Marketing, Propaganda, and Politics From WWI to Trump
This episode is also available as a written essay. Read the full text transcript:
"The History of Marketing, Propaganda & Politics From WWI to the Post-Trump Era."
I believe that marketers and the people who consume marketing (that's everybody) need to know the history of the advertising industry and how we went from “Mad Men to Math Men” to quote Alexander Nix, former CEO of Cambridge Analytica.
There is so much more to this history than a bunch of Don Drapers clinking scotch glasses while they come up with pithy slogans. Marketing history intertwines with how politics and culture took shape over the last century. To understand marketing history is to understand ourselves.
If you want the short version of this, check out this 3-minute TikTok I created last week:
@rachaelkayalbers How did we get here? Marketing history is political history. #marketingmuckraking #propaganda #advertisinghistory #edwardbernays #ww1 #jan6 #publicopinion #massmedia #brandculture #fyp #foryou #trump #history #americanhistory #militarism #capitalism #chiquita #jacoboarbenz #politics #politicalhistory #fbiraid #trumpraid #marketinghistory ♬ original sound - Rachael Kay Albers
For the full deep dive into the history of marketing, propaganda, and politics — from WWI, Edward Bernays, and the advent of public relations, to social media, the 2016 election, Trump, and the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal that brought us to this moment in history — you'll want to listen to this full episode.
Or read the essay version here.
This episode covers:
- How WWI propaganda legitimized the advertising industry
- The irony of Americans declaring independence and then copying the British
- That time in 1918 when the U.S. government institutionalized fake news
- The one thing Rand Paul is right about (for all the wrong reasons)
- How public relations put the "truth" back in advertising
- The not-so-funny story of where "snake oil salesmen" come from
- What Nazi Germany learned from U.S. laws and leaders
- The American banana propaganda that led to 36 years of civil war in Guatemala
- How Facebook exploits the data of people who don't even use the platform
- Why global corporations have more power than our individual governments
About the Marketing Muckraking podcast
Welcome to Marketing Muckraking, the show that asks not simply what brand culture can do for us, but what it’s doing to us — with your host, creative director, brand strategist gone wild, and the court jester of online business, Rachael Kay Albers — making fun of business and making business fun.
This is the show for rebels, revolutionaries, and renegades who run businesses that burn the rulebook. If you’re sick of business podcasts with all the answers — I’ve got nothing but questions.
Where we swap B School for FREE SCHOOL, easy for honest, and goal digging for marketing in pursuit of meaning.
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