Monday, January 24, 2011

The difference between marketing, advertising, and propaganda

A lot of the time people will get confused with marketing, advertising, and propaganda when running there business but there are some significant differences that if recognized along with doing market research can put a a company on the path of substantial growth. All three definitions go hand in hand with one another because they all have a away of getting information out to people but how that information is presented makes the distinct difference.

Advertising is the paid, public, non-personal announcement of a persuasive message by an identified sponsor; the non-personal presentation or promotion by a firm of its products to its existing and potential customers.











Marketing is the systematic planning, implementation and control of a mix of business activities intended to bring together buyers and sellers for the mutually advantageous exchange or transfer of products.
 


Propaganda is  the use of information that only supports one idea or cause.

 

To simplify things advertising is a single component of a marketing process and most of the time is the most expense aspect of marketing. It involves getting the word out to the people about a product or service usually by TV ads, billboards, newspaper clippings, and the internet. Advertising is considered the most important part of marketing but without a good marketing strategy advertising will only go so far. Advertising occurs when the product has already been made and now needs to convince a market target that it is worth there money. Most of the time advertising occurs when a company knows they will be reaching a large audience like the World Cup, Super Bowl, or a very busy highway. Marketing is considered a campaign that is designed to create awareness of products, services, and brands. Marketing believes in building strong customer satisfaction. Marketing has many aspects besides advertising like sales, distribution, pricing, media relations, customer support, etc. All of these elements must not only work independently but they also must work together towards the bigger goal. Marketing is a process that takes time and can involve hours of research for a marketing plan to be effective. Think of marketing as everything that an organization does to facilitate an exchange between company and consumer. Propaganda is a form of communication or advertising that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community towards some cause of position. Propaganda always has a very noticable opinion in its approach to convince a target. Unlike regular advertisements that promote a direct product propaganda aims to sway views usually in a negative way. Most of the time propaganda is used in politics because peoples views and opinions in a political sense are always changing due to propaganda. Propaganda really started to take off in the World War 2 era. The main difference propaganda has over marketing and advertising is that its mainly opinion based and can use false statements to change peoples minds.
Marketing, avertising, and propaganda all relate to each other because they deal with people and promoting products, but marketing is the big picture while advertising and propaganda are just aspects of it. Advertising is way to get a product noticed usually with something that a lot of people will see and hopefully will be interested in. Propaganda is a way of advertising usually to change a persons opinion and can sometimes not be totally true. Marketing is the process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing of goods or services.

Do you feel that propaganda is ethically right in some ways or do you think it should not be allowed when marketing?