Advertising
Madison Ave, Moscow
Philip Kleinman
An advertising campaign for a food product was criticised because of its vague and exagaerated claim that the product would improve consumers' health. No, I'm not referring to Flora margarine, which the Advertising Standards Authority got steamed up about the other day (a Flora ad drew attention to a television programme which suggested that animal fats could contribute to heart disease) but to a Soviet campaign for fruit compote. The difference is that in Russia the criticism was individual, not official. The country has no ASA: since advertising is in the hands of official organisations working directly for government, that is not supposed to be necessary.
It is enlightening to discover that socialist admen are, however, susceptible to the same temptations as capitalist ones. And there are a lot more admen about in Eastern Europe than most Westerners would realise, unless they read Dr Philip Hanson's new book Advertising and Socialism (Macmillan £4.95). The book deals with the organisation of advertising in four countries — the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
It is in the latter two countries that consumer advertising on the Western modelis most developed. This is not surprising given that both Hungary and Yugoslavia practise different forms of "market socialism", i.e. enterprises, though not privately owned, compete in the market and are obliged to make a profit to survive. Thus Hungary's two main advertising organisations, though partly government-controlled, are run on commercial lines, while Yugoslavia has a multiplicity of ad agencies controlled, like other Yugoslav enterprises, by their own employees.
Unfortunately, Dr Hanson's book, being written by an academic, not an adman, gives very few examples of actual advertisements. One which he does cite, for a Western drink imported into Hungary, is noteworthy for having used as its copy line "Best people drink Brand X" (the author is coy about naming the product). These ads are rejected by some Hungarian newspapers but accepted by others, despite the unsocialist sentiment.
Western critics of the persuasion industry may wish to ponder Dr Hanson's conclusion that "substantial consumer advertising ... is a corollary of a market economy, with or without private ownership of resources. It is not self-evident that it needs to be as substantial in a market socialist economy as in Western Europe or North America, but it may be that the benefits of competition and the market mechanism in microeconomic decision-making in a large part of the economy cannot be obtained without allowing substantial advertising expenditure, and that advertising cannot be held much below 'Western' levels without losing some of those' benefits."
Hungary, he suggests, is the country to watch in this respect. But perhaps the most Interesting question — and one which this short book is not concerned even to ask — is what likelihood exists that the Soviet Union itself may in the future follow the Hungarian example.. At present Russian ad vertising is chiefly aimed, not at promoting competing brands, but at talking consumers into accept ing products, like fish from the Pacific, which they might otherwise be reluctant to buy. And that compote. A Russian editor who criticised the health claim campaign said he much preferred another ad: "Open a jar of compote at dinner, and the fragrant fruits of sunny summer will bloom at your table." Maybe Madison Avenue is not as far from Moscow as all that.
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