prizes. When asked to increase the sales of Vaseline, the Nairobi office of Ogilvy & Mather mounted a contest with a cow as first prize. In 1978 the Indian Cancer Society used advertising to persuade people to have regular check-ups at its free clinics. The advertisements, by the Bombay office of Ogilvy & Mather, showed real people who had been cured. Within two months the number of check-ups tripled. Communist advertising – primitive but not forbidden Considering the venom with which left-wingers in capitalist countries denounce advertising, you might suppose that Communist countries would eschew this capitalist tool. Not so. The Soviet party line was laid down long ago by Anastas Mikoyan, the old Bolshevik who was in charge of foreign and domestic trade under Stalin and Krushchev: ‘The task of our Soviet advertising is to give people exact information about the goods that are on sale, to help to create new demands, to cultivate new tastes and requirements, to promote the sales of new kinds of goods and to explain their uses to the consumer.’ I could not have said it better myself However, apart from campaigns for