Much Ado About a Sticker

Advertisement nowadays is very different from what it was during the XIX th century. Advertisement used to be a paragraph on the newspaper stating “Buy this from me, because I have it”. Noways products and services are generally available and advertisement has had to change over the years. Advertising has borrowed heavily from the realm of propaganda, making it hard for those wanting to differentiate them from one another.

The image above, a sticker, was distributed by a hardware store and widely circulated in certain parts of Florida prior to Veterans Day in the United States and I would like to discuss why this advertisement campaign cannot be confused with propaganda. This because, although there are many similarities in intent and content, it lacks essential qualities discussed on the lessons reviewed in class.

This advertising campaign shares with propaganda its two fundamental constants. As seen in lesson two, propaganda always seeks to elicit a “yes” from the targeted audience and always necessitates some type of action for it to be effective. By distributing this particular sticker, the hardware store wants to elicit a yes from the consumer, they want them to think, “yes, me too I thank veterans for their work.” The idea behind this is to have the customer associate his values to those of the store, so that at the time of a future purchase, the customer will chose to buy from “people like him.”

The aesthetics of the sticker emulates how propaganda uses images which can be interpreted in different ways according to the message intended. The imagery used has the same qualities the propaganda poster from World War II, shown in lesson two of the study materials, has. The sticker distributed is minimalist and its wordi...

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...paign is not yet timeless, credible enough or total. Whether the socio-political environment of the United States encourages nationalism in the private sector as a means of indoctrination is a question that would require more than a mid-term paper to analyze.

Works Cited

Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: the formation of men's attitudes. Vintage, 1973. Print.

Rouse, Ed . "Joseph Gobbels: Principles of Propaganda." Psywariors - Psychological Operations. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2011.

Murphy, Ed . "Lesson 2: What is Propaganda?."Propaganda and You. E-Concordia, 05/2011. Web. 20 May 2011.

Murphy, Ed . "Lesson 3: Total."Propaganda and You. E-Concordia, 05/2011. Web. 20 May 2011.

Murphy, Ed . "Lesson 4: Time."Propaganda and You. E-Concordia, 05/2011. Web. 20 May 2011.

Murphy, Ed . "Lesson 5: Truth."Propaganda and You. E-Concordia, 05/2011. Web. 20 May 2011.