Brainstorming in Moscow

"To make beautiful muzhik--give her Red Moscow Perfume!"

"Laikas taste good--like a cigarette should!"

"Fifty out of 50 doctors approve of Khrushchev!"

"They said it couldn't be done--but Russia invented the automobile!"

Advertisements like these will probably not blossom forth in Soviet publications, but Russia is about to travel halfway to Manhattan's Madison Avenue. Sovetskaya Kultura, the official publication of the Ministry of Culture, last week complained that Russians are stupefied and bored by such headlines as "Buy jewelry in the shops of the State Jewelry Trade Organization" and "State Insurance is selling insurance for household goods." To get American-style hard sell, the Ministry of Culture called for "creative, talented people" to staff the new "Advertising-Publishing office" set up to improve shop-window displays, advertising signs and billboards on a nationwide scale.

Headlines and advertising copy were not all that Sovetskaya Kultura was mad at. It charged Russian advertisers with "bashfulness" where prices are concerned: "It must be said that.in most cases the ad is silent about the cost of the goods it advertises, although this question is of great interest to the customer." And window displays are hopeless. Either they are too static, showing nothing but pyramiding cans of meat and vegetables, or they are unchanged from year to year, or--even worse--they do not correspond to what is available in the store. Lamented Sovetskaya Kultura:

"You stop before a shopwindow and on display is a beautifully made overcoat. You like the stylish cut, the color, and even the price. You step inside and the clerk tells you, 'That's not for sale.' Your determination leads you consecutively to the department head and the store manager, but everywhere you get the same answer: the goods are not for sale, but for the shopwindow. That shopwindow has been turned into a museum."

Although the new-style Russian advertising is expected to be "evocative, varied and beautiful," Sovetskaya Kultura added a final cautionary nudge before Soviet admen got too carried away by brain-storming in the Madison Avenue manner: "Capitalistic advertising is noisy and offensive. It stuns a customer. And its sole aim is to get rid of the goods by any method available." As sample of the kind of "persistent, shrill" U.S. slogans Russia does not want, the editor cited what he said was a U.S. slogan, although this will be news in Atlanta: "Coca-Cola is good for your body and your country."

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