Social advertising in former Soviet Union makes us better
Social advertising is not so popular in Russia as it may seem. Even in 1980s social advertising took an important place in our life. All Russians who lived in those years remember social posters and TV spots where messages of responsibility were declared. The following mottos were very popular: “Save Soviet nature, it’s our mpther”, “Matches are not toys for girls” etc. All those social ads were supported by Soviet government and made by official institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we can find lots silly social advertising which is supported by Russian government, non-commercial organizations and private persons. Lots of money is spent every week on different social campaigns which are supported by Russian media campaigns with movie spots, social booklets, texts etc.
Many international foundations work on the territory of Russian Federation and a great deal of social advertisments from different countries can ve found nowadays in former Soviet Union. I am sure that it is really great as we have a unique chance to use best Ameriacan experience in the sphere of social advertizing as our own traditions in this area are very weak but we have lots of thoughts and creative PR specialists who can make all them effective. That’s why various competitions of social promotion are so popular nowadays in Russian Federation and lots of professional promotion companies took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter tube sites you can search for lots of social spots created by the leading local companies but sometimes the visualization of social problems leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social movies on tobacco addiction and other issues. But of course, we should always remember about the current situation in the country and the main problems which the government has to solve. One of such problems is demographic decrease as too many people die in former Soviet Union and they understand that they should force people to give more births. As an example of social advertising which concentrated on demographic problems we can state on social posters which were placed in Moscow subway with a woman with 3 boys on her knees. This post is more uncertain rather than gives answers as there is no male on this poster and the woman looks disappointed.
I think that social promotion in Russian Federation 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.