Yekaterinburg website wins award for “extremist” ad campaign

Yekaterinburg-based web portal Znak has picked up an award for the best ad campaign at the Red Apple Festival of Advertising in Moscow. Its campaign, The Extremist Constitution, comprised a series of banners around Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city, which cited articles from the Russian Constitution. One read “All are equal before the law”, while another said “Everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech”.

The campaign was designed by Red Pepper advertising agency and launched by Znak in February, on the 20th anniversary of the Russian Constitution, as a reminder of citizens’ rights . However, instead of running into trouble with local authorities as expected, it was the companies selling advertising space around the city who refused to display the “sensitive” banners. In an interview with France24 earlier this year, Dmitry Kolezev, deputy editor-in-chief at Znak, said: “Many told us they felt the same thing we had felt when reading these quotations — that they saw in them a challenge to the authorities. They told us the quotations sounded extremist.”