Marketing, Advertising, & Propaganda

We are asked to define in our own words, express questions, thoughts, and articulate the differences between these three terms which affect business. As management majors these terms, ideas, and questions are all important and valid. I will first elaborate on my personal definition of these i.e. not the Webster definition but what I have read in the marketing text, what I see in the media, and what I have learned in other course work.

Marketing is a process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing. This is a very involved chain of events that is important in business and within a company. Marketing in necessary in order to sell the product and make revenues so marketing must be done to be successful. Some companies are large enough to have their own department and some companies must do it on a much smaller scale. But it can be agreed upon that it’s an imperative part of business to keep the company running. Marketing is grouped together by subcategories where each part works together to achieve a common goal through tasks. The kinds of items involved in marketing within a company in order to sell are goods, services, or even ideas. Marketing is also a relationship between the customer and the business unlike the ‘good old boy’ version of business decades ago which will not work anymore. It must be remembered that commerce is now a relationship and everyone is equally important. As we also discussed in class marketing can be looked at as a large father category or an umbrella and the other categories under it work together.

Advertising is the subcategory within marketing that focuses on the portion of marketing in the area of promotion. Advertising focuses on needs, wants, and desires and is sometimes but not always targeted at conjuring people up to do certain things. It is obvious that advertising is very media focused. Even though it is only a subcategory of marketing the work done in advertising is work intensive and important. Tremendous amounts of research and planning must be done for the whole goal is to be accomplished.

Propaganda can be used within advertising and is sometimes used in a sinister light. For example it is used to manipulate a situation; but propaganda can be used in both good and bad ways which can be a matter of ethics.

Now that these have been defined a recapitulation of the differences is needed even though the definition has been stated. Generally the differences are that marketing is the large picture, advertising is a subcategory of marketing and is very important even though it is a subcategory, and propaganda is persuasion which can be used for good or evil.

Upon questions and thoughts I feel like I would like to know more about the other subcategories in marketing more in depth but that is why I am taking the course. By understanding marketing and the subcategories on the micro level the comprehension of the ‘big picture’ can be better understood. More discussion and reading of the chapter will answer these questions. My thoughts on advertising is this; I will remain open minded but I have personally experienced negativity in both of those areas in the past. A lot of times my tastes and beliefs more often than not do not coincide with the general consensus of the current American culture and what are fashionable. The good thing about propaganda is this; intelligent people who are educated enough will know the difference between truth and propaganda and can read between the lines immediately. It is obvious all three things are different i.e. marketing, advertizing, and propaganda, and at this point all ideas are exhausted and thoroughly explained.

The issue of the “War on Terror” that has been described and is clearly propaganda. But it is to be causioned that this can be a sensitive topic when dealing with the different ideologies and expierences of people in the class. In this form of propaganda it is my view point that it is used positively. It is seen as promoting patriotism after 9/11 in order to get troops for the cause for the Iraq and Afganistan War. The same type of propaganda was positively used in World War II to promote patriotism. One example of this is “fight or buy bonds”.

A clear line is drawn between marketing and advertising because advertising is a subcategory of marketing in the promotion area where the internet, magazine advertisements, and television commercials are advertising. Marketing and advertising is pretty clear to us as marketing students but for non-management majors there is a lot of grey area. To the common public creating a product or idea might be seen as advertising. In movies when people are seen in board meeting brainstorming as a marketing team people may think it’s an advertizing team and may think the advertizing department is the large department when this is an untruth. Movies also romantize marketing and advertising making it appear glamourous. In these movies the two get blurred which makes it difficult to have a solid comprehension of either.In this Hollywood image of marketing/advertizing the pricing can also be confused in the realm of being a part of advertizing. Marketing myopia is another problem that occurs. Marketing myopia as we discussed in class is when a company gets an idea about what is best for a customer or what a customer wants which is untrue and it results in a unfortunate situation for the company and not the consumer. In this the advertizing is clear but there is an obvious lack of communication in the research and the other components in marketing.

Question: Do you think that propaganda can be both negative or positive? Does propaganda become a matter of ethics? Is the differences between marketing and advertizing cut in dry or more blurred? Is there anything ‘problematic’ about marketing and advertizing that I missed?