#6 - JRL 7285
Political Ads Start Early, Some Innovation, Quality
Disappointing
Izvestia
August 8, 2003
Article by Mikhail Vinogradov and Natalya Ratiani:
"How Many Units Should Be Put up"
"Give the ad a little more punch, so that it isn't like the others!" And the party emissaries went to the ad firms and PR companies and took money earned by arduous political labor to them. And the ad people were happy: you want that kind of clip, you want that kind of poster? Whatever you want! But the heat that has set up this summer over the European part of the continent seems to have had a negative effect on the creative-it is fashionable now to use the English word-process. Only one creative find can be noted: the crude images of party leaders (put it this way, without the build of Apollo or the gaze of Napoleon) that were so abundant in the ads of past years have been replaced by flowers, fruit, animals, and even tanks.
The obtrusive and much disliked, by the Russian viewer, ads for washers and caries-preventing chewing gum have given way on Russian television to equally primitive political advertising. United Russia, the People's Party, the SPS (Union of Right-Wing Forces), the Party of Life, and the Agrarian Party are fighting with all their might for the heart of the future voter, but in the opinion of advertising analysts, most of the party clips leave much to be desired. The parties are unimaginatively trying to use up their still-unofficial budgets as fast as possible.
In the Past-Death
"In the presidential campaign of the Yeltsin years everything that involved direct and seemingly accidental appearances by ordinary people played brilliantly. In the current ad campaign all the parties are using 'ordinary people.' In the end they have merged into a single stream, as if all launched by the same person," says Vladimir Yevstafyev, president of the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies (RARA).
But all the same, the party bosses are learning from their mistakes. The old party of power, "Our Home Is Russia," depicted its leader Viktor Chernomyrdin embracing a rooster on its posters. Today's United Russia is saving its leader Boris Gryzlov and has replaced him with simple grandfathers and grandmothers. In the opinion of Yevstafyev, though, looking to the past is political death for a party.
"This is a kind of 'new fashion.' Political leaders act as though they are not willing to take part in the political campaign. There is even a kind of 'modesty' in this, not to overdo things by showing their face so often," says Igor Mintusov, head of the Nikkolo M Company.
"My job was to see that the people used simple human values in their statements," well-known director Yuriy Grymov, who was involved in developing clips for the Party of Life, explains the new approach. Grymov thinks that we need to back away from Western methods in producing Russian political advertising and try to be closer to the land. Apparently, that is why the television viewer is now seeing a strawberry every day as the symbol of the Party of Life; the berry is closest to the ground.
The Desman. Gloomy Even on a Tank
The latest popular move in the outgoing pre-campaign summer is to associate parties and their leaders with flora and fauna. The PR people of the SPS stand out in particular-they put forward a gloomy squirrel that is doomed to tap its paws on the wooden steps of a wheel. The squirrel symbolizes the businessman in the constant flow of administrative barriers, bribes, and tax burdens.
The People's Party is driving to the elections in a tank which shoots at bribes (considering the scale of bribery in our structures the phrase about firing "cannons at sparrows" does not quite fit).
Senate speaker Sergey Mironov's Party of Life is even more comical, conducting a loud campaign in defense of the desman. "Our parties today have too many professionals among the developers of programs, tactics, strategy, and advertising. The professional is usually far from the party's political goals. He sells the party just as he would carbonate or beer," say political scientist Yuriy Korgunyuk, editor of the magazine Partinform.
But the people in the Party of Life are satisfied too: "They have been writing about us free of charge for two whole weeks" (perhaps the PR people will even take credit for this article?).
They Started Earlier Because You Cannot Start Later
Here is the principal difference in the new ad campaign: it does not matter who you go to the voter with--with a desman or with new proposals to "double GDP (gross domestic product)." For many parties, especially the new ones (we do not have many old ones), the main thing is to "pop up" in front of the voters and become recognizable.
Another difference in the current ad race is that formerly there was one campaign, and now there are two. "The current law on elections and all the restrictions on PR and direct advertising imposed by the Tsentrizbirkom (Central Electoral Commission) have led to a situation where the informational ad campaign begins before the official announcement of elections," said Aleksey Volin, specialist in PR and information technologies who took part in the 1996 and 1999 elections.
It turned out that the parties and their financial backers got an opportunity to conduct two election campaigns. This is a plus for the ad people too. "The campaign that is underway broadly on television, radio, and the streets of the cities is an example of how the Tsentrizbirkom restrictions are being circumvented," Volin believes. Some parties, for example United Russia, actually began the campaign a year early when they announced their desire to monitor wages and pensions.
How Much Are Roots on Rublevo Highway?
Meanwhile it is hard to understand from the advertising of the current season-as it has been in the past-what kind of voter the parties are figuring on. For example, the People's Party has put up billboards along the Rublevo and Kiev highways that propose fighting bribery and corruption, reviving spirituality, and returning to our roots. And the owners of fancy houses drive by in their expensive foreign-made cars, look at the billboards, and of course, start desperately wanting to fight corruption and return to their roots...
The SPS, in addition to the above-mentioned grim squirrel, decided to put a human being in its graphic materials too: the party posters show a dashing sanitary engineer waving a toilet brush-the SPS is calling for a solution to the housing and municipal services problem. Somehow they are forgetting that the traditional right-wing voters no longer care about the cost of the brush and the sanitary engineer or their timely appearance in the home if the above-mentioned toilet is leaking.
According to Yevstafyev, the volume of the advertising market in Russia in the first half of this year was about $1.2 billion. As for political advertising, according to Yevstafyev, it is "significant and has impressive rates." As one of the ad agencies shared with Izvestiya, a recently received order to place party advertising on television and on billboards, a campaign of ordinary intensity including buying "prime time" on television (from 1900 to 2200 hours), will c
ost the party $2 million. The price of a billboard for outdoor advertising varies from $300 to $1,000.
Total Monitoring
According to estimates by advertising specialists, the homeland's information space (the federal and regional media) has been most densely covered by United Russian and the CPRF (RF Communist Party). Significantly behind in third place is the SPS, and Yabloko is overtaking them. Then comes the LDPR (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), which the People's Party has started to close in on. The Party of Life has been written about one-eleventh as much as United Russia.
According to data from the total monitoring system for electronic media developed by Aleksey Volin, on Channel One in the two summer months United Russia was mentioned in an information context 50 times, the Party of Life once, the CPRF 18 times, Yabloko 8 times, the LDPR twice, and SPS twice (not counting the program "Time").
For RTR (Russian Television and Radio Company) (the program "News"), the figures were: United Russia-70 times; Yabloko-25 times; CPRF-23 times; SPS-12 times; LDPR-10 times; Party of Life-twice.
NTV (Independent Television) mentioned United Russia, the CPRF, and Yabloko about 40 times each, the SPS 30 times, the LDPR 20 times, the Party of Life twice, and the People's Party 4 times.
TVTs (Television Center) (the program "Events") mentioned United Russia 50 times, the CPRF 40 times, Yabloko 30 times, the LDPR and SPS 15 times apiece, and Party of Life 8 times, and the People's Party 4 times.
What Is Tinkling in the Little Box
One more explanation for the low quality of the advertising, experts note, is that most of the parties are producing their own products through homegrown agencies and "manual" PR people. And they prefer the 10-second clips where it is possible to get nothing but the name of the party in to the 30-second variety not because they are cheaper, but because "they simply have nothing more to say."
The agencies prefer to work on advance payment. Experience teaches that as soon as the election campaign ends it is impossible to get money from the customer. In the last elections the budgets for the full advertising cycle (that is, television, radio, and billboards) were from $2 to $15 million for each party that wanted to present itself to the voters (and, of course, get into the Duma). Experts estimate that the massive campaign launched by the Party of Life in late July will cost $2 million (considering a discount for high volume).
The groaning of some ad people that they are not going to earn much on the upcoming elections is rejected by the experts: the sellers will get their piece of the pie. While the volume of television advertising can still be calculated, it is practically impossible to track outdoor and radio advertising, especially in remote regions. And that is exactly where, the ad people figure, they will "make their primary money" after the official start of the election campaign. And as one of the veterans of domestic PR campaigns noted, "No one has abolished Xerox boxes yet..."
Top • Next
Aug. 12, 2003:
#7285 • #7286 • JRL Home
- Back to the Top -