Propaganda

Propaganda: Information of a typically misleading nature promoting a particular point of view.

When you think of the word propaganda, most people will think of iconic imagery from WWI or WWII. The same imagery that 'mislead' so many people to their deaths. War propaganda was clever- it left out the true reality of war, the death and destruction and instead focused on encouragement. Encouragement through peer pressure, if you think about it now. 'All of these other BRAVE men are enlisting, so if you do then you are brave too. If you don't you are a COWARD.' That's the message. It worked.

Nowadays, people wouldn't really think there was much propaganda about due to the collective automatic association with War propaganda. Wrong. When you're watching the TV, you're being exposed to propaganda in the form of advertisements. When you're watching a movie and you see the logo for a company in the background or on an object that a character is interacting with, you're being exposed to it. It's become such a big part of our daily life that we don't acknowledge it anymore.

I will admit that I still find advertisements like this annoying, however I have developed a respect for the people that design them. It's an art form in itself, based around being memorable and putting across a convincing message. That message is usually 'buy this', but if an advert gets stuck in someone's mind, then they've succeeded.