Baby Bear Knut


March 2007 gave birth to Knut, the übercute baby icebear in the Berlin Zoo. A unique event, since it was 30 years ago a baby icebear was born in the zoo. Within weeks, Knut has become a mediastar. And as we know, no stars without a little controversy. Since the bear was abandoned by its mother, the baby bear is being raised on milk by its attendants. This "manual" raising of a baby bear is unnatural and unwated, says animal-rights activist Frank Albrecht and therefore the cute bear should be killed. Of course, this sparked the public's sympathy for the animal. In the meanwhile, babybear Knut is Big Business. And we mean BIG. Everyday, 800 teddybear versions of knut are sold for at least 11,95 euro. There are Knut-ringtones, keycords and DVD's for the eager fanbase. But there's more. All this attention has driven the Berlin Zoo's shares upto 4.000 euros, coming from 2.000. Images no longer represent products, but products represent images in todays Global Image Economy. This phenomena is definately no biomimicmarketing, but how to label it then? Biomarketing? Shareholderscuddlevalue? One thing's for sure: the toys are us.


Die Zeit on babybear Knut

The Sun on Babybear Knut

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3 comments

  • Maybe the tag name 'biomimicmarketing' is just confusing because of it's association with biomimicry which is something different. Anyone good proposals for a renaming of the tag? fakenaturemarketing would be boring.

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  • I'd say this story about Knut is a story about biomimicmarketing: Selling goods through a faked, romanticized, image of nature. I do agree it is different than most of the biomimicmarketing examples we've seen so far (it is different than selling puma shoes).

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  • =A=

    Another animal that got attention of the worldmedia: the so called "dominomus" or "domino sparrow" was illegally shot when it threw over 23.000 dominoes. The poor animal was used in campaigns to get more visitors to museums and also for animals-rights activism. http://www.nmr.nl/nmr/pages/showPage.do?instanceid=17&itemid=1197&style=default try and google: "dominomus" or "domino sparrow" ;)

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