Social advertising in Russia makes you better
Social advertising is not new in former Soviet Union as it can seem. Even in 1980s social advertising took significant place in usual life. All Russians who lived in those years remember social booklets and video spots where ideas of responsibility were declared. The following texts were so much popular: “Save Soviet nature, it’s our mpther”, “Matches are not toys for boys” etc. All these social ads were supported by Soviet government and created by governmental institutions. At the moment everything has changed and we may find many silly social advertising which is sponsored by Russian government, non-commercial companies and private persons. Much money is spent every month on various social campaigns which are supported by strong media campaigns with movie spots, social posters, texts etc.
A lot of international non-commercial companies work on the territory of Russian Federation and a great deal of social advertisments from different countries can ve found at the moment in Russia. I am sure that it is really importans as we have a unique opportunity to use best international experience in the sphere of social promotion 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 visible. That’s why various contests of social advertising are so popular now in Russian Federation and a lot of professional advertising firms took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter RuTube you can look for lots of social spots created by the leading Russian firms but sometimes the visualization of social problems leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social movies on alcohol addiction and other problems. But of course, we should always remember about the following situation in Russia and the main difficulties which the government has to sort out. One of such problems is demographic decrease as too many people die in former Soviet Union and they know that they should force people to give more births. As an example of social advertizing which concentrated on demographic issues we can mention social posters which were placed in Moscow subway with a lady with 3 children on her knees. This post gives more questions rather than gives replys as there is no guy on this poster and the woman looks not very happy.
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 TV spots and social posters as well as complicated social campaigns.