Today we are bombarded with messages; not just text messages or electronic messages, but marketing messages. With modern technological advancements, advertisers compete for consumer attention. When we are crowded with these images, we no longer recognize them and fall into their carefully designed traps. This behavior leads to more extreme tactics employed by the mass media to gain the attention of its demographic. Ultimately, corporations produce and promote propaganda. This trend is highlighted in the nonfiction book Age of Propaganda: The Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson. The two authors explain how the media and advertisers use a calculated formula to convince viewers and consumers to buy their product. The way advertisers do this so effectively is through the use of the “four influence strategies,” as coined by Pratkanis and Aronson. These stratagems are as follows: pre-persuasion, source credibility, message and emotions. Each section is a complicated but nevertheless applicable device to influence and deceive consumers. The first of the vehicles used by advertisers to attract their consumers is pre-persuasion. Pratkanis and Aronson define this step by saying, “Pre-persuasion refers to how an issue is structured and how the decision is framed” (Pratkanis and Aronson, 51). In other words, pre-persuasion is creating a scenario where the consumer makes a decision about the product the way advertisers do. The scenario is constructed in such a way that the only choice available to the consumer is the already predetermined decision. A real example of this step is present in the ACPCA campaign that obtains donations of money for their animals. Th......middle of paper......ter's pre-persuasion was revoked due to controversy, in which Peanut Butter changed the slogan to "picky moms choose Jiff." This change is also an example of extreme marketing gone wrong. All in all, the book Age of Propaganda: The Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Partkanis and Aronson points out the flaws in advertising and marketing methods. The purpose of the four marketing ploys is to most effectively capture consumers' attention and convince them to buy their product. The strategies are pre-persuasion, source credibility, message and emotion. The authors point out that the rush of companies to beat each other to win over consumers has created an advertising world cluttered with tactics that take away the truth of the product. If this trend continues and these ploys continue to be implemented, our world will be littered with exaggerated and unnecessary campaigns.