There's no such thing as bad publicity - or is there? IKEA is about to find out.
The popular Swedish home-furnishings chain, whose long-heralded arrival March 22 has visions of futons and rice-paper lampshades dancing in the heads of many Muscovites, has run up against at least one cool customer: the Moscow metro system, which has summarily rejected two mildly provocative IKEA ads for its underground billboards.
The two ads, part of a full-fledged display campaign, are relatively tame by Western standards. "Every tenth European was made in one of our beds," reads the first. The second, which pictures one of the store's catalogs, says "The most-read publication in the world. After the Bible, thank God."
Andrei Amlinsky, senior copywriter at BBDO-Moscow, the agency behind IKEA's local advertising, said the ads were harmless, meant to provoke "nothing more than a smile for a normal person."
Instead, he said, they provoked the "moral indignation" of Laura Babayan, the general director of MetrosMedia, the agency holding exclusive advertising rights for the city's metro system.
Babayan, who declined to comment Friday, was quoted in an earlier interview as saying that she "personally disliked the IKEA slogans and for that reason MetrosMedia has forbidden [them].
"Such advertising would hurt Muscovites," she added.
IKEA, which is depending heavily on advertising to achieve name recognition in Moscow, has quietly accepted Babayan's verdict. According to Amlinsky, the company's long-term plans - which include building six more stores in Moscow and St. Petersburg over the next 10 years - preclude rocking the boat at such an early stage.
"IKEA could really have created a scandal out of this," Amlinsky said. "But they would prefer to avoid a major incident."
If Babayan is correct in her assessment of the city's moral sensibilities, Muscovites should brace themselves - the "Bible" advertisement is already visible on billboards on Leningradskoye Shosse, with the "Bed" ads scheduled to appear soon.
IKEA will also begin running a series of five different spots on local television stations RTR, NTV, TV-6 and TV Center within the next few days.
When asked if BBDO-Moscow had ever encountered such resistance to their advertising campaigns in the past, Amlinsky sighed and said that they had.
"A while back the acting general designer of the city of Tula banned our Pepsi billboard campaign, declaring it 'too erotic.' All it showed was a Pepsi bottle and a pair of lips which resembled Cindy Crawford's," he said.
"Some of the government officials and functionaries whose paths we cross in the course of developing a campaign simply don't believe that Russians have enough of a sense of humor or sophistication to appreciate our advertisements," he added. "Of course they do."
Amlinsky admitted, however, that BBDO-Moscow rather enjoys being considered the "Benetton of Russia" - a reference to the Italian sportswear company's controversial and highly unorthodox advertising campaigns.
BBDO-Moscow will still be advertising for IKEA in the metro, he said, but the posters have been toned down to accommodate the "hyper-sensitivity" of MetrosMedia.
As they glide up and down the system's escalators, Muscovites will simply be informed that an IKEA catalogue will soon be sent to them by post.
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