Style Beats Substance in Ad Campaigns (published with exerpts)
By Sophia Coudenhove

The Moscow Times. Thursday, May 30, 1996

Anyone trying to watch Boris Yeltsin's expensive television advertising campaign could be forgiven for being a little confused. Yeltsin is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, commercials feature "ordinary" Russians talking about themselves. In one, a collective farm worker talks about the joys of being a private potato farmer. In another, an old woman in a head scarf recounts how communists pillaged her village church and speaks with dread of a return to persecution.

A few words that appear at the bottom of the screen in the final few seconds provide the only clue that this is a Yeltsin ad. "I believe, I love, I hope," is followed by the president's signature, "B.N.Yeltsin."

The pitch is a subtly calculated, but very deliberate soft-sell. Ekaterina Egorova co-director of “Niccolo M”., a political consultancy working for Yeltsin, said the desire not to over-expose the president was a key factor in choosing to omit him from TV campaign advertising.

"The idea behind his absence is that Yeltsin, as president, appears so often on the screen that if he were on commercials as well, people would get sick of him," Egorova said.

This reverse psychology is a sign of the fast-evolving nature of political image-making in the current elections. After the 1995 Duma election campaign, in

which viewers were hammered by hours of used-car salesman-style advertising, campaign 1996 has seen candidates grow much more careful in the image they present to the public.

In fact, according to some, with Russia's electorate growing more cynical, subtle manipulation of image has virtually replaced content in political advertising.

"People no longer believe candidates' promises, and that's why human qualities are becoming the most important criteria," said Alexander Oslon,

general director of the Public Opinion foundation. "This year, image is what comes first."

Yeltsin's concern about over-exposure is justified. He has been given plenty of time on regular television news to project a more active personality. Yeltsin dominates the television news, beaming forth every day in a new populist incarnation — Yeltsin down a coal mine shaft, Yeltsin dancing with costumed folk-dancers, Yeltsin on a swing with a young girl, and so it goes on.

It is unquestionably the Yeltsin campaign that has borrowed most from Western-style image-making. It is also the most expensive. While the president's campaign has so far cost him 4,387,000,000 rubles, ($875,299) Zyuganov has spent only about half that amount, according to the Central Election Commission's May 20 figures.

As far as Yeltsin's Communist rivals are concerned, much of that money is wasted. "It's not necessary to make an image of Gennady Andreyevich [Zyuganov]. He just is who he is." said Communist spokeswoman Irina Makaveyeva. "He's a balanced man. He has a calm character and in strong health."

" Having rejected paid commercials, Zyuganov uses his 10-minute free television slot to show childhood photographs and discuss his career and his love for the motherland as he talks to ordinary people around the country, before addressing viewers on the need for social justice

and a multi-party system.

Grigory Yavlinsky, who heads the reformist Yabloko faction, appears to have similar ideas on keeping a low personal profile. His television slot is little more than a biography, with some explanations of how the election system works. Not once does the candidate tell viewers to vote for him.

Strangely, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who made his name as a demagogic hell-raiser, seems to be switching to a calmer public image for these elections.

Yeltsin is employing the services of Video International — one of Russia's most prominent advertising firms, which has also promoted a presidential vote-of-confidence telephone line. A recorded message promises to deliver comments to Yeltsin, and several of them have been printed as advertisements in the daily Izvestia.