IRWIN

Uršula Seeks Her Price

Can a teddy-bear be the object of the mechanisms which lead to the motive for purchase? Can something so fragile as childhood, safety, and memory, be contained within the logic of a marketing strategy? Will this teddy-bear lift or lower its ears when it hears the two notorious marketing formulae: AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?

The answer is unequivocal: YES. At the moment when Uršula is invited into the realm of the relations of exchange, when a price tag is placed behind her neck, when she becomes the object of price reductions and shop provisions, her sign - the black cross - will become a trademark, a logotype of her market contest with the rest of the plush world.

Well, let's play with it.

1. The product is a quality-made, plush teddy-bear.

2. The price will be set according to the competition, but it will be widely available.

3. The creative strategy: I am Uršula; I desire your company; you can also display me or give me to others as a present. If you are a child, you can caress me or hit me, ask me or blame me; if you are a grown-up, I can rouse your memories, you can give me as a present, you can dismember me. Of course, you can also hide me away. I am especially attentive to the collector.

4. We will distribute Uršula to toy wholesalers, and to other interested outlets. We will also provide for mail order sales. For larger orders, we will produce suitably marked packaging.

5. As to the promotion, we will exploit all the principal media and work out the corresponding communication means for them: television, radio, newspaper and magazine advertisements, hoarding posters, bill posters, commercial promotion, the Internet (www), promotional events in shops, kindergartens, galleries.

6. The media strategy will endeavour to exploit holiday and special occasion purchasing.

This whole range of principles and marketing techniques will be employed firstly to create a non-need, which will later be turned into profit-making opportunities.

The highly-developed societies have stepped forward from the age of need satisfaction (this has become self-evident) and into the age of non-need generation (which, paradoxically, is also being satisfied). This is achieved on the basis of the development of high technologies, or the widening of the space of the imaginary. Thus, after the marketing of needs comes the marketing of signs - signs with price tags.

Marko Rogač

Translation: B. C.

e-mail:slo.vas.madagaskar@arctur.si

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