MGT-331-01-SP11: Principles of Marketing

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Marketing, Advertisement and Propaganda

In an effort to try and differentiate between marketing, advertisement and propaganda without any in-depth research, I would explain it as this.  I have always perceived propaganda as more of a political term, but I can see where it comes into play in this class.  Propaganda as we all know is misleading information, but this is not to say that all propaganda is a lie.  Companies all over the world use propaganda everyday to sell their products.  First thing that comes to my mind when thinking of propaganda (in the context of this course) is Subway.  Subway had told the public that a man, Jared Fogel, had lost hundreds of pounds while eating their sandwiches daily.  This is not a lie, however, they held out important information that he only ate a small 6-inch sub with no mayo and had other proper diet and exercise.  Because of this Subway has misled the general public into a belief that if you eat their subs you will lose weight; information we all know is not true.
I look at advertisement basically as any way a company or organization gets their product heard or noticed to the general public.  Advertisements can be found on television, on the radio, on a billboard, and really anywhere else.  Even we ourselves serve as advertisement for a company when we put on our Nike shoes or Levi jeans.
Marketing can incorporate both of these ideas.  Advertisement is almost always a part of the market mix and sometimes propaganda is as well.  But marketing encompasses really four main ideas; product, price, distribution, and promotion.  Marketers design the product to appeal to certain people, set the price to appeal to certain people, make the product readily and easily available to their target market, and promote their product in any way they can.  Therefore, marketing really follows a product from the day it starts being designed to the day it reaches the hand of the consumer.

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