for production.

Today’s propaganda is maybe subtler and less obvious, but with the internet and advanced technologies of these past few decades, information can spread