In the article “Propaganda Techniques in Today’s Advertising” by Ann McClintock, she discusses the seven main propaganda techniques that advertisers use for political purposes and consumer goods. In the article name calling is the first technique McClintock describes. Name calling is when an a company or another advertiser calls their competitor or opposing side a name that would make their target market frown upon them. Like Ann said in the article a politician may call their competitor a war monger to sway people who don’t want war to join his own side.
The next technique is glittering generalities, it is the opposite of name calling. Glittering generalities uses words that are hard to define such as American, justice, Christian, and many others to make others think higher of the product or politician. Politicians use this technique when they make up slogans like President Obama’s “change we can believe in”. The next technique is Transfer, transfer is used by associating a product with a symbol their target audience would love, and hopefully it would rub off onto the product. For example, politicians flood their campaign ads with the U. S.
flag and use American music in the background.The next technique is testimonial, it is an advertising technique in which celebrity’s talk about a product or are shown using it to hopefully sell to their fans. Testimonials can be used with books too if they have a well-known reviewer’s comment on the back of the book. Another technique is plain folks, it pretty much says “I’m like you buy me”.
Commercials using plain folks often show hard workers like us or people acting like we do on a daily basis to get common people to buy their product.Card stacking is another propaganda technique in which an advertiser stacks cards in the favor of the product they are trying to sell. Card stacking could be used in the reverse manner. The final technique is bandwagon, the bandwagon technique pretty much says “everyone is doing or buying it you should too”.
This technique works because everybody wants to fit in. We are surrounded by propaganda it is on the television, on the internet, and in our political campaigns, but we don’t have to fall for it we can’t let others think for us.
