Social promotion in Russia makes Russians better
Social advertising is not new in former Soviet Union as it may seem. Even many years ago social advertizing took an important place in our life. All Russians who lived in those years remember social booklets and television spots where concepts of liability were declared. The following mottos were very popular: “Save Soviet nature, it’s our motherhood”, “Matches are not toys for boys” etc. All these social advertisments were sponsored by Soviet government and created by official institutions. Nowadays everything has changed and we can find many silly social advertising which is sponsored by Russian government, non-governmental companies and private persons. Much money is spent every week on various social campaigns which are supported by Russian media campaigns with video spots, social posters, texts etc.
A lot of international organizations work on the territory of Russia and lots of social ads from all over the world are available at the moment in Russian Federation. I am sure that it is really good as we have a unique opportunity to use best international experience in the sphere of social advertizing as our own traditions in this sphere are very weak but we have many ideas and creative PR specialists who can make all them effective. That’s why different contests of social advertising are so popular today in former Soviet Union and a lot of professional promotion agencies took an active part in such kind of competitions and if you enter RuTube you can search for many social spots created by the leading Russian organizations but usually the visualization of social problems leaves much to be desired. Still there are quite a lot of interesting social ads on alcohol addiction and other problems. But of course, we should always keep in mind about the following situation in the country and the main problems which the government has to sort out. One of such difficulties is demographic decrease as too many people die in Russian Federation and they know that they should stimulate people to give more births. As an example of social advertizing which concentrated on demographic problems we can mention social posters which were placed in Moscow subway with a lady with 3 boys on her knees. This post is more uncertain rather than gives replys 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.