What are you searching for?

Sign in
Company News

Russians Say ‘Nyet’ to P&G Campaign

Protestors boycott ads that appear in Putin documentary.

Author Image

By: TOM BRANNA

Editor

And Rush Limbaugh thinks he’s got problems! Procter & Gamble is facing a boycott of its products by Russian opponents of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin forsupporting state-run NTV television through advertising. NTV broadcast a documentary film called “Anatomy of a Protest” on March 15 that accused opposition groups of paying people to attend their rallies, sparking demonstrations outside its broadcasting center in Moscow and calls from prominent bloggers to boycott the channel and its advertisers’ products.


P&G, the largest advertiser in Russia, said in a recent email that while respecting the rights of citizens to express their opinions, it rejects any attempt to make it an “instrument” in a political war. P&G accounted for 5.2% of all ad spending in Russia last year, according to Moscow-based research group TNS Media Intelligence.

The boycott campaign marks a new tactic for Russian opposition forces struggling to regain momentum. They brought tens of thousands of people to the streets of major cities to protest election fraud in parliamentary polls that Putin’s United Russia party won in December and the presidential ballot March 4 that will put the former president back in the Kremlin.

“P&G doesn’t make any exclusive products, so we can easily substitute them with brands of their competitors,” said Alexander Plushchev, an opposition activist and journalist, in a blog posting.


P&G had global sales last year of $82.6 billion, about 14% of which came from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to the company’s website.

“Advertising is a means of bringing information about our goods to a wide range of consumers through all communication channels,” P&G said in the statement. “The assessment of contents of TV programs broadcast by licensed TV channels is beyond an advertiser’s competence.”

Andrei Lyan, a P&G spokesman in Moscow, declined to disclose how much the company spends each year on advertising on NTV, which is owned by the media arm of natural-gas exporter OAO Gazprom (GAZP), saying the information is confidential, “commercial information.”


Keep Up With Our Content. Subscribe To Happi Newsletters