Tuesday, January 25, 2011

What is the difference between marketing, advertising and propaganda?

The first step in understanding the differences between each phrase is to knowing what they mean – their definition. Here are some of the definitions according to our marketing text book:
Marketing is defined as the process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing goods, services, and ideas to facilitate satisfying exchange relationships with customers and to develop and maintain favorable relationships with stakeholders in a dynamic way.
Advertising is a paid non-personal communication about an organization and its products transmitted to a target audience through mass media
Propaganda: According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, it is the spreading of ideas or information to further or damage a cause.
Marketing:
It becomes obvious that advertising is a part of marketing. Advertising and propaganda are both used to inform the public (target market) about a product or idea or service and used to attract and convince people that they want your product or agree with your ideas.
The difference is that marketing is about educating about a product; stimulating a demand that already exists. Marketing main objective is not convincing consumers to buy a product. Advertising on the other hand, is presenting a product in a very attractive light, convincing consumers that they want to buy it. Advertising is very focused on sales and capturing a large market share. Propaganda on the other hand, although can be considered as a type of advertising, main goal is not only to influence a person but do so by giving partial information while omitting anything that will not further the cause or that is detrimental to it. It involves the deliberate use of misinformation and usually to further a political idea.

Examples of each:
Marketing: First time home buyer credit when the government was trying to stimulate the housing marketing and inturn the economy.


Advertising: Ads seen in magazines, newspapers, billboards, and on television to name a few.
Cool Ads 
Propaganda: Rwanda 1994 - when the Hutu extremist convince Rwandans that the Tutsi were going to kill them and in order to prevent that they had to take action. They used the history of Rwanda (after colonization), twisting it to suit their agenda which lead to the Rwandan Genocide.
RADIO PROPAGANDA AND GENOCIDE

Isn't there a bit of advertising and propaganda in every marketing venture?