the relations between marketing and advertising. In this chapter the importance of marketing to advertising that takes important part in the marketing process, sales promotion, marketing research and also advertising and marketing plans and objectives are mentioned.
Chapter VIII discusses another two controversial spheres of persuasion, propaganda and education and tries to make distinction in relation between them. In this chapter are explained religion, education and propaganda, national education understood as propaganda, the distinction between education and propaganda also the significance of educational propaganda for international relations.
After chapter VIII comes chapter nine which consists the conclusion of this Book. It brings the important ideas, remarks and the main suggestions of the Book.
Finally the chapter ten is the supplement in this Book. In this supplement the characteristic features of practitioners in different persuasions spheres are described. This supplement explains which desirable characteristics and what kind of education and knowledge are required for persuasion sphere activists for performing their activities successfully.
What is very clearly seen is the process of adoption of patterns or standards from countries that had longer tradition of practising democracy. It pertains first of all to the spheres of activity that have closer ties with market and economy. Persuasion undoubtedly belongs to such spheres with all activities surrounding it, belonging or akin to it.
In the process of taking over new patterns and/or standards some shifts or changes in meaning and understanding have been made. Remarkable is for instance expansion of some notions and at the same time abandoning other ones. In this context it is worthy to mention first of all enormous expansion of the notion (as well as the sphere) of advertising. And at the same time very clearly shown is shrinking the area of using the term propaganda that now more and more is getting obsolete and applied primarily for the purposes of description of the past events and realities.
From this perspective very interesting is the task of analysing relations between other spheres of activity that are in one or other way linked with the above mentioned. Meant are predominantly such spheres as public relations, marketing or education and their surroundings.
In this context there is no need for firstly: more detailed delineating boundaries between the spheres in question and secondly, better understanding the goals and objectives they are aiming at. It is needed because one observes many mistakes and misunderstandings connecting with these spheres. It is vital because the importance of at least some of these spheres grows tremendously.
PART ONE CHAPTER I – PERSUASION
We are constantly engaged in trying to transmit ideas to other people and also are continually expose on the receiving ideas from those around us and from that mass media. We all gradually learn what kind of effects our words are likely to have on our friends and associates and at the same time we learn methods of distinguishing among the persuasive information we receive, for example the important from the unimportant, the reliable from the unreliable and so on. For most of us, the range of knowledge about persuasion is limited to the situations we encounter in everyday life, but this is ordinarily sufficient.
There are, however, a number of professional groups that require a broader knowledge of the uses and effects of persuasion and sub-spheres. Those engaged in the practice of advertising, public relations, propaganda, education, marketing and religion must have broader knowledge because they make use of a wider range of media for the transmission of ideas and they also find it necessary to reach large number of widely different people in the cause of their professional activities. Yet professionals in the fields of persuasion spheres, like non-professionals ordinarily accumulate the specialized information that they need through practical experience. The seasoned politician or the expert in one of the persuasion spheres rarely looks too formal psychological or sociological theory when deciding what to do or what to say. On the basis of his past observations, he/she usually has a fairly good idea what kinds of information about his audience he will need and what his general course of action should be.
This is entirely appropriate, because at their prevent stage of development the social sciences cannot provide precise guidance for professional specialists in these fields. Much of the persuasion process remains an art; experience and creation imagination are often the most accurate guides to successful action.
The social sciences can, however, be useful as a supplement to experience. They can help to suggest new questions. That the practitioner should ask about situations confronting him; they can provide categories for codifying experience so that it will be more easily accessible; and they can assist in relating one body of experience to another.
EXAMPLES OF PERSUASION EFFECT AND NON-EFFECT
The files of advertisers, public relations practitioner, propagandists, broadcasters and opinion researchers are full of examples of the massive effects that mass media or gossip can have. Numerous experimental studies have found sweeping changes in attitudes following ex-pure to persuasions for example:
A women's magazine surveyed its readers to find how many of them were paying attention to a column on beauty tips and household matters. It was found that two million women followed the suggestion, recently given in this column, that they put their feet up for a few minutes at intervals throughout the day.
An experiment at the University of Iowa found newspaper editorials extremely effective in influencing student’s attitudes toward a former prime minister of Australia. Almost 100 percent of students who read „planted“editorials in the campus newspaper favouring Mr. Hughes and shifted their attitudes in a positive direction.
Nearly three-quarters of the wartime audience that saw a film about conditions in Naples changed their opinions about the advisability of sending food to Italy.
(Hovland I.C., Janis L.I., Kelley H.H., Communication and Persuasion; New Haven 1959)
By way of contrast, a great many instances can be found of occasions on which extensive advertising or propaganda campaigns seem to have had very little effect or no effect at all. For example: An all-out effort was made by a group of organizations in Cincinnati, Ohio, to acquaint the citizens of that city with facts about the United Nations. In spite of the full cooperation of mass media, advertisers and civic organizations during six months period of the campaign the survey showed that the campaign failed to raise the level of information of the people about the United Nations appreciably. Before the campaign 30 percent of the Cincinnati population had to be classified as knowing nothing about the United Nations and after the campaign the figure was only 28 percent.
A similar experiment on a smaller scale was conducted by a German opinion research institute in cooperation with the Stuttgart radio station. During a period of two years the station took every opportunity to familiarize its listeners with the name and compositions of the upper house of the German Federal Legislature (the Bundesrat), which previous research had shown could be identified correctly by only 10 percent of the audience. After one year and again after the second year, further surveys showed that there was no change in the proportion of the listeners who would correctly identify the Bundesrat.
A publisher who was favourably impressed with the sales of new book shortly after publication decided that with vigorous promotion it might be lifted to the ranks of bestsellers. He therefore greatly increased his advertising budget for the book, only to see sales drop precipitously during the following weeks.
As these examples suggest, there is no clear correlation between ex pure to an idea and its impact on knowledge, attitude or behaviour. No matter how intensive persuasion
