KZBlog

Caspionet, the Kazakhstan government’s answer to CNN, is reporting that the advertising market in Kazakhstan is third in the CIS for number of commercials. I’m not sure that this is an achievement worth celebrating, unless you work in an advertising agency of course. I don’t know too many people who like commercials. On the other hand, if there are going to be ads anyway, they might as well be locally made. Obviously large brands like Colgate and Nescafe are going to use their international ads translated into Kazakh or Russian, but every now and then you do see Kazakhstani actors.

The Caspionet article cites the problem that a lot of Kazakhstan-made ads copy the same basic format and lack creativity. There are exceptions of course. I was rather fond of a bank commercial that showed giant stacks of money learning the alphabet and doing exercises, rather like a nursery school. The tagline was something like, “We help your money grow.”

I would also note that a lot of magazine and newspaper ads lack quality. I suspect a lot of the time, the agencies take images off of the Internet and don’t think about image format so small images are blown up too big. And some photographers don’t seem to have found the zoom on their cameras. Or use low quality equipment. I wish some agencies would invest in professional digital slr cameras.

That being said, a lot of ads are good quality-though it’s hard to tell which brands use local ads and which are using their international ads.