Social advertising in former Soviet Union makes the world better
Social advertising is not new in Russia as it may seem. Even many years ago social advertising took significant place in everyday life. All Russian citizens who lived in Soviet times remember social booklets and TV spots where ideas of liability were declared. The following mottos were so much popular: “Save our nature, it’s our motherhood”, “Matches are not toys for girls” etc. All these social ads were supported by Soviet government and made by governmental institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we may find many various social advertising which is sponsored by Russian government, non-commercial organizations and private persons. Much money is spent every year on various social campaigns which are created by popular media campaigns with movie spots, social booklets, mottos etc.
A lot of international non-commercial companies work on the territory of Russia and lots of social ads from different countries can ve found nowadays in Russia. I am sure that it is really good as we have a unique chance to use best world experience in the sphere of social promotion as our own traditions in this area are very weak but we have a great deal of ideas and creative PR specialists who can make all them visible. That’s why various contests of social advertizing are so popular nowadays in Russia and a lot of professional advertizing agencies took an active part in such kind of events and if you enter tube sites you can search for lots of social spots created by the leading local firms but usually the visualization of social messages leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social ads on alcohol addiction and other issues. But of course, we should always keep in mind about the following situation in Russian Federation and the main problems which the government has to sort out. One of such difficulties is demographic decrease as too many people die in Russia and they know that they should force families to give more births. As an example of social advertizing which concentrated on demographic problems we can mention social posters which were placed in Moscow metro with a woman with three boys on her knees. This post gives more questions rather than gives replys as there is no guy on this poster and the woman looks sad.
I think that social advertising in Russia just starts its way and in the nearest future we will see lots of great examples of TV spots and social posters as well as complicated social campaigns.