The morning after

As far as I remember this post stems from 60’s when AAA started a PR campaign defending advertising business from concerned consumers attacks. This one sent the message, “Advertising cannot force people into buying things they don’t need”.

Ironically, ad people did force women into buying razors – to shave legs. Women should be naturally beautiful, shouldn’t they? And what could be more natural then shaved legs!

Winter at last

Reklama Review

It seems like Alex Shifrin from eXile lost interest in reviewing absurdities of Russian advertising. His last column is very short, not funny and outright silly. But anyway...

One thing that Moscow doesn't lack is advertising space. Clients regularly brief agencies to develop "guerilla" marketing tactics, or find alternative ways to promote their goods and services outside the well trodden path of television, print or outdoor. For those looking at alternative advertising options, ones that will certainly yield impact and notice, look no further than the material below. So, where else can one advertise in this city?

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No bears, only beauties

St. Petersburg started a campaign promoting the city on the Neva River. It would cost the City Council about 1 million Euros to place 300 billboards in London, Amsterdam and Paris till the middle of December. Actually, this is the very first promotion campaign of any Russian city abroad. Press tours don’t count as after a week of drinking and dining foreign journalists usually wrote about grim horrors of bloody Putin mother town where wild bears are roaming dark snowy alleys. Probably this gave the idea the promo campaign, “No bears, only beauties”.

One million Euros is definitely not enough to attract more tourists. Although Boston Consulting Group believes that 5.2 million foreign tourists will visit St. Petersburg in 2010 the current situation doesn’t give much room to optimism. Problems with foreign tourists in St. Pete are:
- almost no tourist information
- street names and directions are not dubbed in Roman letters
- service personnel don’t know English and even menus in English at restaurants are rare
- police harassment
- very expensive hotels
- very expensive licensed taxis
- very expensive air flights

All in all a trip to St. Petersburg is a very expensive affair not everyone can afford. Then tourists should at least learn Cyrillic alphabet (it takes no more than an hour) and some Russian phrases. Imagine what kind of service you would get at a Ney York restaurant if you do not know Roman letters and speak only Russian. Waiters in Russia do not know English but they promise not to laugh when you speak Russian.

Via AdMe