I prefer David Foster Wallace's description of advertising:

"It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”

I always liked: "Advertising robs you of your dignity, and sells it back to you at the price of the product."

With the arguable exception of therapy/counselling, you can never retrieve your dignity and self-worth by buying a product.

So all it really does is sell the promise.

True. As a side point, IMHO, therapy and counseling are not products.

They’re services, and, even more so, should be a service bound by a medical code of ethics, which, since the healing professions go way back, imho makes therapy and counseling distinct from many other services.

:)

So advertisements deplete dignity, with no recompense or amelioration? No wonder our society's replete with indignity.

I believe in most Latin languages there isn't a separate word.

At least in Portuguese and Spanish, both advertisement and propaganda are simply "propaganda".

Not true. In spanish, "ad" is usually anuncio, or sometimes comercial or publicidad. Propaganda can also be used, but is less common than those i think, I've never heard it used.

I once read an original edition of Bernays' Propaganda (1928) with its title in a jaunty typeface on the cover, before the word had a negative connotation.

Pic of its cover here: https://www.baumanrarebooks.com/rare-books/edward--bernays/p...

I have definitely heard "propaganda" in South American Spanish-speaking countries. Perhaps a regional quirk?

You can also use "publicidade" in Portuguese, but "propaganda" is not used exclusively for "political propaganda".

And all propaganda is political.