Obama used in Russian anti-smoking ads: "Kills more than smoking"

Back in the day, Stockholm in the late 80s, there would be red & white punk stickers covering advertising posters and random subway surfaces with the phrase "Communism kills more than cancer". Looks like the phrase has gotten a revival, in Russia of all places, where this billboard of Obama appears with the line "Obama kills more than smoking". A simpler variant of the idea has been done before Fnazca Saatchi & Saatchi made cigarette portraits of Hitler & Bin Ladin, with the line "Smoking kills more".

The Obama ad, spotted in Moscow, reads "Smoking kills more people than Obama, even though he kills too many. Do not smoke, do not be like Obama."

Russian Politician Dmitry Gudkov, the only liberal opposition MP in Russia’s parliament, took the above photograph and posted it to his FB account, noting " They will frighten children with Obama instead of Baba Yaga"

The Guardian note that the ad has no attribution, and that Moscow city hall has not commented.

Some have taken the anti-Obama ad as a reference to a “Stop Obama!” video posted last week that showed dozens of Russian students falling to the floor as if dead, revealing a lone girl with a sign claiming that the “president of the United States kills 875 people every week”.

Now, my Russian is rusty at best, but they seem to have two different messages. One is telling you not to smoke, the other is telling you that Obama kills 875 people every week. That this would be the work of the same sender seems far-fetched. The Guardian also notes that a in January, a poster parodying the "hope" poster but with the word "killer", had been hung on Kudrinskaya Garden, the street in front of the US Embassy in Moscow.

Adland® is supported by your donations alone. You can help us out by buying us a Ko-Fi coffee.
Anonymous Adgrunt's picture
comment_node_story
Files must be less than 5 MB.
Allowed file types: jpg jpeg gif png wav avi mpeg mpg mov rm flv wmv 3gp mp4 m4v.
Dabitch's picture

Just to prove I didn't dream all of the late 80s winters in Sweden (one never knows), I went google hunting for images of the line in Swedish and Finnish : "Kommunismen dödar mer än Cancer / Kommunismi tappaa enemmän kuin syöpä" - and found the Finnish version scanned! Not sure when and where the phrase originated or was first used in propaganda.