On Russian Commercials (and The Irony of Fate: Continuation)

I've been rethinking my life decisions on joining the history writing profession. If Lena's Vladimir (tentative title) doesn't work out, I'm thinking about getting a degree in television advertising sociology, writing a book or two on societal values reflected in commercials and then selling out to the first consulting firm that offers seven figures. Here's a preview:

1. "Aluminum--The Civilized Container"

Scene: A movie theater. From left to right, two half-liter green glass bottles, one half-liter grey aluminum can and one plastic bottle of indeterminable size (either one liter or 1.5 liter) sit in the balcony row.

Plastic bottle (moves forward part of lid upward): Burrrrp.

Glass bottles (leaning into each other's seats): ClinkClinkClinkClinkClink.

(Theater darkens)

Can (top comes up): Click. Shhhhhh.

(Glass and plastic bottles jump and then sit down motionless.)

Announcer: Aluminum, the most civilized container.


I like this commercial because it's pretty much true. Glass bottles always have waste (the cap) and are potentially very loud and messy. A plastic bottle is no less than a liter and up to five liters. Plus, most beer that comes in plastic bottles is not good and if you aren't sharing or drinking fast, it's going to go flat. Aluminum cans leave no waste, they aren't loud and they are usually of a size that will not go flat before you can finish.

After I had seen this message a dozen times or so, I started to wonder who put it out there. The can and glass bottles both look like Baltika 7, a quality light beer, but the labels aren't visible and that particular beer does not have a plastic bottle variety. It's possible Baltika is trying to drive people to its aluminum can variety products; it recently put out a 1 liter can version of Baltika 7. Maybe Russia has experienced a rash of murders by broken beer bottle in movie theaters. (It's obvious why you would want to discourage people from drinking from plastic bottles.) Maybe the aluminum lobby finally got up the balls to take on those assholes at Big Glass.

2. Mayonnaise

I have a couple commercials in mind here, but the main thing I want to point out is that Russia is the only country I know of where mayonnaise is sold with sexy commercials or a blockbuster film.

Example 1: An attractive young couple has just moved into their new apartment. The woman gets out a bag of mayonnaise (pictured below), squeezes out a dollop onto her partner's fingertip and inserts finger with mayonnaise into her mouth. The couple goes to the bedroom, the woman carrying the mayonnaise behind her back.

Example 2: In The Irony of Fate: Continuation (which, is a travesty. This is a sequel to the Russian equivalent, in the sense that it gets played every New Year, to It's a Wonderful Life. The original is a social commentary, a good comedy and does a good job maintaining the illusion of realism through character interaction, even though the plot is a little far-fetched. The sequel is a slick, shallow picture about the children of the original characters. It's a Vh1-esque nostalgia-fest packed full of the most blatant advertising I've seen since Independence Day but none of the substance of the original. [Independence Day, for that matter, also had more substance although I do think that Linux would clearly have been more compatible with the alien operating system.]) an old lady makes a salad, which in Russia is usually a bunch of random ingredients--beets, carrots, ham, eggs, garlic etc etc etc--smothered in mayonnaise. She squeezes out the whole bottle of Calve, which is running a media blitz right now, then tastes and makes the "mmm-good!" face. Later, another lady tastes, then squeezes some more mayonnaise in and makes the "mmm-better!' face.

Could it not be that the preponderance of mayonnaise on television and in the store has catastrophically lowered the age of death in Russia? Is it not so that mayonnaise from a bag, clearly a more efficient container, has made the stuff so accessible that it is sexually corrupting young Russia? What I'm really trying to say is that mayonnaise is a big, sexy deal in Russia.