Social advertizing in former Soviet Union makes Russians better
Social advertizing is not so popular in Russian Federation as it can seem. Even lots of years ago social advertizing took essencial place in everyday life. All Russian citizens who lived in Soviet times remember social booklets and video spots where ideas of liability were declared. The following mottos were very popular: “Save the nature, it’s our motherhood”, “Matches are not toys for children” etc. All these social ads were sponsored by SU government and made by official institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we may find lots silly social advertising which is supported by Russian government, non-governmental organizations and private persons. Much money is spent every month on different social campaigns which are created by Russian media campaigns with movie spots, social booklets, texts etc.
A great deal of international foundations work on the territory of former Soviet Union and many social ads from different countries are available nowadays in former Soviet Union. I am sure that it is really great as we have a unique chance to use best international experience in the sphere of social advertising as our own traditions in this sphere are very weak but we have a great deal of thoughts and creative PR specialists who can make all them true. That’s why various contests of social promotion are so popular today in Russia and a lot of professional advertising agencies took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter RuTube you can search for many social spots shooted by the leading Russian organizations but usually the visualization of social problems leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social ads on alcohol addiction and other issues. But certainly, we should always remember about the following situation in the country and the main difficulties which the government has to sort out. One of such problems is demographic decrease as too many people die in Russia and they understand that they should stimulate people to give more births. As an example of social promotion which concentrated on demographic difficulties we can mention social posters which were placed in Moscow metro with a lady with 3 boys on her knees. This post is more uncertain rather than gives answers as there is no guy on this poster and the lady looks disappointed.
I think that social advertising in Russia just starts its way and in the nearest future we will see lots of great examples of television spots and social posters as well as complicated social campaigns.