Teaser Ads

Scraps of Moscow writes about a strange re-branding campaign of MTS mobile telephony provider:

There is something strangely appealing about the crazy drama of these "secret" ad campaigns. I can remember several from my time in Moscow. The silliest was one that involved a bunch of posters with nothing more than the letters "AB" (if memory serves) and eventually turned out to be advertising a new (and ultimately unsuccessful) line of potato chips being promoted by Alla Borisovna Pugachova, an aging, overweight pop star. Happily, I think the Russian marketers have become more sophisticated in the past couple of years, although some of snowsquare's photos suggest there are still companies taking a low-budget approach to advertising.

Another, more recent - and more captivating - campaign of this type involved a man with his hand on a curvaceous figure that looked like the silhouette of a woman, with the caption, "So that she doesn't leave [you] for someone else." ("Chtoby ona ne shla k drugomu") Turned out the ad was for car alarms, and the man was resting his hand on what emerged (in the second version of the ad) to be a luxury automobile.

Only we call such campaigns not ‘secret’ but ‘teaser’. They are very effective but incredibly expensive. If I’m not mistaken the fashion started some six years ago when one day Moscow was packed with billboards with strange questions, like, “Where’s money?” and nothing else. Two weeks later stickers appeared over the same billboards “Kommersant Daily Newspaper”.

Also read snowsquare on the topic of MTS re-branding.

Caption on the picture - "Are you ready?"

Related Tags: Russia, Moscow, marketing, advertising, billboard, teaser