Specifically w.r.t to advertising: In socialist contries there is often only one single brand of a certain product. This removes the need for advertising. But without competition, productivity goes south with time.
And yet modern socialists are very keen on public healthcare and not very keen on controlling the means of production to enforce a single brand of deodorant. So… perhaps your mental benchmark is wrong?
Yes, there are exceptions. The Soviets also poured resources into making quality watches.
But they were unable to generalize this.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, various companies sprang up to sell Soviet goods. I bought a marvelous small telescope, an old-fashioned electro-mechanical telephone, and a mechanical submarine clock. (Note that these were all obsolete technology.) They were all made by former military suppliers.
