NEWS - Tuesday, September 3, 2002
The Name Game Is Over.. Yikes!
Remember the Turok promotion of changing your name for a year for only a couple-a grand? In London five people have changed their names by deed poll to that of "Turok" in a new marketing ploy that aims to turn people into living adverts, according to the company pioneering the scheme. Everything from their passports to their telephone bills will now simply carry the name of the hero of a cult dinosaur-hunter computer game. Ross Davison, Paul Codling, Matthew Grist, Andrew Boughflower and Lheila Oberman were chosen on Tuesday from more than 10,000 people, who had applied at www.mynameisturok.com. The winners, all aged 18 to 34, will be paid 500 pounds each and given a Microsoft X-Box ( news - web sites) and the new game, "Turok Evolution", for changing their name for a year. Acclaim Entertainment, which will release the new game on September 6, is the first company to try out so-called "identity marketing". "The five Turoks will no doubt speak to and meet tens of thousands of people between them over the next year and will be walking, talking adverts for the Turok video game," Shaun White, UK communications manager of Acclaim, said in a statement. The identity marketing concept was dreamed up by Simeon Cantrell of Britain’s Institute of Science in Marketing, which has patented the idea. In a paper entitled "Identity - the Ultimate Marketing Platform", Cantrell argues that re-branding individuals is the "ultimate evolution" of a type of extreme marketing. Cantrell predicts identity marketing will become commonplace in the coming years. Scary stuff. Here’s the link to the article so you can get a good luck at the losers *cough* I mean winners.Source: http://www.yahoo.com/
