Tired of second-hand foreign ads, Russian and foreign companies are marketing their brands with sophisticated and distinctly Russian campaigns. Astrid Wendlandt explains what it takes to make a good Russian ad.
When Hershey chocolate bars first started advertising in Russia two years ago, they used a recycled U.S. campaign based on the slogan, "This is your chance to see and hear all of America."
Russians' well-known love of sweets was tempted by such images of Americana as the Statue of Liberty in New York, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and happy jazzmen performing in the streets.
But more recently, Hershey has switched to new locally made campaigns based on profoundly Russian attitudes toward chocolate.
In its latest campaigns, Hershey has tried to cash in on Russians' nostalgia for pre-Revolutionary traditions with an ad showing a 19th-century family enjoying Hershey's. The fashions and decor carefully disguise the fact that Hershey's is a U.S. and not a Russian tradition.
Another ad for Hershey's Kisses candy appealed to the Russian love of ice-skating. Graceful animated Kisses swoop across the ice to applause from the crowd and the familiar gypsy rhythms of the famous "Kalinka" song.
The rationale for the change in strategy is simple, according to Gerard Lombardi, general manager of the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.
"American ads don't have the same attractive power anymore. They are not the guarantee of clear-cut success anymore," Lombardi said.
Russia, which once delighted in its classic novelists, dissident poetry and art-house films, is fast embracing its own culture of television advertising.
And while few businessmen care much for Tolstoy, Tsvetayeva or Tarkovsky, more and more foreign and Russian brands, just like Hershey, are investing in big-budget, locally made, uniquely Russian television advertising in the hopes that it will boost their sales.
Three or four years ago, when the market was starting to open itself to Western products, recycled Western commercials and particularly American ones were still very popular, but most advertising industry experts agreed that Russian tastes and the Russian market are so different from any others that they now require their own ads.
"You can see Russians being fed up with Western advertising and looking for something more sensitive and local," said Bruce Macdonald, chairman of the Moscow-based American BBDO advertising agency.
"A few years ago Russians preferred Western ads because they could see how life was in the West," agreed Dmitry Abroschenko, general director of Video International Advertising.
Russian television advertising has developed hand-in-hand with the growth of the Russian consumer market. In 1994, the consumer market was slow, so cashed-up Russian banks and financial institutions were by far the biggest producers of television advertising.
With airtime and production costs low, banks spent money just for the sake of showing they had it. The result was some pretty bizarre advertising.
Perhaps the high tide of this style was a campaign for Imperial Bank, which carried the slogan the "History of the Emperors for Imperial Bank," and featured quirky stories of scenes from the life of Catherine the Great, Louis XIV and Julius Caesar.
The cycle of ads may have won plaudits from the young Russian advertising industry, but it was not really designed to raise sales or reach consumers.
In fact, Bank Imperial is not even a retail bank and is only interested in corporate banking customers.
Abroschenko, director of Video International, which made the ads, said apart from targeting a few top businessmen and government officials, Imperial Bank was only spending money as a way of impressing its peers.
"The increase in sales from the campaign was secondary for them," he said.
But this whimsical attitude started to change, partly inspired by the phenomenal success among Russian consumers of the low-budget advertising campaign for the MMM financial company in 1994, which was based on a simple cast of Russian characters.
MMM crashed, but Mars and Snickers chocolate bars achieved huge growth in sales thanks to a Russia-specific brand advertising campaign.
Consumer goods companies like Procter & Gamble in health products, Nescafé coffee, Stimorol chewing gum, Pepsi Cola and Panadol aspirin and tens of others have followed in their footsteps.
Today fast moving consumer goods like cosmetics, confectionery and pharmaceuticals have replaced banks.
At the same time, there has been a sharp rise in the price of television air-time.
In 1993, 30 seconds on national television cost about $500, but now it's closer to $15,000, according to Lombardi of Ogilvy & Mather.
Rates have jumped so high in the past few years that now advertisers make sure their advertisements are adapted to the Russian consumer before they spend all that money on buying air time, he said.
The decision to make a local ad is not painless, however. Production costs have risen dramatically.
"Four years ago, to produce a good quality film without any special effects would cost you $2,000, now for the same film, production costs can reach $70,000," Lombardi said.
Some companies still save themselves time and money by just screening ads produced and developed in the West. Lombardi said this usually only works when Russia and the West have about the same level of awareness of a product.
Stimorol chewing gum is one example. Lombardi said since Russians are already well acquainted with the chewing gum on the market, "for Stimorol, the message developed internationally fitted the Russian consumer as well."
Even when brands make the decision to use non-Russian ads, it may make more sense to take ads made for other emerging markets rather than for Western markets on the theory that those markets share a lot in common with Russia.
For example, Lombardi said Russia and Brazil used the same IBM advertising campaign, featuring a talking dog using his PC, because they had the same level of product awareness towards computers.
But nothing can match the impact of an advertisement with topical local flavor.
According to Elmira Mikhailova, a spokeswoman for DMB & B advertising agency, one of their most successful campaigns was for Panadol aspirin because it relied heavily on a common daily situation.
The series of ads showed a pharmacist named Maria. In one particularly effective spot, as an old lady leaves the pharmacy, she says, "Walk quickly! Otherwise you will miss Santa Barbara."
Mikhailova said the line about "Santa Barbara," a reference to the U.S. television series which was hugely popular among Russian audiences last year, was a winner for the advertisement because it provided a Russian context.
"People were pleased to see someone on television who was also a 'Barbara' fan," she said.
So what else makes a good locally made Russian advertisement? In fact, most Western advertising agencies operating in Russia say the Russian soul has quite a lot to do with it, and so does market research.
Given the current average monthly salary in Russia of $160 and the modest living conditions of some Russians, agencies say they are careful not to show too much wealth in their ads.
"We try to avoid obvious socioeconomic indicators to not offend those people who cannot afford having a certain life style," said Viktoria Garnett, a director of the Moscow office of the McCann Erickson agency.
"For example, we try not to show how many appliances there are in the kitchen, and the actors should be dressed in a neutral way, not wearing any fashionable clothes or jewelry," she said.
Equally important is understanding the Russian family's buying habits.
Older women are less of a focus because they tend to be responsible for purchasing non-brand commodities, such as meat, sugar or flour.
According to McCann Erickson, in the first quarter of 1996, the primary purchaser of fast moving consumer goods were women between the ages of 22 and 35, and men usually make decisions on expensive household items such as kitchen appliances, electronics or furniture.
McCann Erickson therefore targeted the young Russian mother in a recent campaign for Maggi soup stock cubes. In the ad, a young mother plays in Gorky Park, thinking with satisfaction of the fact that the pre-processed stock cubes give her more time for family life.
Garnett said that the typical Russian advertisement family has one child but also usually involved the grandmother and perhaps an aunt or uncle present because they often all live in the same household.
On the other hand, parents were "usually younger than the typical Western mom and dad because Russians generally have kids at a younger age," she said.
The deep sentimentality of the Russian soul explain why highly emotional female-oriented images are popular in Russian advertisements.
Garnett said sentimentality is the key to the setting and character list of the latest Nescafé advertisement made by McCann Erickson.
In the kitchen of her well appointed home, Lena, a delicate heroine, holds a letter. From her look of soulful sadness, it is clear this is a letter from a man she once loved deeply but who is now saying good-bye.
Looking for solace, she sips gently from her cup of coffee. And then suddenly, a miracle happens. After a few sips, she feels stronger and laughs at her fate.
Folding the once hurtful letter into a paper plane, she sends it sailing aimlessly, harmlessly across the kitchen.
"The point was to create a nice story around the product and make the viewers feel good about it," said Garnett.
"Russians respond more to warm, cuddly, calm visuals which gives them positive and happy feelings, than those which gave them aggressive energy."
The Russian soul is not all warmth and generosity however. Garnett said she usually advised her clients not to use commercials using ethnic minorities because she said the Russian consumer was still not ready for that.
She added that the Benetton United Colors ads focusing on minority mixes were risky for that reason.
In general, she said it was better not to touch any sensitive political or social issue in ads.
Some would also argue that excessive slickness is a problem. Advertising in Russia has faced credibility problems because of the attitude to communist-era propaganda.
"No one believed the communist slogan, and here we try to sell them products and services using the same means," said Abroschenko of Video International.
According to agencies, the choice of an advertising strategy will generally depend on the maturity of the Russian consumer for a given product category.
Part of the problem is that many Western ads assume familiarity and a tradition for each product and just show a well-known product in a new light.
But if Russian consumers are not familiar with the product, this approach will often go over their heads.
To avoid this, many advertisers opt for more traditional, "testimonial" style advertising in which a person describes and endorses the product.
It may be a cliché in the West, but advertisers say it still seems to work in Russia.
For instance, Mars, one of the biggest advertisers on Russian television, has relied on testimonial advertising for its chocolate bars and pet foods.
Many Russian hygiene and grooming products such as tampons or hair conditioner also use a basic testimonial approach because in many cases the whole idea of the product is new to the Russian market.
"In advertising, Russians are much more influenced by their peers than by specialists," said Garrett of McCann Erickson.
"Someone's personal opinion on a product or a testimony will be more efficient than a scientific explanation of the product given by a professor."
McCann Erickson used this approach in a campaign for the Epilady depilatory device.
Quirky humor is probably the hallmark of the best all-Russian ads made for Russian advertisers.
The Video International agency won several prizes for a series of ads for Rikk Bank featuring bankers dressed in gray costumes typing monotonously at their computers to the slogan. "Rikk Bank: the most boring bank in the world, people are working, money is working, and that's all."
Video International's Abroschenko explained, "We tried to create through that slogan, an image of a very professional and solid bank."
While international brands play by well-recognized rules of market research, Russian advertisers often take pride in their indirect, off-beat and zany approach.
"The Russian mentality reacts very differently to direct advertising than Westerners. It's a tradition in Russia not to communicate directly but through images. It comes from Russian classical authors like Pushkin and Dostoevsky," said Vladimir Yevstafiev, president of the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies.