Making the Metro Smile

She stares down from a poster in Moscow's Savyolovskaya metro station, dressed like a station attendant though she's prettier and more coiffed than any you'd ever see at the turnstiles. The headline advises, "A smile is an inexpensive way to look better," and she's pointing with both hands at her own rictus grin to reinforce the point.

The ad, it seems, doesn't always have the desired effect.

"Why don't they have a row of men smiling? Wouldn't that be nicer for women?" complained Yekaterina Shafrin, 17, after stepping off the escalators Wednesday.

"I didn't pay any attention, I have a pile of problems with my insurance company," muttered Vitaly Puboshov, 27, between fraught conversations on his cell phone.

The poster is part of a rapidly expanding social advertising campaign that is covering Moscow's billboards with advice on everything from drug to condom use. A 2006 law ordered that 5 percent of Moscow's 40,000 advertising spots be reserved for social advertising. But in some parts of the city, that figure was recently raised to 15 percent.

"Almost without any particular announcement, it's everywhere," said Alex Shifrin, head of advertising agency The Creative Factory, which doesn't do public-service work.

Metroreklama Some Metro social ads are mundane, advising riders that smoking is "unfashionable," while others verge on profound.

Many eschew subtlety in favor of a paternalistic tone struck by Soviet-era posters, which commanded citizens to stop drinking vodka and women to rub their nipples with cold water to prepare for breast feeding, for example. The topics of posters are often dictated by government ministries and serve state interests, such as asking citizens to give birth to stave off Russia's looming demographic crisis.

"Social advertising undeniably helps our government, our president," said Vladimir Makarov, chairman of Moscow's committee on advertising and information.

Social ads first appeared in the metro 13 years ago, when advertisers couldn't be found for the new hoardings installed along escalators and tunnel walls. The ads are produced by a three-man team at the Shabolovskaya office of Metroreklama, which is decorated with erotic versions of famous ads -- one shows a woman wearing a dress decorated with a map of the metro, but unlike in the photograph shown in stations, the dress is transparent.

Their posters have an audience of 9 million passengers a day. They range from cheesy -- a woman posing in a dress printed with cigarettes with the caption "That's already unfashionable" -- to almost profound, including one of a beaming metro worker pointing up an escalator with the caption "There is a way out."

"In its time, that was relevant -- because it was common to find in public transport signs that said 'No exit,'" said Yevgeny Koval, the head designer at Metroreklama. "It suggests that there's a exit out of the metro -- it's set against the background of the escalators -- and also that there's a way out in the human sense, that everything can change."

Koval and his team usually produce two series of ads per year, choosing the topics themselves and working on an extremely low budget. To save money, many of the models, including the woman in the popular ad that suggests "Smile at the world and it will smile at you," are employees of Olimp, the company that sells advertising space in the metro and whose office is in the same building as Metroreklama.

Metroreklama The poster reads "There's a way out," reminding passengers how to exit as well as of the ephemerality of problems.

Funding restraints also necessitate cutting corners. An ad encouraging women to have more children, "The country needs your records," seems to imply that the mother shown with three babies has had triplets. In fact, she only had one baby, and two copies of the same child were digitally pasted in.

The series on smiling was prompted after Koval observed the "sad, stressed" faces of fellow passengers on the metro, he said. And he thinks the ads may have had an effect. "If we're compared to Thailand, then of course in terms of smiling we are behind," he said. "But recently, yes, people have begun to smile more."

The ads have been supplemented with intercom announcements that remind metro riders how to cross the road properly and tell them where they can get free psychiatric help, among other things.

Roadside billboards with public-service announcements are designed by advertising agencies rather than a single office, often on requests from ministries. A recent series responded bluntly to a wave of ethnic-inspired violence by picturing celebrities, including musician Vladimir Spivakov, alongside quotes explaining why they're against xenophobia.

Moscow's Znamenka advertising agency made a hectoring ad displayed in 2005 and 2006 that showed a new metro station paid for with taxpayers' money. The caption read: "Thanks to all those who paid taxes. To all those who didn't, please do so."

"We want people to understand that taxes are paid and collected not to make officials rich," explained Alexander Mozhayev, president of Znamenka. "We're saying, 'If you haven't paid, please do so, because others have and you should feel a little ashamed.'"

Although social advertising is thriving in Moscow, experts say the quality is well below that in the West.

"Social advertising can be effective when it is very offensive or graphic," said Maria Nicholson of Identica branding agency. It can also work when it is interactive and encourages passersby to get in touch over the phone or Internet, she said. Social ads here usually do neither, she added.

Shifrin remarked on the lack of subtlety. "In the West, social advertising wants you to do something in a particular way while making you think you did it on your own," he said. "Here, there's no doubt about the steps you need to take."

Worse, the ads sometimes give misleading advice. One metro campaign last year sponsored by the City Duma and an AIDS charity said having a trusting relationship, rather than using condoms, is the way to avoid becoming infected with HIV.

Still, the ads sometimes find a sympathetic audience.

"I think, yes, it's necessary to smile," said Olga Gelina, 43, at Savyolovskaya on Wednesday. "But I smile for my own reasons often enough."