Social advertising in former Soviet Union makes the world better
Social promotion is not so effective in Russia as it can seem. Even lots of years ago social promotion took an important place in our life. All Russians who lived in Soviet times remember social booklets and video spots where concepts of responsibility were declared. The following texts were very popular: “Save the nature, it’s our mpther”, “Matches are not toys for children” etc. All those social advertisments were supported by the government and created by official institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we can find lots different social advertising which is supported by Russian government, non-commercial organizations and private persons. Lots of money is spent every year on different 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 Russia and a great deal of social advertisments from different countries are available nowadays in Russian Federation. I am sure that it is really good as we have a unique chance 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 Russian Federation and lots of professional advertising companies took an active part in such kind of events and if you enter tube sites you can look for many social spots shooted by the leading Russian organizations but usually the visualization of social messages leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of popular social advertisements on tobacco addiction and other issues. But certainly, we should always remember about the following situation in the country and the main problems which the government has to deal with. 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 advertising which concentrated on demographic issues we can mention social posters which were placed in Moscow subway with a lady with three boys on her knees. This post gives more questions rather than gives answers as there is no guy on this poster and the woman looks not very happy.
I think that social advertizing in former Soviet Union 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.