Виктор Пелевин: Babylon

‘In New York you realise especially clearly.’ Pugin said over a glass of the vodka they moved on to after the tea, ‘that you can spend your entire life in some foul-smelling little kitchen, staring out into some shit-dirty little yard and chewing on a lousy burger. You’ll just stand there by the window, staring at all that shit, and life will pass you by.’

‘That’s interesting,’ Tatarsky responded thoughtfully, ‘but why go to New York for that? Surely-’

‘Because in New York you understand it, and in Moscow you don’t,’ Pugin interrupted. ‘You’re right, there are far more of those stinking kitchens and shitty little yards over here. Only here there’s no way you’re going to understand that’s where you’re going to spend the rest of your life until it’s already over. And that, by the way, is one of the main features of the Soviet mentality.’

Pugin’s opinions were disputable in certain respects, but what he actually had to offer was simple, clear and logical. As far as Tatarsky was able to judge from the murky depths of his own Soviet mentality, the project was an absolutely textbook example of the American entrepreneurial approach.

‘Look,’ said Pugin, squinting intensely into the space above Tatarsky’s head, ‘the country hardly produces anything at all; but people have to have something to eat and wear, right? That means soon goods will start pouring in here from the West, and massive amounts of advertising will come flooding in with them. But it won’t be possible simply to translate this advertising from English into Russian, because the… what d’you call them… the cultural references here are different… That means, the advertising will have to be adapted in short order for the Russian consumer. So now what do you and I do? You and I get straight on the job well in advance - get my point? Now, before it all starts, we prepare outline concepts for all the serious brand-names. Then, just as soon as the right moment comes, we turn up at their offices with a folder under our arms 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 Marlboro 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 will 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 ‘taste of victory’, then Coca-Cola possesses the ‘taste of freedom ’, as declared in the seventies and eighties by a vast number of Eastern European defectors. For the Russian consumer, therefore, the term ‘Uncola’ has extensive anti-democratic and anti-liberal connotations, which makes it highly attractive and promising in conditions of military dictatorship.

Translated into Russian ‘Uncola’would become ‘Nye-Cola’. The sound of the word (similar to the old Russian name ‘Nikola’) and the associations aroused by it offer a perfect fit with the aesthetic required by the likely future scenario. A possible version of the slogan:

(It might make sense to consider infiltrating into the consciousness of the consumer the character ‘Nikola Spritov’, an individual of the same type as RonaldMcDonald, but profoundly national in spirit.)

In addition, some thought has to be given to changing the packaging format of the product as sold on the Russian market. Elements of the pseudo-Slavonic style need to be introduced here as well. The ideal symbol would seem to be the birch tree. It would be appropriate to change the colour of the can from green to white with black stripes like the trunk of a birch. A possible text for an advertising clip:

Deep in the spring-time forest I drank my birch-bright Sprite.

After reading the print-out Tatarsky brought him, Pugin said: ‘"The Uncola" is Seven-Up’s slogan, not Sprite’s.’

After that he said nothing for a while, simply gazing at Tatarsky with his black-button eyes. Tatarsky didn’t speak either.

‘But that’s OK,’ Pugin said, eventually softening. ‘We can use it. If not for Sprite, then for Seven-Up. So you can consider you’ve passed the test. Now try some other brand.’

‘Which one?’ Tatarsky asked in relief.

Pugin thought for a moment, then rummaged in his pockets and held out an opened pack of Parliament cigarettes. ‘And think up a poster for them as well,’ he said.

Dealing with Parliament turned out to be more complicated. For a start Tatarsky wrote the usual intro: ‘It is quite clear that the first thing that has to be taken into consideration in the development of any half-serious advertising concept is…’ But after that he just sat there for a long time without moving.