Abramovich was ordered for $1600
Yesterday, a Kommersant photojournalist on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow took down the billboard that you see in the photo on the left. Two hours later the poster disappeared. In its place appeared an advertisement for the Fatherland movement. Who ordered an advertisement with a photo of Roman Abramovich? Why did it only hang for one day? With details - ROMAN KOSTIKOV.

The poster, from which Sibneft board member Roman Abramovich looked directly at the main government highway in Moscow, hung on a billboard on Kutuzovsky Prospekt for exactly 24 hours. Yesterday afternoon, while the poster was still hanging, the ATOR agency, which owns this billboard, told our correspondent that this advertisement was placed by a certain private person for a period of one month. The agency refused to give the name of its client. One of the company’s employees said that the advertising slogan: “Roma thinks about the family. The family thinks about Roma. Congratulations! PS Roma chose a cool place,” their agency mistook for a family congratulatory advertisement. As the agency assured, “no one here knows your Abramovich by sight. Maybe he’s some kind of hockey player.”
An unknown male private individual came to the agency with ready-made posters and paid $1,200 in cash for their placement on billboards on both sides of Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Considering that the cost of producing two posters is $400, then the entire advertising campaign cost the customer $1,600.
It was not possible to find out Abramovich’s own opinion about the advertising work of unknown persons - the oil trader is on vacation. Many people in the presidential administration saw the poster, where it caused a lot of fun: they discussed whether Abramovich looked like himself or not, whether anyone from the “family” had seen this poster, or whether it was handed over to Roman Arkadyevich himself. They agreed that all this was Luzhkov’s machinations.
The head of Luzhkov's Maxima advertising agency, Vladimir Evstafiev, denies authorship: “This is absolute nonsense. I don’t see any reason for such an action - hanging a single poster on a large highway where everyone is driving fast. If I wanted to cause an effect, I would have come up with a dozen other moves, more energetic. Unless it’s someone’s stupid joke or friendly joke.”
The Sibneft employees did not find the portrait of their boss on the government highway funny, and they immediately recognized their boss on the poster. Yesterday in the afternoon, ATOR received an official letter from Sibneft with a request to remove the advertisement “due to the incorrect use of the name and photograph of Roman Abramovich, a member of the board of our company.” According to ATOR employees, the official text on the form was not signed by anyone. But the poster was immediately removed, replacing it with an advertisement for “Fatherland” with athletes. “Tomorrow we’ll call the customer and return the money,” the agency commented on their actions.
ATOR does not see any connection in the fact that Abramovich was replaced with “Fatherland”: “This is our burning advertisement, we had to place it urgently. And then an opportunity turned up.”
Whether the anonymous customer wanted it or not, this joke opens up completely new opportunities in election technologies: it is very difficult to hold people accountable for using a photograph (nothing is advertised, and it is unlikely to affect honor and dignity), and it is easy to create this or that image for a competitor .

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 122 dated July 14, 1999, p. 1