Propaganda Techniques & Other Manipulative Tactics in Mary Kay Cosmetics
“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”
–attributed to Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany
Propaganda. What is it? What are Propaganda Techniques? Can you recognize Propaganda Techniques when they’re being used? Have you or your loved one fallen pray to Propaganda Techniques that are used by Mary Kay Cosmetics and its sales force?
These are a few of the questions raised and addressed in this article. After you’ve learned about Propaganda Techniques (and other manipulative tactics), you can decide for yourself if you’ve become another victim of of Mary Kay Cosmetics’ predatory tactics.
As has been pointed out elsewhere on F.A.C.E.S., Mary Kay Cosmetics’ sales forces uses predatory tactics to lure women into buying or becoming part of Mary Kay. If a person knows how to recognize the techniques as they’re happening, Propaganda Techniques and other manipulative tactics are easy to spot.
What is Propaganda?
According to Dictionary.com, Propaganda is defined as:
- information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.
- the deliberate spreading of such information, rumors, etc.
- the particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organization or movement.
Propaganda, in varying forms, has been around for a long, long time–as far back as ancient Greece. By today’s standards, early forms of propaganda were rather crude and were used for both positive and negative purposes–for good intent, as well as ill intent.
Today, with the advent of technologies like mass media, radio, TV and the internet, we are constantly exposed to both good and bad propaganda, day and night. We get it from politicians, from advertisers, and from the media. We hear it on the radio, we see it in movies–we are bombarded.
While we see and hear propaganda techniques every day of our lives, we may not always recognize them for what they are.
In late 1930s, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) identified seven basic propaganda devices (or techniques) that are used in the dissemination of propaganda.
While not all forms of propaganda are used all the time by the propagandist, usually there is at least one or two deployed from the propagandist’s arsenal at any given time to influence opinion.
Here are the seven Propaganda Techniques, as identified by the IPA:
Do you recognize the propaganda techniques Mary Kay Cosmetics’ sales force uses on its targets?
If you recognize Glittering Generalities, Testimonials, Card Stacking and Band Wagon as the primary techniques Mary Kay’s propagandists use, you’re right.
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