Social advertising in Russia makes Russians better
Social advertising is not so popular in Russian Federation as it can seem. Even during the years of Soviet Union social advertising took essencial place in our life. All Russians who lived in Soviet times remember social booklets and video spots where ideas of liability were declared. The following mottos were so much popular: “Save Soviet nature, it’s our mpther”, “Matches are not toys for boys” etc. All those social advertisments were sponsored by Soviet government and made by governmental institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we can find lots different social advertising which is sponsored by Russian government, non-governmental companies and private persons. Much money is spent every year on different social campaigns which are created by strong media campaigns with movie spots, social posters, logos etc.
Many international non-commercial companies work on the territory of Russia and many social advertisments from different countries are available now in Russian Federation. I am sure that it is really great as we have a unique opportunity to use best world experience in the sphere of social advertising as our own traditions in this field are very weak but we have lots of ideas and creative PR specialists who can make all them effective. That’s why different competitions of social advertizing are so popular nowadays in former Soviet Union and lots of professional promotion agencies took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter YouTube you can search for many social spots shooted by the leading local organizations but sometimes 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 problems. But certainly, we should always keep in mind about the current situation in the country and the main problems which the government has to solve. One of such difficulties is demographic decrease as too many people die in former Soviet Union and they know that they should stimulate families 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 subway with a woman with 3 children on her knees. This post is more uncertain rather than gives replys as there is no man on this poster and the lady looks disappointed.
I think that social promotion 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.