Public Opinion Management

Design and Contemporary Propaganda

What is the link between 'design' and 'propaganda'? Tricky question, especially since 'propaganda' is a term that is associated with negative connotations. Alhtough frequently used synonyms for propaganda are 'lies', 'distortion', 'deceit', 'manipulationa', 'psychological warfarea' and 'brainwashing', those synonyms are more suggestive of techniques of message production rather then the purpose of the process itself, and they are not entirely true.

Many people, especially in the western world, feel that 'propaganda' is a negative thing. In reality this is not true. Propaganda is a form of communication, and whether it is used for good or bad purposes is besides the point that I would like here to address. The concept of good and bad use of propaganda is very hard to define. For example, if one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist who is actually right? It all depends on the point of view. Even a non-smoking campaign can cause mixed feelings. Non-smokers might warmly welcome it, but smokers might feel that they are publicly harassed. Anyway, I am more interested in the process of creating a propaganda platform, rather than the ideology behind it (although the ideology itself is the driving force of the propaganda).

Designers, with their ability to understand human needs and with their skills to communicate in a semiotic manner, can become an indispensable force in any propaganda campaign. Contemporary propaganda, or 'public opinion management', is a 'communicative form with potential to create change'. Therefore, many institutions such as media, private corporations and governments use propaganda on a regular basis. Contemporary propaganda shares techniques with advertising, advanced marketing, strategic brand management, corporate communications, public diplomacy and public relations. In a contemporary sense, propaganda can be used for promoting or shaping the perception of an organization, person or a brand. Also, contemporary propaganda (public opinion management) is used for public information campaigns by governments, which are intended to encourage or discourage certain forms of public behaviour (such as wearing seat belts, not smoking, not littering and so forth). In spite of this, governments are better known for their use of propaganda in psychological warfare.

Today, everything we do, everything we eat, what we wear, where we work and what we watch, every segment of our lives, is determined by one or another corporate strategy. It took 150 years for the corporate world to raise to what they are today - global dominant economic institutions. We are surrounded by corporate culture, iconography, and ideology. Without any difference to the church and the monarchy in the past, they present themselves as possessors of unlimited power and universal authority, which can also be seen in the symbolically imposing buildings and elaborate displays. Their dominance is increasing, and they are even dictating the decisions of governments and control society domains that have been firmly embodied within the public sphere.

However, one contemporary multinational corporation, in its structure is no different than a nation-state, political movement, the military and even a religious institution. All of these organizations share one common need, and that is the need to motivate people. This works in two directions. Inner directed (corporations have their own armies of employees that they need motivate so they can perform and act in the desired manner), and outer directed (corporations would like to keep their present clients and attract new ones). For that reason, strategies that might be used for promoting corporations may not be different than the ones used to promote any kind of organization, or the other way around. If they all share the need to motivate people, then they must use similar methods to do that. After all, people do act in a predictable manner.

When people think that a certain company is good and successful, that means that they know the company, or they have heard about it and they like what they have heard. Large part of that is due the visibility of the corporate identity. Good corporate identity not only makes the company recognizable, but it also serves as the first level of communication between the company and the people. The same principle applies for nations and national identities. Everything that an organization does, makes, or sells must project its standards and its values. Even the buildings in which it is located and the way in which they are furnished and maintained are a manifestation of identity. Identity cannot simply be a slogan, or a logo; it must be visible, tangible, consistent and all embracing. It takes multidisciplinary experts to create such identities.

If a certain organization wants to be successful, it needs to have a good understanding of people. For that reason, organizations need experts who understand people, and who can turn that knowledge into strategy, and turn that strategy into visual manifestation. If we take design for example, it is a field that deals with understanding and satisfaction of the human needs on various levels. But designers get their briefs from the marketing departments and marketing departments get their knowledge of the people from the experts in human behaviour studies (also known as consumer behaviour). And then we also have advertising - the process of communicating the products or services to the wider public or to the specific target group. Advertising and design have appeared earlier then marketing and human behaviour, but it was only after the appearance of marketing and human behaviour studies, that they have become more powerful and more focused.

I was interested to understand why certain products sell better then some and why certain companies are more successful then others. Questions like that took me deeper into the studies of marketing, advertisement and consumer behaviour. Although such studies helped me to understand the purpose of design much better, and made it clear that design is neither a decorative service nor a tool to improve the sales, there were still some questions that were unanswered to me. And then I went deeper and took on the studies of propaganda and persuasion. I have found that to be the missing link. After that everything started to make sense.

Even though propaganda in some form existed before and during Ancient Macedonia and Ancient Greece, through Caesars Rome, Napoleons Empire, the British Empire, it gained its contemporary communication form during the First World War. In relation to this, I would like to mention that the word 'propaganda' is actually Latin and has been introduced by Vatican in the 1622 when they wanted to explain what the missionaries were doing in South America.

At the end of the First World War, the scientists were surprised by the apparent power that propaganda had exhibited as the conflict raged over the entire globe. By 1914, the mass media allowed propaganda activities to assume a role more significant than ever before. Advertising developed into highly sophisticated form of persuasion, together with the press and media coverage, which were also used for the purpose of propaganda. During the 1920s, the scholars who studied propaganda understood that the general public could be better influenced if it was segmented rather than treated as a whole. Out of that, marketing was developed. The marketers understood that people should be divided in target groups by age, background, education, regions, religions and so on, but they wanted to understand what were the best ways to approach each of these groups. That opened way for the human behaviour studies, whose purpose was gathering information about the peoples needs and wants, and their reactions and turning it into knowledge.

During the Second World War, the Nazis developed the propaganda communication to a state of art (and science. Immaculately displayed in the use of symbols and forms of communication. In their visual execution, only Vatican precedes them. Hitler borrowed heavily on concepts from Caesars Rome, the concepts of mythology and the Church. The Soviets, the French, the British and the Americans were quick to follow. With the end of Second World War, and the beginning of the Cold War, the propaganda took another form. It became more subtle and hidden, and the propaganda departments changed their names to communication departments, public relations, advocacy, public diplomacy and so on. The use of design in propaganda purposes was not so apparent, since the communications forms became ever more sophisticated, and design moved itself towards the business sector. However, the process of building a brand became adopted from the process of building the propaganda structure and the national identity.

The uniqueness of the identity derives from the organization's roots and traditions, its personality, its strengths and its weaknesses. Identity serves as a foundation on which the image is build. Everything that an organization does, how it behaves, or what it offers, is a projection of its values, and most of all, its image. Nevertheless, every single detail can be pre-defined, managed and designed to serve the purpose of communicating the message that the organization wants to send to the public.

Every organization needs to make people understand what they represent; to accept the organizational behaviour; its leadership, its style of management, and the people associated with that. An organization, regardless of its nature, can function successfully only if the people within have a sense of belonging, if they are proud of 'their' organization and its actions, if they share the same culture, and if they understand in full the organizationa's aim and ambitions. To communicate this, organizations use symbols. Not by chance, design consultants involved in building identity strategies put the symbol at the heart of the creative process. If it is right, the symbol can summarize the idea of an entire corporation, but if it is wrong, then it can jeopardize the whole company.

Most organizations unsurprisingly look for a symbol to inspire feelings of confidence, comfort and empathy. They like to play safe, but still to remain distinctive. They want to be modern and timeless, strong and memorable, while at the same time not being offensive. It is hard to produce an effective solution with this kind of compromising and contradictory brief.

However, I would argue that in certain cases corporations should be bold in their choice of symbol even that it means to cause resentment within certain groups. It is naA?ve to believe that one model could satisfy all. Therefore it is important to aim at specific target groups strategically chosen upfront. In almost all cases, if a certain organization or a brand wants to be successful, it must identify an enemy. The enemy must represent an exact opposite in the category of the organization or the brand. Having an enemy helps the organization/brand to position itself and to highlight its own values.

One of the most intricate, complex and ritualized uses of symbols lies within the Christianity. The cross is integrated within the whole process of worship. It appears on Christian buildings, in paintings, in books, on vestments, jewellery, and at different stages in the service, as part of the ritual. With an intimate and all-embracing movement, the cross is even made by individuals, both priests and worshippers.

If we look beyond the story, the church can be observed as an organization that encompasses all of the corporate elements. It almost represents the perfect model of a multinational corporation. Even from marketing and branding strategy point of view, its nearly ideal. It offers the ultimate story, and in branding - the greater the story is behind the brand, the better it sells. And there is no greater story than the one religion can offer. Not only that it gives the people sense of belonging it serves as a promise of something more behind the generic product. Since people are social animals, they have a need to belong to a group. That is a function of a brand - an element that Pepsi tried to use in its Pepsi Generation advertising campaign.

Another good example is the Marlboro Man campaign that was launched in 1954 and lasted to 1993 and was developed by Leo Burnet. I could say that during those years, the invented character became as powerful American symbol as the Statue of Liberty - the great American symbol of freedom. Nevertheless, the Marlboro Man was supported with the great idea of the Marlboro Country - a place that had a resemblance to the 'blessed' lands for which myths have been made. - 'Come to Marlboro Country' the brand's popular slogan - was an invitation to visit a place as equal as Eden, Avalon, Elysium, Utopia, Valhalla, Camelot, or Paradise. A cigarette was all a person needed to get there, and perhaps a horse. Coming from a former socialist country, I still remember how the visual imagery of the Marlboro Country was perceived there. People perceived it as a promised land - directly identified with the United States of America. Then again, if Communism has been advertised with the white sandy beaches of Cuba and Mojitos-, instead of factories, mines and crop fields, it might have still remained feasible.

Nevertheless, it is not a coincidence that such campaigns have a strikingly resembling structure to many religious stories and myths. And then again, the question is why do many religious stories have such a narrative. I cannot stop wondering to what levels can a brand develop itself if it is maintained with a steady campaign in course of centuries. If you support it with a fictional character, a charismatic individual, or a real person supplemented with fictional extraordinary powers, will people build a cult of the brand? What about Santa Claus for example? We all know how Santa looks like. But how many people actually know that his 'look' was defined in 1931 by Coca-Cola, and that Santa image is actually a self-portrait of Haddon Sundblom - the artist that draw it. Funny how this coincides with the story that God created men in his image. Who knows... maybe the cult of Santa will replace the cult of Jesus in some 2000 years from now.

In my opinion, contemporary propaganda represents the ultimate use of multidisciplinary design. It is an area where design and visual communications can exercise maximum power and expect maximum results. The issue of propaganda has not been discussed from the perspective of design so far, and for the purposes of my research, I am interested to break to code of the use of propaganda. The process of managing and communicating the image correctly may well determine the brand's success and investigation in this area could identify what these methods are. Also, it can identify what is their relation to the field of design and what is their responsibility for the visual manifestation of the company's overall business strategy or a country's national image in terms of competitive advantage.

Basically, propaganda is a form of communication and can therefore be depicted as a process that has a cultural rim made up of government, economy, events, ideology, and myths in society. Design on the other hand, is a communication-oriented problem-solving process that remains to be the most significant part in the propaganda since it provides the final visual manifestation of the national or corporate strategy, and this is how they can be related to each other.

Copyright by Gjoko Muratovski 2007 - 2008; This material was presented as a lecture prepared for the University of South Australia / South Australian School of Art Graphic Design Undergraduates (June 2007), it was also presented at the Postgraduate Symposium at the University of South Australia (June 2007), and it was presented at the Departemnt of Political Science at St. Cyril and Methodious University - Skopje, Macedonia (November 2007).