Is Propaganda Replacing Marketing and Sales?

The line between sales and marketing has blurred in recent years with articles intended for a sales audience actually being all about email marketing campaigns, and marketing articles providing sales advice.  And most of it is bad!

As the politicians have been saying for the past two weeks at their respective conventions, let me make something perfectly clear.  Marketing, regardless of who initiates it, is everything that occurs prior to an actual conversation between a prospective customer and a seller.  Sales, regardless of who initiates it, is everything that happens when a two-way conversation has begun.

Marketing usually communicates a story, though it is typically one-sided and skewed.  Lately however, some of the marketing we have witnessed has been so contradictory to what we know and believe that I can no longer call it marketing.  It's propaganda. This is a great article on how the recent hack into the DNC email server was likely all part of a wider Russian propaganda scheme.

What we have been seeing for the past two weeks at the two conventions is only slightly different from Russian propaganda.  Rather than an official government news agency, like TASS, it's the public news media churning out the propaganda.

If you watched either Convention in July then you saw and/or heard one narrative at each convention, while you read or heard about a completely different narrative in the news.  Make no mistake about it.  Today, more than ever, the news media is not objectively reporting on the news.  It is providing us with their version of what they want us to believe is the news.

With regard to Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech, this one tells us how Hillary Clinton was booed, another tells us how she was cheered.  They covered the exact same event but we get two different versions depending on whether they are for or against Hillary.  Was it any different on the other side of the isle?  With regard to Donald Trump's acceptance speech, this article tells us how dark and dangerous he is, while this article said the speech was the best ever.  All  opinions of their speeches - not coverage.

It was only a couple of days ago when Trump made his comment about hoping the Russians could find the 30,000 missing emails that Hillary deleted.  Again, the media took two dramatically different positions.  Here, we are told that his comments are treason and in this article a felony. However, we are told here that he brilliantly hijacked the Democratic convention and here how he turned it all to his own advantage.

For those of us who are smart enough to look both ways before we cross, this isn't problematic, although it can be both frustrating and comical.  But for those who trust what they read and hear from credible sources and love it when they hear something that rings true to them, this is scary.  In the age of 24 hour news, sound bites, edited YouTube videos, and quotes taken out of context, fewer people are actually getting complete news stories, fewer media outlets are covering events with any objectivity, and more and more of the news is simply the media telling people what to think and believe.

I love sales, or helping people to choose us.  Marketing helps to support sales so I love marketing, or helping people to think about us.  I don't like Propaganda, or telling people what to think about us.