Marketing works and propaganda works. It's as much of a science as it is an art. When done effectively, both leverage characteristics that:

1) exploit known aspects of indivdual human behavior (more reliable when based upon aspects that stem directly from physiological processes)

and

2) play to the the social climate of whatever emergent phenomena are presently occuring in society.

Strategies for 2) tend to be less evergreen. Many people are always hard at work doing reaearch to bolster techniques for 1) and 2).

I agree with you that education helps build immunity against "cheap tricks" used to influence human behavior.

I also want to add that if one has the privilege of decreased susceptibility to these strategies, it's only that: decreased susceptibility and not immunity. At which point, if the goal is not to be influenced, then a useful strategy for the "marketed-to" is to maintain a healthy respect for the power these techniques can have.