"Victor Pelevin. Babylon (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

and do business. The most important thing is to get a few good brains
together in good time!'
Pugin slapped his palm down hard on the table - he obviously thought
he'd got a few together already - but Tatarsky suddenly had the vague
feeling he was being taken for a ride again. The terms of employment on
offer from Pugin were extremely vague - although the work itself was quite
concrete, the prospects of being paid remained abstract.
For a test-piece Pugin set him the development of an outline concept
for Sprite - at first he was going to give him Marl-boro as well, but he
suddenly changed his mind, saying it was too soon for Tatarsky to try that.
This was the point - as Tatarsky realised later - at which the Soviet
mentality for which he had been selected raised its head. All his scepticism
about Pugin instantly dissolved in a feeling of resentment that Pugin
wouldn't trust him with Marlboro, but this resentment was mingled with a
feeling of delight at the fact that he still had Sprite. Swept away by the
maelstrom created by these conflicting feelings, he never even paused to
think why some taxi-driver from Brighton Beach, who still hadn't given him
so much as a kopeck, was already deciding whether he was capable of applying
his mind to a concept for Marlboro.
Tatarsky poured into his conception for Sprite every last drop of his
insight into his homeland's bruised and battered history. Before sitting
down to work, he re-read several selected chapters from the book
Positioning: A Battle for your Mind, and a whole heap of newspapers of
various tendencies. He hadn't read any newspapers for ages and what he read
plunged him into a state of confusion; and that, naturally, had its effect
on the fruit of his labours.
'The first point that must be taken into consideration,' he wrote in
his concept, is that the situation that exists at the present moment in
Russia cannot continue for very long. In the very near future we must expect
most of the essential branches of industry to come to a total standstill,
the collapse of the financial system and serious social upheavals, which
will all inevitably end in the establishment of a military dictatorship.
Regardless of its political and economic programme, the future dictatorship
will attempt to exploit nationalistic slogans: the dominant state aesthetic
vsill be the pseudo-Slavonic style. (This term is not used here in any
negative judgemental sense: as distinct from the Slavonic style, •which does
not exist anywhere in the real world, the pseudo-Slavonic style represents a
carefully structured paradigm.) Within the space structured by the symbolic
signifiers of this style, traditional Western advertising is inconceivable.
Therefore it will either be banned completely or subjected to rigorous
censorship. This all has to be taken into consideration in determining any
kind of long-term strategy.
Let us take a classic positioning slogan: 'Sprite - the Uncola'. Its
use in Russia would seem to us to be most appropriate, but for somewhat
different reasons than in America. The term 'Uncola' (i.e. Non-Cola)
positions Sprite very successfully against Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola,
creating a special niche for this product in the consciousness of the
Western consumer. But it is a well-known fact that in the countries of
Eastern Europe Coca-Cola is more of an ideological fetish than a refreshing
soft drink. If, for instance, Hershi drinks are positioned as possessing the