MOSCOW — A giant pack of Russian cigarettes flies toward the defenseless New York skyline. Torch raised, the Statue of Liberty helplessly watches its flight.
There's an undercurrent of vague menace in the picture that can be instantly recognized by anyone who ever watched a Cold War-era movie. And it's underscored by the aggressive slogan of the flashy Russian advertisement, displayed on huge billboards all over Moscow: "Striking Back."
The ad for a local brand of cigarettes, Yava, is just one of many indications that Russia's newfound consumer fantasies not only are becoming as slickly designed and sophisticated as their Western models but are growing more nationally self-assertive.
In the post-Soviet crisis of the early 1990s, when most Russians were self-deprecating about anything that came from their own country, goods imported to Russia were instantly in demand. Russian producers even marketed their goods under pseudo-foreign names. For instance, the Moscow clothes designer Anatoly Klimin sells under the trademark name Tom Klaim.
But now, as the domestic economy revives somewhat, the pendulum has swung back.
Buyers here want to be shown that their home-grown Russian values, as well as their goods, are at least as attractive as foreign ones. And a big new advertising industry--made up of both the subsidiaries of Western agencies and of Russian agencies born after the Soviet collapse in 1991 but already surprisingly mature--is realizing that it must satisfy the demand for Russian national flavor if it is to continue succeeding here.
"As we've gotten more experienced, the magic of 'imported' has faded. We've learned to distinguish between good products and the second-rate," commented the weekly newsmagazine Itogi. "Having been disappointed by stinking Turkish tea, rubbery Polish sausages, Chinese clothes that come apart and clocks from Hong Kong that fall to bits, Russian consumers are getting nostalgic for the Russian mustard and chocolate and sausage that they grew up with."
Western Ads Misfired
The first Western ads shown in Russia in the early 1990s often got their market wrong, offending people because they didn't take into account Russian sensibilities, according to Vyacheslav Chernyakhovsky, editor of Reklamny Mir (Advertising World) magazine. Ads for tampons embarrassed this prim society; ads featuring black people apparently touched a chord of racial unease. Now the agencies are learning to provide what the customer wants.
