Saying that propaganda is necessary for the elites to function is putting it mildly. The thing is, in order for propaganda to be effective, it must be holistic. It can be tricky to convince people on ideological matters because they are weighty to most. Even the primary forms of sub-propaganda, or material conditioning the audience to accept certain premises, is not enough because it is often too obvious.
This is where cultural propaganda comes in. It applies to areas that appear to have no ideological function- what to wear, what to eat, etc.- on the surface. It is the mechanism by which acceptability is tested, by which, I mean the ability to be influenced at proper cues and provide the right cues outwardly. The goal of propagandists is for the audience to have a Pavlovian response to their content. If the audience does not respond in the intended way in small matters, how can it respond in the desired way in great matters? Those who buck superficial trends, therefore showing a lack of appropriate assimilation to that which “everyone is doing” will inevitably be suspect as they are more likely to be resistant to ideological sub-propaganda without a shadow of a doubt.
The primary tell for the use of cultural propaganda, as opposed to run of the mill consumerism, lies in surrounding messaging in the specific media in play. Specifically, these media tend to be anti-capitalistic and anti-consumerism in ideological content while promoting trends in other content. If a resource specifically is anti-capitalistic or anti-consumerism and has multiple articles dedicated to purchasing items on Amazon’s website, then the resource is definitely utilizing cultural propaganda as a litmus test.
For context, anti-capitalistic individuals complain that corporations are too powerful, that monopolies are allowed to run rampant, and that this is oppressive. They make an exception in judgement however for nearly every business in the United States that is actually monopolistic, namely Alphabet Incorporated- i.e. Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, because all of these businesses have engaged in power grabs against ordinary people. This makes the monopolies simpatico with all elitists, especially the openly anti-capitalistic. So, keep an eye out for this sort of content spread. Elitists will be hypocritical in their hunt for wide stretching influence.