Comrade Copywriter

Comrade Copywriter A documentary swipe file* of Eastern Europe Socialist advertising. Directed by Valentin Valchev. *A swipe file is a collection of tested and proven ads. Keeping a swipe file is a common practice used by advertising copywriters and creative directors as a ready reference of ideas for projects. Swipe files are a great jumping-off point for anybody who needs to come up with lots of ideas. 1 Synopsis “What is the difference between Capitalism and Socialism? Capitalism is the exploitation of humans by humans. Socialism is the opposite.” an East German joke from the times of the DDR For more than half a century a vast part of the world inhabited by millions of people lived isolated behind an ideological wall, forcedly kept within the Utopia of a social experiment. The ‘brave new world’ of state controlled bureaucratic planned economy was based on state property instead of private and restric- tions instead of initiative. Advertising, as well as Competition and Consumerism, were all derogatory words stigmatizing the world outside the Wall – the world of Capitalism, Imperialism and Coca Cola. On the borderline where the two antagonistic worlds met, a weird phenomenon occurred – the Com Ads. This was comrade copywriter’s attempt to peep from behind the wall and present the socialist utopia as a normal part of the world. Welcome to comrade copywriter’s brave new world! Marketing - in a strictly controlled and anti-market oriented society. Branding - of deficient or even non-existant products, in the situation of stagna- tion and crisis; you could watch a Trabi TV ad every day and still wait for 15 years to bye one. Free choice - proclaimed when there is no choice. /”Drink fruit juices” - a Soviet ad from 1980s/ From the mid-1960s to mid-1990s The film follows the story of the rise and fall of the absurd communist social experiment through the weird story of communist Eastern Block advertising – the Com Ads. The time span of the film is from the mid-1960s to the mid 1990-s; from the era of Khrushchev’s thaw with the singing corn-cobs ad, claimed to be the first Soviet commercial clip to Mikhail Gorbachev’s appearance in the Pizza Hut ad in 1997. A character- driven documentary narrated in each country by Com Ad copywriters and advertising idols. We meet the men who brought Coca-Cola to Bulgaria in the mid-1960s - but when Pepsi made a deal with the USSR their Coca-Cola deal flopped and Bul- garia started producing Pepsi instead, 2 Or the Estonian studio Eesti Reklaamfilm - the only advertising agency for forty years in the Soviet Union, which made thousands of advertising clips for such “products“ as nuclear power stations and the state arms industry. Or Ana Sasso – former Miss Yugoslavia ’82 who since her wet t-shirt appearance in a Pipi Soda commercial became and remained a universal symbol of beauty for all parties engaged in decades of fierce post-Yugoslav wars. And also the story of copywriting comrades from Poland. In the mid-1970s, while the Coca-Cola ad campaign was on Polish TV, they officially graduated in Advertising and Marketing from the State University. A couple of years later, in 1981 during the communist martial law, with their rationing cards in hand, they joined the crowded queues in front of empty supermarkets. This is also the story of the Trabi time-machine – a brand that proved so success- ful that it outlived the political system that created it. And many other absurd and fascinating characters and stories caught between idea and ideology… The overall structure of the film is constructed from visual blocks of thematically grouped advertising clips, linked by historical archive, reenactments and present day episodes to present the weird story of copywriting comrades and their times. Epilogue: after the changes ”I think my eyes are getting better. Instead of a big dark blur, I see a big light blur.” Han Solo Star Wars, Episode 6, Return of the Jedi, 1983 Twenty years after the collapse of Communism and transition to democracy / and capitalism/, a tidal wave of nostalgia for the old clumsy Com Ads swept the former Eastern Block. Present day advertising agencies began imitating the Com Ad style. The story of comrade copywriter and his Trabi goes on – Trabies are planned to be electrified and become the car of the future. Ugly LADAs have been seen on MTV. And Coca Cola wars entered a new dimension - after the huge success of the advertising campaign of Kvass Nikola /kvass is a traditional Russian fer- mented drink/ in 2008 Coca Cola started the production of kvass for the Russian market. So why did a system advocating the elimination of private property, a system in which googs were owned in common and available to all as needed, introduce advertising in the first place? And how did a society that professed social harmony embrace the cotradiction between long queues for bread along with solid planned economy that relied on socialist ads? 3 Director’s note of intent There have been many films about life under Communism in Eastern Europe. There have been serious ones and informative ones, and dramatic, and humane, or tragic, boring or even lively and funny ones. Low budget films – and block- busters. Films made by filmmakers from the East as well as from the West. Comrade Copywriter is a creative documentary film about advertising in Com- munist Eastern Europe. There certainly have been more dramatic and direct themes and approaches to the Communist past but for sure this is an unexpect- ed and paradoxical theme with a great comic potential. Film and video ads, and the people who made them in the countries of the Eastern Block, is a topic that has hardly been explored, especially from this angle. My very earnest intention is Comrade Copywriter to be an extremely funny film. ‘Advertising in Communist Eastern Europe’ sounds a little like ‘Giraffes in Fin- land’. The theme itself is absurd. A society of planned low consumption and permanent shortage in all consumer goods with occasional severe economic crises didn’t need advertising. Nobody advertised bananas in DDR or oranges in Bulgaria, anyway they were available only to the lucky few of the long queues at Christmas Eve. And Trabi ads on DDR television were magic invocations of the car you paid for but to get it you would wait for at least 10 years. And also there is the worldwide presumption that the countries of Communist Utopia didn’t have advertising at all. It’s not so. Since 2009 even half-starved North Korea has its first ever beer TV ad. “Drink beer, it’s nourishing and has vita- mins!” is the slogan, very much like the old 1982 USSR ad “Drink fruit juices!” Ads of the East existed, and now they present a really funny and surreal curiosity. Advertising activities in the Socialist countries, as part of the centrally planned economy, were imposed by the system after a high rank Comecon meeting in the late 1950s. Advertising was planned for years ahead in all these countries. And what was planned had to be done. The Communist propaganda machine at the time met Comrade Copywriter with suspicion but did not take him too seriously. And for over 30 years he created the pointless and absurd “ads for ads’ sake”. There are interesting people and interesting stories, all unknown. At present many international advertising professionals try their best to exploit the mass wave of nostalgia to the socialist past that has overcome the countries of the former Eastern Block, and to revive long forgotten brands and imitate the clumsy ads from socialist times. Comrade copywriter is a film more interested in people than in ideas, in people’s stories than in History. And it is also a film interested in “Now” as well as “Then”. 4 The film will trace a number of fascinating and moving life stories, of the past but of the present too. Old ads of socialism and the people who made them, but also present day visionaries, like, for example, the people behind the “new Trabant initiative” in Germany. Present day advertising professionals finding inspiration in Com Ads from the old Comrade Copywriter’s swipe file, as well as ordinary people who have lived through the double standard of everyday life during Communism. People nostalgic about socialism, and others, telling acid jokes about it. Comrade copywriter is inevitably a film about politics too. And moreover - the political context should be perfectly clear to the audience. However, the film won’t be endless politics disrupted by advertising blocks, as in a boring TV-show. Vice versa – the continuing story of Comrade Copywriter from different times and places will have only little occasional breaks for Politics – very short, propaganda newsreel-like, voiced -over visual presentations of the surrounding political context. And these “political spots” shall be funny and comic too. The visual style of the film will mix old Com Ads will many types and styles of material. Film and news archives and old propaganda footage, Super 8 home movies, all kind of visuals, ironic re-creations, documentary observation, occasional short interviews, jokes about socialism, and what not. Such a film showing a variety of different events from all over Eastern Europe in different times certainly needs a unifying point. There are several main heroes in the film. Every one of them will himself present his or her own story. The overall idea of what the “Brave New World” of Communist Eastern Europe really was, and of the place Comrade Copywriter had in it will need a witty and ironic com- mentator, carrying today’s point of view with an attempt to look into the future.

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