Only five volunteers will be chosen. However, just 12 hours after the offer appeared on the web site, 3,000 people had already applied to change their names, Reuters reports.
According to the web site, more than the financial gain, “the participants will experience the kudos of being pioneers-one of just a few taking a brave step beyond the leading edge of marketing practices.”
The idea of “identity marketing” was apparently conceived by Simeon Cantrell who presented it in a paper in 1999 to a marketing conference. The paper argued that the ultimate evolution of referral marketing is to re-brand individuals, because “the more personalised the message source, the greater the endorsement and the less effort is needed to attain the required mass.”
Acclaim UK says that it is the first company to put this theory to practice in its new advertising campaign.