Marketing, Advertising, Propaganda

       Marketing, advertising, and propaganda are three words that a lot of people tend to believe mean the same thing. Although these words do share similar meanings and purposes they are not the same by definition. In my opinion marketing is a term that defines a complex and well organized strategy that someone would use to attract customers and keep them brand loyal. The biggest difference to me between marketing and advertising is that marketing involves a lot more research than advertising does and it is also based more on a specific target market than advertising is.
       Advertising is a form of promoting a product or service that is meant to reach a large audience. Although advertising is meant to reach a target audience it often reaches an audience that is not a part of there market because advertising is so much based on quantity rather than quality. For instance the Super Bowl is a great example of how advertising is utilized. Last years Super Bowl attracted over 106 million viewers who saw advertisements for a wide variety of products and services. Although these companies, who were promoting their names, were trying to reach a specific market they were also reaching a lot of viewers who were not in their target market because of how many people watched this event.
       Propaganda is a form of promotion that is used in a way to influence or persuade a group of people toward a specific thought or cause. I think that it is a mix between marketing and advertising because it is used as a strategy that you have to do research for, but at the same time it is meant to reach a large number of people because with propaganda, your target market is everyone. The most famous example of propaganda was used by the Nazi party during WWII against the Jewish religion. The Nazi's would use propaganda against the Jewish people by creating posters of Jewish people depicting them in a negative way and spreading false information about them being bad people. The term propaganda is used more as a political term because of this event and it is used primarily as a tool of persuasion and influence.