ABSTRACT
Advertising is such a constant presence in our cultural conditioning, virtually from birth to death, that it is hard for us to view it objectively or critically, and particularly to think of it as a form of propag and a. As with public relations and lobbying, there is of course a huge diversity of sources and motives for advertising. Much advertising, especially on the local level or by nonprofit groups, is straightforwardly informational and honest, and many ads sell products that have a limited target market and features that legitimately distinguish them from their competitors. However, the advertising to which we are most frequently exposed is typically produced to maintain a constant profit level for big businesses that have large, long-range production and sales quotas that depend on artificial stimulation of demand. This kind is produced by hired professional agencies, transmitted through mass media, and characterized by the traits of propaganda identified in Aldous Huxley’s account of Hitler’s methods: “the systematically one-sided attitude … the slogans, the unqualified assertions … confined to a few bare necessities and … expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.”
