Russian Classic Literature In Modern Advertisement

Appeals to classical symbols to confirm “greatness” of the goods

The last example of poem quoting was used by Toyota. New car’s advertisement issued in 2018 is accompanied by verses of a poem “Do not be afraid of thick fog” by modern classic Yevgeny Yevtushenko. The advertisement appeals to a strong man who is able to overcome any obstacles in life thanks to the faithful iron horse.

Approximately the same appeal had already been used four years earlier by a competing company. The Mercedes-Benz 2014 video (in the year of the 200th anniversary of M. Lermontov) used a phrase from Lermontov's poem “Parus” “And he, the rebel, asks for the storm” in a truncated version - “The rebellious, asks for the storm”. “It has to go through thousands of storms, and you only have one - a storm of emotions!” is listed in the car’s advertising description on the official website of Mercedes-Benz GLA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvyjGVumtg).

According to a composer and a blogger Gromadin (2009):

Within the framework of pop culture, classical music today is a unique symbol of the strength of tradition, luxury and high style. Appealing to the classics, advertising tries to relate the product (which is today - and will disappear tomorrow, and often is not particularly needed) with something more stable, reliable, proven experience of generations . (p. 4)

This idea can be fully transferred to the use of classical literature in advertisement (Figure 01 ).

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The musical and literary classical culture was united by a series of commercials of the brand “Maiski tea” in 2014 - 2016. In the video of 2014, images of two classics are used at once - Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. A fragment of the audio recording of "Eugene Onegin" sounds: “her heart had long been overrun…” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbTmxf2SBX4). This commercial demonstrates a noble waltz reminding the waltz of Natalya Rostova. This is also achieved through recognizable music – “Waltz” by Aram Khachaturian from the film “War and Peace”. The 2015 commercial is fully devoted to Pushkin's work - we are shown the author himself and, apparently, the most important items for creativity - goose feathers, candles, tea. The final 2016 commercial of the whole series contains the quote from “Eugene Onegin” describing the tea party. The video series demonstrates a picture where Pushkin, played by S. Bezrukov, with his wife and children, drinks tea and draws inspiration for writing sounding lines.

Car and tea advertisement (see № 1-5 in Table 01 ) uses literary symbols established in the minds of educated people to make a product more valuable, significant, and respectable, turning it in category of classical brands.

Quoting of classic authors to form loyalty to the product

Close to reading Russians in spirit was the advertisement of the Internet browser Google Chrome. The video starred writer Victoria Tokareva and her granddaughter Catherine Todorovskaya. Video shows two parallel youths of grandmother and granddaughter. While a granddaughter is reading the book of the Silver Age poets from the tablet and watching Bella Akhmadulina’s presentation on YouTube, a young grandmother is standing in an endless queue for a new book of poems. The final phrase in the commercial: “I think if grandma had Internet then, she would have spent even more time there than I did” (https://www.sostav.ru/publication/google-zapustil-kampaniyu-dlya-vas-7414.html). Here the poet's quote is used to attract the target audience. In our opinion, it is one of the successful advertising works, bringing the object of advertising closer, as well as the advertisement itself, to works of art.

The method of quoting poets of the Silver age is used, according to our observations, by the authors of modern advertisement since the mid-90s. Then Timur Bekmambetov successfully advertised Slavyansky Bank by quoting poems of Osip Mandelstam, Alexander Blok, and Boris Pasternak (Stepanov, 2015). In 2005 a successful experience was repeated by the advertising company “Rodnaya Rech” (Native speech), which released two ads for the mobile operator “MTS”: “The Exam” and “The Train” with fragments of poems by Alexander Block (“Night, street, lantern, pharmacy...”) and Igor Severyanin (“Romance”).

Classics for the culture of reading

Another reason to appeal to the classics is the promotion of reading culture in social advertisement and advertisement of bookstores (see № 8-10 in Table 01 ). In 2013, the Russian book Union initiated a series of social advertising posters for bookstores in Russian cities. The authors of the posters propose to imagine: “In what way the world literature could develop, if, for example, in the XIX century to steal a new book by the author would be as easy as now?” (Prudinnik, 2013, p. 6).

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Writing on the poster above (Figure 02 ): “One doctor more. One great writer less. If Internet piracy had existed in the 19th century, many writers would have had to change their profession”. These posters show, that in this case, talented doctor Anton Chekhov would have remained only a doctor, peasant boy Sergei Yesenin would become a butcher, the gambler Fyodor Dostoevsky would make a career only in gambling, and Maxim Gorky, who worked in a bakery in his youth, would still work as a baker.

The authors of another series of 2012 social advertisement “Read out” have chosen the same pattern. These posters were designed for young audience and portray Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and Anton Chekhov as fitness trainers. The message of these posters is that reading books is as good as playing sports. The poster with Anton Chekhov says: “Three sets of 7 pages on a daily basis, and you will see result after a week”. On the poster below, Leo Tolstoy is portrayed as a trainer for trained readers, the writing says: “Don't give up - on the 500th page a second wind will open”.

On the trainers’ sport suits, we can find symbolic references to famous works, represented as sport labels: image of a seagull on Chekhov’s suit and the writing “WAR & PEACE” on Tolstoy’s suit (Figure 03 ).

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Using elements of classic art to attract mass audience

In our opinion, the examples above are relatively good in appealing to the classics. Nevertheless, it is difficult to use these types of advertisement without hurting the feelings and tastes of readers. The possible reason of it is that the main target audience of this advertisement is different (Ogilvy, 2013). This audience is simpler and knows about represented books from school curriculum. For these audience “aggressive advertising” with direct appeal is more effective, because it uses more familiar symbols to increase the selling of goods and services, and do not care about people's true attitude to it (see № 7 and 11 in Table 01 ).

In the “Rossiysky Kredit” (Russian credit) bank deposits outdoor advertisement, which appeared on the streets of Russian cities in October 2014 (see more in Salnikov, 2014), we can see the using of “Mayakovsky” type of advertisement. These type is characterized by using poetic form with call-up phrases (High interest deposit! Catch the revolutionary moment!), pseudo-revolution aesthetics, and grotesque. It appears in red and black design, sans-serif letters, and the image of red man. This advertisement stylizes the famous Vladimir Mayakovsky’s “okna ROSTA” posters. Moreover, the grotesque effect of the present advertisement is represented by discordance between the “revolutionary” concept and the quite traditional interest rate of deposit (11 %).

The last example is the 2011 advertisement of “Baltika” beer, which also uses the works of Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Pushkin. This commerical presents a poem about “classic beer” using the phrases from Lermontov and Pushkin’s works: “So what is a classic in Russia?”, “Yellow waves of cornfield”, “The water – “like genius of the purest grace””, “And hop – “high ideals inspire him””, “Combined in the beautiful “league of ours””, “Classic taste, unchangeable over the years!”. And in the end of the commercial comes the slogan: Baltika – all about the components of classical taste in the special series. Anashkina (2009) in her work “Advertising image as an invariant of art in modern culture” concludes that: “The phenomena of postmodernism culture has more thraits of artistic forms, and advertisement appears in these general pattern as a model of modern culture with artistic form but with pseudo-artistic content” (p. 15). We assume that advertisement of “Baltika” beer is the right example of these statements. But we can not agree that advertisement always had pseudo-artistic content. There are more appropriate examples that contain modern and classic art.