Bzzz

When you arrive into Dushanbe airport, one of the first things you see, and by far the brightest color you see in at least the first thirty minutes after landing, is the yellow and black ad for the Russian "Beeline" mobile telephone company. I find that kind of amusing.

Beeline was the company whose shameless use of product placement throughout the 2007 sequel to the classic Russian New Year's movie "The Irony of Fate" went above and beyond anything I've seen in American movies. (If you look carefully at the movie poster here you can see the prominently displayed yellow and black Christmas tree ball. None of the other very obvious products placed in the movie, including Toyota and Calve mayonnaise, got even close to that kind of a boost.)

You do have to admit, Beeline's logo does have a great visual element in those yellow and black stripes, which are easily stretched and pulled to fit new images.

In Tajikistan, from what I can see, they must have just recently begun to enter (muscle their way into?) the market. They also must have some comfy relationship with the government to allow their big "welcome to Tajikistan" ad to greet you as you wait for the passport control officials to do their job. Oh, and although on our first arrival passport control had run out of immigration forms, on my second arrival they had a fresh batch. With guess-whose ad printed on the reverse side? You got it: Beeline. And in the center of town, their billboards and ads stand out pretty well -- especially when you consider that probably about 50% of billboards in Dushanbe actually don't carry ads at all, but sayings from the government and usually quotes attributed to President Rahmon.

I find their attempts to use Central Asian imagery in their ads a little clever -- I'm not sure what Tajiks think of it. I need to take some pictures of the print ads I've seen around town. Online I couldn't find the most interesting attempts to incorporate local visuals into their material.

Obviously they can fit the yellow and black into a classic Russian image, too, like the nesting dolls. Although I think it's possible that they may only feel the need here in Central Asia. On Beeline.ru you just see lots of modern Europeans smiling and living the good life with the ease of communication that Beeline apparently affords. I don't see any matryoshki there.

Anyway, the Central Asian teabowls (piala) below will have to serve as my best example here, until I can get out there with a camera.