The Fuzzy Face of PR

This Sunday, the whole of Cologne will be celebrating the first official birthday of Marlar with parties and celebrations taking place across the city.

If you are now thinking "who or what is Marlar?" then you are not alone. The further you venture outside the Cologne city limits, the fewer people you will meet who will be able to tell you that Marlar is the city's baby elephant.

If you reach Berlin and ask any one of the thousands of people cramming in to see a certain ball of white fluff in their own zoo, the answer you will get will probably be that they neither know nor care who or what Marlar is -- because they have Knut.

Berlin's polar bear cub has achieved worldwide fame in a very short amount of time due to the fact that he is unbearably cute and has a truly heart-warming story of survival to back up the photogenic fuzziness.

However, Marlar -- the first Asian elephant calf to be born at Cologne Zoo -- is hardly a boring eyesore. With her seemingly electro-charged spiky hair and heavy, yet playful galloping stride, the live-wire baby elephant has her fair share of "ahh" factor.

Add to this the fact that her mother had to be put down due to illness when the calf was barely six months old, leaving the rearing to a benevolent aunt, and you have the 'elephant-enclosure-of-hard-knocks' back story to make her a global star.

Marlar's people miss a gilt-edged opportunity

And yet, when Marlar trumpets out the candle on her fruit loaf on Sunday, it will barely register on the media seismograph. Why? Because Marlar didn't have the right representation when it really mattered.

Animal stars, like their human counterparts, need a good publicity team behind them to work the media and break them on a worldwide scale. Knut undoubtedly has a huge entourage behind the scenes; a publicist, a stylist, a rolling-in-the-dirt coach. The cub is not yet four months old and yet his media persona is already a cultivated one. Celebrity photographers jet in to snap him, and he's just had his first cover shoot for German Vanity Fair.

Marlar, on the other hand, has a few amateurish posters slapped up on the Cologne underground system and the odd photo in the local press.

"If Marlar's people had talked to my people shortly after the birth, I would have her modeling for Stella McCartney by now," said Lena Pfote, the managing director of German animal public relations firm Media Horse. "Obviously, Karl Lagerfeld would have been our first choice, but he has size issues."

Making up for lost Knut

The Düsseldorf-based PR company was established in November 2006 and already has a number of German zoo animals on its books but missed out on the big one.

While early efforts were made to entice Knut to the Media Horse stable, the Berlin Zoo authorities made it clear that the polar bear's physical development was more important than that of his celebrity status.

"That's very honorable to say so," said Pfote, "but I know this business. That cub has got some serious representation. Annie Leibowitz? Please. She doesn't get on a transatlantic flight to photograph some bear unless there are some serious players involved."

"We totally underestimated the impact, and someone at Media Horse dropped the ball on that one," Pfote added. "Take it from me, they're flipping burgers now."

License to print animal money

Cute and cuddly animals are big business. The Berlin Zoo sold 2,400 stuffed toy versions of Knut on the weekend of his first public appearance and is rushing thousands more into production to re-stock its souvenir shop and meet orders from Austria and the United States.

Meanwhile, German confectionery maker Haribo plans to add a new Knut-shaped design to its existing range of sweets by the end of the week. It all goes to show that not being human need not interfere with a successful career in the media spotlight. In fact, in the right hands, an animal can be even more omnipresent.

"Our company turns an animal's potential into a marketable reality," said Pfote "While an animal's appeal can get families through the turnstiles, the right PR strategy can have those families leaving at the end of the day with baskets of merchandise."

"We have a red panda cub signed up who's going to be huge," she added. "Knut will be relegated to advertising sanitary towels when this baby hits. You name it, the panda's face will be on it."

Only winners in PR game

When asked about the potential by-product of animal -- and human -- exploitation, Pfote denied Media Horse had anything but good intentions at the heart of its business.

"The animal gets adored, the zoo gets money and publicity which helps fund all its programs, plus the public is made to feel good, companies that invest get massive returns, and we, of course, get our slice. Everyone's a winner."

Nick Amies

Disclaimer: This was an April Fools' Day hoax. Don't believe a word of it.