Reaching Back In Messaging War

Michael Hedges May 28, 2022 Follow on Twitter

Out of home advertising, abbreviated in the ad trades as OOH, is a very resilient segment of the business. This year OOH, no longer just billboards, has rebounded as marketers target consumers returning to the streets. Some like the giant digital visuals. Others are attracted to the interactive possibilities of facial recognition. So cool. So upscale. And Netflix, so far, doesn’t show ads.

People living in big cities, some anyway, have grown accustomed to seeing billboard panels attached to vans rolling through busy districts, very often at the lunch-hour, pitching pizzas. These, too, feature moving pictures, TV on wheels, flashing lights. OOH advertising can be effective for every message.

This past week, the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) sent three vans affixed with big screens to “provide background information to residents” in Mariupol, Ukraine, reported exile news portal Nexta (May 24). The port and industrial city of Mariupol has been effectively destroyed after nearly three months intense Russian bombing and shelling in and around the Azovstal iron and steel works. More than a thousand civilians sheltering in the plant’s underground caverns were finally evacuated followed by several hundred Ukrainian troops.

Also positioned at a dozen fixed locations were the 190 cm (75 inch) TV screens “across crowded public areas” like water distribution points. “They broadcast news from federal and republican TV channels (read: Russian state TV channels), provide background information for residents, and show cartoons and fairy tales to children,” said the EMERCOM statement, reported by Russian state news agency TASS (May 26). There is no water supply, sanitation or electricity in Mariupol. One of the fixed big screen TV locations is adjacent to the completely destroyed once-elegant Mariupol Drama Theater, that brought death to 600 sheltering civilians in March. "Also, such complexes operate in Volnovakha and Krasnolimansky districts,” added the EMERCOM statement.

“Cynicism at the highest level,” said Petr Andryushchenko, advisor to the Ukrainian Mariupol mayor, on social media, noted Ukrinform (May 26). "The practice ‘There is nothing to eat, so just feed them lies" is gaining momentum.” Added the Mariupol city council: "This could be enough for the Russians, but you can't feed our people with such ‘noodles’.”

Several foreign news outlets picked up the story. “Orwellian propaganda,” noted the Guardian (May 26), referring to British novelist George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, which allegorically depicted life in the Soviet Union. Everybody remembers the disinformation strategy of “Four legs good, two legs bad” in Animal Farm. In Nineteen Eighty-Four protagonist Winston Smith is employed by the Ministry of Truth to rewrite documents to conform to the party line. “Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing.”

Russian propaganda efforts long preceded the invasion of Ukraine. Deep in the Soviet tradition it is meant to keep Russian citizens in line. This, it appears, has generally succeeded. Beyond the Russian borders the task is confusion and disinformation. With the invasion of Ukraine, Western governments reacted by curtailing distribution of Russian propaganda such as RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik. Still, there are softer more pliable targets for the Russian specialists, recently giving attention to privately-owned Italian TV channels. The ending to this, like Nineteen Eighty-Four, is dystopian.

See also...

• Hot Topics - Conflict Zones

• Hot Topics - Propaganda

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