Social advertising in Russia makes us better
Social advertising is not new in former Soviet Union as it may seem. Even lots of years ago social advertising took significant place in usual life. All Russians who lived in Soviet times remember social booklets and TV spots where concepts of liability were declared. The following mottos were so much popular: “Save our nature, it’s our mpther”, “Matches are not toys for boys” etc. All those social ads were sponsored by Soviet government and created by governmental institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we may find many different social advertising which is supported by official government, non-commercial organizations and private persons. Lots of money is spent every month on various social campaigns which are created by popular media campaigns with movie spots, social posters, logos etc.
A lot of international non-commercial companies work on the territory of Russia and a great deal of social advertisments from different countries can ve found now in Russia. I am sure that it is really importans as we have a unique opportunity to use best international experience in the field of social advertising 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 true. That’s why different competitions of social advertising are so popular nowadays in former Soviet Union and many professional advertizing companies took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter YouTube you can search for lots of social spots shooted by the leading Russian companies but usually the visualization of social messages leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social ads on tobacco addiction and other issues. But certainly, we should always keep in mind about the current situation in Russian Federation and the main difficulties which the government has to solve. One of such difficulties is demographic decrease as too many people die in former Soviet Union and they understand that they should stimulate people to give more births. As an example of social advertizing which concentrated on demographic problems we can state on social posters which were placed in Moscow metro with a woman with 3 boys on her knees. This post gives more questions rather than gives answers as there is no guy on this poster and the lady looks not very happy.
I think that social promotion in former Soviet Union just starts its way and in the nearest future we will see lots of great examples of video spots and social posters as well as complicated social campaigns.