Ad Decree Is Welcome: Now Use It

They are everywhere. Turn on the television or the radio, open the newspaper, ride the metro -- the onslaught of investment fund advertisements preying on Russians' fear of losing all their savings to inflation cannot be avoided or ignored.In some cases, the sheer brazenness of the ads has been shocking. Now-defunct funds like Impulse-Invest and Independent Oil Kontsern were able to continue airing blatantly fraudulent commercials -- and collecting deposits -- well after the police had launched investigations into their activities.The damage goes far beyond inexperienced investors' monetary losses. The parade of wild promises and subsequent well-publicized failures could lead even the most progressive-minded Russian to conclude that capitalism is synonymous with crime.The government, finally, has come up with a concrete response. President Yeltsin's decree on truth in advertising, signed last week, is designed to force companies to accept responsibility for the claims they make in their commercials. Companies will not be allowed to make claims about future returns on deposits or unfounded comparisons with competitors. They will also be required to provide information on their previous returns and their legal status.But significant obstacles remain.First, though Economics Minister Alexander Shokhin has hinted that newspapers, radio and television would have to answer for the ads they run, the decree places no responsibility on the media. This would not be a problem if Russian Television, say, worried that an irresponsible ad policy would undermine its respectability. But experience has shown that money speaks first where advertising policy is concerned.Second, investment companies have developed the effective technique of spawning so many independent divisions that regulators cannot keep track of them.At last count, for example, the investment firm MMM consisted of 22 different companies. When any government agency begins an investigation of one or a few of the divisions, MMM allegedly shifts its activities to the other ones. Even MMM officials have admitted that this is their policy.With no control at the media end, investment firms could theoretically continue running banned ads and get away with it using these tactics. The fact that the decree delegates implementation to three separate entities -- the Finance Ministry, the Central Bank and the Anti-Trust Committee -- will only serve to complicate enforcement.Russia needs now to create a more civilized market in which people can put some faith in the new commercial structures that surround them. Yeltsin's decree on advertising is a solid first step: may the government find the will and patience to make it work.