Ok so you’re probably wondering, what could have possessed me - Michael DeMoya, Cofounder of Prop - to name our company after a pretty negatively received word? Here are two simple, yet meaningful reasons:
Propaganda was and is the based on all advertising and marketing
Just by reading that statement alone, you should be bobbing your head a bit.
According to Wikipedia, the all-knowing source of information:
“Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.”
Or for a more visual concept, think back to Buddy (Will Ferrell) the Elf when he walks into a diner to congratulate them on having the ‘Worlds Best Cop of Coffee.” Any New Yorker could tell you, you’d have a better chance at finding good coffee at a Hipster establishment that has a sign that reads, “World’s Worst Cup of Coffee served with a Succulent.”
It’s something I picked up back in High School when I took a psychology course and one of the lessons described how advertisements affected a consumer’s behavior and/or decisions. The teacher at the time compared all the World War II propaganda to Today’s modern ads.
But that wasn’t the only reason it stuck with me.
My grandmother called every magazine ad, propaganda.
My grandmother was born in Colombia and came over to the states in the late 60’s with the rest of her family and her oldest son, my father.
She was a stay-at-home matriarch. Everything I learned about the life I wanted to give my future family was modeled after this woman. What was also modeled after this woman, was my love for magazines and television.
I would read tabloids with her, all day long. They were mostly in English, so whatever she couldn’t understand, I would act out because my Spanish was and is still horrid. But even though she loved all the pretty pictures, we always came across one ad/insert where she would say, “no leas esa propaganda.” Translation: Don’t read that ad, it’s a waste of time. She said the same thing about my favorite cartoon, Cow & Chicken.
But it’s what I always knew she would call it, so it resonated with me.
Then the last portion of the company name… Today. Why?
This is even simpler than the first… Propaganda Media was taken, so I needed a secondary word to finish it off. Propaganda Today seemed just like the right amount of cool and just right amount of messaging. “We’ll get it done today, not tomorrow” type of thing.
So that’s how I came up with the name, Propaganda Today.