Moral problems of Russian advertising

For the first time in 1937 some rules of behaviour of advertisers were known as «the Code of norms of advertising practice. For the International chamber of commerce in Paris» has been formulated and published the Code. We shall study some articles of «Code» in edition of 1987.

Main principles

Article 1. Any advertising message is obliged to be legal, decent, fair and truthful. Any advertising message is obliged to be created with feeling of responsibility to a society and people and must correspond to the principles of a diligent competition which is quite natural in commerce.

Article 2. The advertising message should not abuse trust of the buyers and does not use a person’s inexperience or lack of knowledge about the advertised goods.

Article 3. 1) The advertising message should not play on feeling of fear. 2) The advertising message should not play on superstitions.

Article 7. The advertising message should not blame any firm, industrial and commercial activity or a trade market.

Imitation.

Article 10. The advertising message should not simulate a composition, a text, a slogan, an image, music, sound effects, etc. of other advertising messages, so that it could lead to error or to misunderstanding among customers.

Children and youth.

Article 13. 1) Advertising messages should not use trust of children or lack of life experience of the youth and it should not play on feeling of their fidelity.

The responsibility.

Article 14. 1) The responsibility for incorrect behaviour of advertiser is stated in the article as following: advertisers, executors of advertising messages, advertising agencies, publishing houses, owners of mass-media must concern advertising messages and be honest and trust customers.

This document from the point of view of Russian lawyers is quite imperfect. So, for example, nothing is said about political advertising or problems concerning political themes in advertising. In some cases advertising can be represented as political criticism and some people think that some sort of political criticism is used in advertising. In some cases manufacturers ask to advertise some of their products in a playful form. You may see that it is cool to use famous people for improving brand’s images, using voices, typical features of behaviour of well known politicians for example, Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin, etc.

Political views and economic interest of commercial radio stations is difficult to analyze, but it is possible to understand those who have other political views. In fact these political views are similar to different types of religion. A lot of different sects are the result of our religion advertising. But the greatest problem is that it is really very difficult to judge about it. Psychological concepts of crash of Marxism - Leninism in the world can be compared with sudden disappearance of one of global religions of such level as Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity. We can’t persuade people to turn their faces to the God or to turn blind eyes to those who put obstacles to believers. So we must not offend people with different spiritual views in advertising. Advertising should be without policy and religion.

Manufacturers and advertisers are uniting in their attempt to have mutual understanding with the consumers. The main aim is to expand number of the clients should concern the study of people, their needs, and feelings, seeking the ways how to perceive and respect other people

The problems of morality, patriotism, interests of society are closely connected with the problems of advertising in modern business. Manufacturers of advertising and modern Russian businessmen order advertisements promoting goods are done without patriotism but the only rational thinking. If we want to live in a civilized country where all laws are observed and interests of proprietors are protected, we should respect peoples’ feelings and their political and ideological opponents.

In Russia as we know the most popular advertising words are the following «our goods are the best ones, only we shall solve your problems, only we know how to make it, only we are the best». So we may say that the advertisement displays some sort of psychological concept. Russian advertisers reproduce this program in advertising. The aim of advertising in Western countries is the struggle against the competitors for the improvement of the quality of products and advantages of goods. As for Russian advertising it is the aspiration to hide advantages of goods of the competitors and to the increase of thepopularity of advertised goods.

When you look at a telecast in our country nobody warns you that it may be interrupted by advertising of different goods. Advertising can interrupt a football match or even a fascinating film. Thus nobody considers the interestsof the spectators. Many people complain that sometimes advertisement is similar to the content of film and they forget about the content of the film, sometimes it is far from the content of the film and people find it difficult to watch the rest of the film after ads. They ask for a special channel for advertising.

Nobody protects the consumer from unwilling advertising. There is nothing as irritating as monotonous advertising.The emotions of films are deformed. There is a problem of efficient social influence of art and advertisements on a personality. There is a deformation of valuable people’s orientations. The classical advertisements of soaps, beer or chewing gums touch people’s attention for several times a day. Social psychologist A. Mol in his book «Socio-dynamical culture» has offered a special term for this phenomenon: a mosaic culture». The essence of it is that a person is being offered different types of goods, medicine, appliances in one and the same advertising.

The review of newspapers is supposed the advertisers to give more information about different goods for readers. The advertising informational circulations are used not only for self-advertisement but also as a struggle against competitors. Some newspapers allocate but do not reflect the authority and quality of goods, trade image of other manufacturers. Advertising does not correspond to the contents of advertised products.

It is possible to say that advertising always presents doubtful data, since inflation in Russia is so high that the payment for advertisement does not correspond to the validity of advertisements. Nobodyhas been punished for discrepancies in advertising in Russia; nobody has taken reliability for suggested information. Advertising frequently render specificity of manufacture and material damage. Advertising interpreters try to sell and promote necessary products. As the experience shows ads are based on feeling of trust and do not give full information about goods. It means that any form of ads will bring nothing and is already known to a person. They interfere into consciousness. Therefore the most adequate means of struggle against bad ads is to teach experimental psychology and theory of advertisement.

1. Найдите в тексте английские эквиваленты следующим словосочетаниям:

ответственность за соблюдение, во многих отношениях несовер-шенна, прерывать фильм, мы решим ваши проблемы, экономический интерес, напоминать религию, учиться уважать других людей, улучшения, многие жалуются, борьба с конкурентами.

2. Переведите следующие словосочетания:

to protect from bad advertising, to feel other people, influence on all sides of our life a deformation, to use images, a well know politicians, advertising represents, earlier we mean a word political accusation, valuable orientation, emotional influence, involve the manufactures, free of charge.