The Way the world works

The topic of ethical and moral responsibility of business seems one of the most fashionable subjects at the moment It is quite natural – business, which was always associated with criminal activities, the black market, corruption and oppression of workers, was not swept away by the wave of peoples’ wrath, was not crushed by the bony claw of tax policy, nor was strangled in competition with industrial producers. Everybody understood that we have to live with it. The illegitimate child of the illegal guilds and komsomol, which aroused a touching care in its early childhood, has now seriously disturbed neighbours, teachers and parents and grandparents turning teenage. Now the child has finally grown up and now is the right time to speak of morality. Everybody needs it. Society cannot be divided into the good and the bad for long. One way or another, we need to find the right place for every estate and every class of person in the our staff list. We’re all equal in front of God.

First of all, morally speaking we would like to distinguish between the obvious scheme Hangman – Victim – Saviour, which is a closed-looped and leads only to a change in roles. Unfortunately it always happens this way: “Hey, you’re advertising beer here. And don’t you think about children suffering from alcoholism?”. And then the answer: “The vodka producers invented the concept of beer alcoholism for PR purposes, to drag the law limiting beer production. Their sales dropped 10% last year. As for us, we encourage customers to switch from drinking hard drinks to light ones. In Finland the government has spent a lot of money for this, but in our country you have to pay for everything, etc., etc...”

I have a feeling that for all these speculations on morality there is a big substitute. We substitute the morality of a specific activity, with the morality of a specific person involved in this or that activity. At the same time we forget that the person’s deeds do not always define his/ her moral qualities. “It is not your deeds that are important for God, but your thoughts”. Many religions use conversions which allows almost any activity to turn into one which pleases God (i.e. is ethical) following some mental ritual.

The theatre is sinful from the Christian point of view. Ioursky, Smoktunovsky, Lavrov, Tovstonogov, Efremov, Plisetskaya, are people who sacrificed their lives to serving art and the theatre. They are primarily examples of morality for everyone. The graphics in books for children were part of procommunist propaganda, which is now a sign of lowest immorality for a lot of people. Konashevich, Charushin, Traugot, Chizhikov, Yasinsky are people who put their souls into each their drawing that they presented to children - such an enormous quantity of beauty and kindness that it is hard to grasp.

These are just examples but they say many things. For me, they say that people are able to transform the activity they are involved in by talent or hard labour. Anything you like can become a piece of art: weapons, means of transportation, dishes, clothes. From the other point of view, you can say the people that I mentioned were alienated from the concept of church or the communist party in what they were doing. They were involved with an absolutely different activity!

It is possible to say that any phenomenon in this world is transformed by a human with time. How does it happen? Probably because the feeling of harmony is inherent in the human being. This feeling can make correspondence between totally different phenomenons. A harmony is not just something to do with aesthetics – it is the law according to which the world is built. Harmony is a necessary condition of development and motion.

Any living being is harmonious.                                                               

With a break of harmony (sticking a spear inside a deer, for example) it dies. By dying, the living being becomes food for the other living beings thus reviving harmony. It is the same story with political structures, economic formations etc. People always know what they enjoy and what they don’t.

The feeling of harmony makes people fight against something that appears in their life and disturbs their pleasant existence. If it is not possible to destroy it, the person starts to place it in his/ her life, readjust it to his/ her values. A person can feel disharmony only after trying it on. If it doesn’t concern me personally then let it be like it is.

As I already said, everybody agreed about business: «Let it be». It survived and is now a part in the lives of many.

Somebody owns, others are employed. A human face of business must be painted.

Now we can move closer to advertising. It is the one that paints this face. Hypocritical hydra, a prostitute, a double-faced creature or whatever! At the moment it appeared it was exactly like that.

Nobody limited it. Nobody cared about its appearance. Nobody put their heart into it. Everybody just earned money and helped others to do the same. Recently one young man, who had started an advertising agency, asked me to help him with a campaign for his customer. I asked for the market data, competitor’s analyses, customer research, etc. All this produced a bewilderment in him: how could I give money to strangers for their research, when you could use this money yourself! Reminding himself of the fact that the advertiser himself would tell him everything about his business, and the client didn’t need all this information because he already knows it:. He needed me just as a brand name; to fool clients and to earn more. Many regard this approach as perfectly acceptable and normal. Speaking of advertising there are two sides to moral responsibility. The first one is a responsibility for your client, the second - responsibility for those at whom this ad is addressed.

The issue of responsibility for your client is eliminated with the professional growth of both client and an advertiser. In this instance everything is simple – a professional couldn’t be cheated. The responsibility for your customer is dictated by the laws of advertising. This seems even simpler. In reality we can not reduce it just to this. You can prohibit the use of a Doom-Doom bullet, but a Mosina gun wouldn’t become just as beautiful as a catana because of that. This means that the issue is formally accomplished but what should we do with the inherent ethical responsibility?

Advertising is now part of our environment. It couldn’t be got rid of. Society changes and advertising changes together with it. ÌÌÌ corresponded to what was going on in society. The Soviet epoch wasn’t aware of any advertising except for political, but movies like «Kommunist» or «The Fate of a Man» perfectly corresponded with their time and solved their own specific problems. At the moment of starting work at those movies, there have already been genius directors and cameramen in this business which produced the stunning results. Why didn’t they do a fraud serving some specific aims? The feeling of harmony and responsibility for THEIR job didn’t allow them to do so.

For a director, a script-writer, a cameramen, or actors who work in a movie, this was an art. And at the same time THEIR art. For the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Gorkom (city council), Obkom (regional council) that was a propaganda (a job). As a result we got works of art which reflect specific traits of the soviet epoch. Advertising has to function in the same way. For me, and for those who work in my team, TV commercials, prints, outdoor advertising – are all works of art: our art. I won’t go into details, but I think I already answered the question of morality in creative work. The quality of what you can watch on the air is an affirmation to that. We can see less dirty tricks and more and more good creative works. We are learning and growing together with society.

Now about the «non-creative works». Let’s recollect the Indian cast system or the communist opinion on the class nature of morality. I suppose (probably due to mythological thinking) everyone has to act according to their destiny. And that would be ethical. A money-lender has to multiply wealth, a ploughman has to plough hard. Whether it is an accountant or a driver who are negligent in their duties, they are absolutely immoral. A production director who is not stimulating her/ his production development and the brand-manager who is not perfecting his/ her knowledge are both acting in an immoral way. Such a conclusion. It was unexpected even for me. It is ethical to do your business with maximum return. It is immoral to do it only half way to your abilities. Get up in the morning and start your work.

 One question remains– how to find your own business? I do not know the answer to this question. I suppose SSE for their part is also trying to solve this problem.One army major told me once: «I have, soldier Yasinsky, 1,5 kilometers of front line– I cannot allow the enemy to approach these 1,5 kilometers. I am responsible for them. And you have your 1.5 metres. If you all will be able to hold your 1,5 meters, I will be able to hold my 1,5 kilometers». It is possible that finally when we hold them we will start to perfect them. In fact they are our meters and there are a lot of us.