People complain both of the quality and quantity of advertisements. On Thursday the “Center of public poll” organized a discussion on this issue. According to the director of this center, Karine Titanyan, 99,8% of people get information from T.V. programs. They had decided to organize a discussion on this subject first because people mostly complain about this. But it turned out that the advertisement agencies invited didn’t show up and the discussion was led by one side. It looked like a gathering of critics (but I don’t think anything would change if they were present).
According to them 500 people took part in their poll. The results were not surprising: 91,1% don’t like advertisements at all and want to cut it down, 7,7% are not against it, and 1,2% like advertisements and would like them be more.
As for the quality, people mostly complain that the advertisements are mostly nonprofessional and translations are not good and don’t fit with our mentalities. As for Marz citizens, most of them hate advertisements because advertisements interrupt their soap operas. But in this case we wonder which one is worse: advertisements or soap operas? Of course some Armenian advertisements are “garbage” and don’t have any meaning. We understand that advertisements are also products of market relations and people want to make money. As for making money, in order to make much money they should spend less of it on advertisements. There are some advertisements that are really poor and don’t have any meaning, so they’d better keep this money for themselves and not waste it.
As for using slang in advertisements, of course it is not good to use it on T.V., but we should confess that some humoristic advertisements look and sound much better with slang and are not nerve-wrecking. Some of the participants said that this was bad for youth, especially for school children. But on the other hand, what should they do? Even our officials speak like that on T.V…
According to the deputy chief of the state linguistic commission, Marine Hovyan, they have no leverages to fight against this. “Advertisements are considered to be creations, work, and they can use whatever they like, for instance their approach, which may be slang”. Even in case when they use very bad words this commission can’t apply to court. The only body that can do this is the state T.V. and radio commission, but they don’t do such things usually.
There is much to do in this field, because even some of the representatives of this field are not aware of the relevant law. This law defines the time limits of advertisements, but they are violated by almost all T.V. companies.
On the other hand the law prohibits advertising alcoholic drinks, but we can still see such advertisements on T.V. In this case sometimes producers do something else: instead of advertising alcoholic drinks they advertise the logo of their company producing these drinks. There is another way too: for instance the same company produces pasta with the same logo of alcoholic drink, and later advertises the same brand, and if they are asked they can say that they have advertised their pasta, but not alcoholic drinks.
Some journalists that were present at the conference were trying to justify their T.V. companies by saying that the law didn’t prohibit advertising logos. But the same law prohibits disorienting consumers.
But we should confess that advertisements are important for us (even the bad ones). The reason is not that they help consumers orient, but that they bring profit to T.V. companies. If we want to be given an opportunity of making a choice between ten T.V. channels, we will just have to put up with these advertisements.
As for the quality and other errors, we should blame the corresponding body that is responsible for controlling this field. If they set punishments, most of the people will turn outlaws. Now the state T.V. and radio commission doesn’t control this field as they should, but they do this with the purpose of not letting anyone criticize some “giants”. The head of this institution, Grigor Amalyan, will later be known for one thing-shutting down the “A1+” T.V. channel…