Does a country need an ad/marketing agency? I didn’t think so until I read “Selling the World on Russia (Leaving Out the Spies)” by Andrew Kramer. It turns out that Russian Officials were so concerned about it’s worldly image and the affect the image had on opportunities that, a few years, they hired various agencies to work on this image. The article profiled one of those agencies, Adore Creative, and Rupert Wainwright's, its CEO, adventure working with Russia. Adore Creative’s job was to create a video for the 2013 World University Games, the 2014 Winter Olympics, and the 2018 World Cup, three videos in total.
Russia wanted to shed the stereotypical images of its country. Wainwright wanted to “normalize” the country within the ads because “If people see that sense of normalness, he said, ‘the country will de-demonize itself’” But it wasn’t so simple for Wainwright. The Russian Officials were zealous on shedding Cold War images that their idea for the Olympic video was “a black-and-white montage of post-Soviet street protests and the Berlin Wall falling down…”, not very appealing as a promotional video. They also wanted to include a host of their philosophical ideas and imagery. Wainwright eventually worked with the tough demeanor of the officials to create videos which, along with the other work from the other agencies, helped Russia to earn rights to host all three of the games they submitted videos to.
The article presents a country as a client as a potential clash of ideals and a challenge for the agency. Having contributed to Russia’s win to host all games is an accomplishment for Russia and the ad/marketing agencies which took them as a client. Wainwright stuck well to his guns; giving the Russian officials what they hired Adore Creative for, the ability to host three international games, three opportunities for Russia to reshape its image on a Worldly stage.
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