Armenia isn’t paying attention to a powerful tool for relations with the public in the form of social advertising. This is what head of the Association of Audio-Visual Journalists NGO Arzuman Harutyunyan said during a conference entitled “Improvement of State Policy and Social Dialogue in Armenia Through Institutional Social Advertising” today.

According to him, Armenia needs to develop social advertising at the institutional level. As the analyst mentioned, during the years of the former authorities, Armenia made an attempt to develop a concept paper on social advertising, and it was submitted to the government for consideration. Moreover, the concept paper implied recommendations for legislative amendments and the mechanisms for implementation of those recommendations, but the document wasn’t approved since the President had to give a conclusion, which hasn’t been given to this day.

In spite of this, according to Harutyunyan, the document also led to positive outcomes. In particular, changes were made in the broadcasting policy. Nevertheless, there is a gap since there was no authority that would verify the compatibility of the particular social advertisement with its nature and the absence of the trade component.

Arzuman Harutyunyan emphasized that social advertising must not be sectoral and broadcast through certain resources and must be presented as a consistent policy to have an impact on people’s subconscious.

According to the analyst, today, people in Armenia don’t realize the value and significance of social advertising. He stated that in international practice, the government is the client of the main part (60-70%) of a social advertisement, and non-governmental and humanitarian organizations are the clients of the remaining part.