We operate with the notion that we have free will but decisions still mostly depend on persuasion. This is extremely prevalent within advertising as it is all about persuasion and manipulation. Whilst adverts do have to pass standards, and can’t lie, e.g. Lynx can’t explicitly say that their product will make girls fall in love with guys, they still can use persuasion techniques to make guys believe that.
The Ancient Greeks believed in voting and achieving citizenship. In democratic and legal processes, they believed people should argue for themselves. In that era, Sophists were specialised in rhetoric (presenting a point of view in a persuasive way) and they would teach citizens how to argue persuasively.
Propaganda is biased/misleading information, often associated with psychological methods of influencing/persuasion. It often generates an emotional, not rational, response. This is true with adverts, which often use emotions to drive profits up. This is evident especially with Christmas adverts, with John Lewis becoming known for making emotional Christmas adverts. Maybe this is why the 2016 Christmas advert was so controversial/disappointing, because it didn’t make people emotional (cry).
Photography can both show the impact of propaganda and be used for propaganda, e.g. the Nazi rallies showing the masses of support they received could be used as propaganda as it could manipulate people into thinking it was the ‘right’ thing to do as so many people agreed with them.
Early research said adverts didn’t change how people thought, but rather changed choices. Moreover, they didn’t change what we thought but what we thought about.
For mundane products, e.g. washing powder, it is interesting to note how adverts can change our perception on them. If someone chooses the most expensive object, it is because they think it is the best, if someone chooses the cheapest they do so because of value for money and if they choose the most well known, it is because they trust it. No one does actual research into the product. With further consideration, I can conclude that I only agree with this to a certain extent. This point implies that adverts don't have an impact on people's decisions with mundane products, and I disagree, as I think successful advertisements impact people on all products, no matter what they are. However, I do appreciate that with the example of washing powder, adverts don't tend to influence people more than the prices do, perhaps because of the poor quality of advertising that tends to go with that product, i.e. the typical TV advert of someone, usually a woman, cleaning a surface.
I found it interesting that when these words are used in an advert, sales tend to increase (new, quick, easy, improved, now, suddenly, amazing, introducing). These all fit under the heuristic mechanism (a rule of thumb method for solving a problem). However, we should not dismiss the fact that even with that choice of vocabulary, if the idea behind the advert is not persuasive/creative enough, then sales will not automatically increase.
There are two routes of persuasion:
1) peripheral: using heuristics, decision not supported by research
2) central: using research/careful thought
Out of these two routes, the first is generally the most popular, due to the fact that we are Cognitive Misers, which mean we don’t like to think about matters when we don’t have to.
In the lecture we also discussed post truth politics, which is when emotions have a bigger impact than the objective facts. In ‘Propaganda’ (1928) Bernays says; “Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear.”
I completely agree with this point as I think people often want to scapegoat other people for their problems, and that’s why people like Donald Trump and Hitler were able to get into power, due to the silent voters.
With images, it is often not the image itself that is propaganda but the context of which it is presented, e.g. the copy alongside it, the time it was published, where it was published etc. This is of course true with advertising, as if an advert has both copy and imagery, then both aspects are needed to persuade the customer. If the copy isn’t there, then the advert may not work, as the imagery may not make any sense. However, with some adverts, the imagery is all the advert needs. For example this Lego advert:
Although this Lego advert had the word ‘Imagine’ on it, I don’t think it was necessary as the image was so strong.
We also looked at Jenny Holzers work, specifically her Truisms piece. I found it really insightful as when you look at all the statements written, on face value they seem like truths yet when you look further into them, we can see that they all contradict themselves. Perhaps with propaganda, although on the surface it may seem believable, if people actually studied it then we wouldn’t be so susceptible to it. Perhaps if customers therefore also took the time to study adverts, and see what persuasion techniques were being used, and replaced emotional response with rational response, adverts wouldn’t be nearly as effective. 
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