Spectator Competition: Quite a turn 

In Competition 3381 you were invited to write a proposal for the rebranding of a well-known product/entity to aim it at an entirely different market. It was of course inspired by Jaguar’s gender-fluid relaunch ad, which has already somehow faded into distant memory by now.

The idea here was to rebrand an existing thing rather than reinvent it, but the lines blurred sometimes. Among those deserving a mention: D.A. Prince’s idea to reposition the National Trust as a body that looks after wild coastlines and historic houses etc, which seemed like a crowd-pleaser. Basil Ransome-Davies took over Liz Truss’s PR (‘It’s irony, stupid. Liz’s career is performance art at its most adroit’); George Simmers did a deft pitch in fluent Gen Z-speak directing young concert-goers towards the Zimmer frame (‘What you need is a well dank small portable frame that gives support even through the longest set’). Then there was David Harris’s plan to change the British Museum’s name to ‘World Library’ and hand everything back (‘All our Afghan collection… has been earmarked by the Taliban Centre for Cultural Destruction’). The £25 prizes go to the following.

The proposal objective is to widen the target audience from existing users who either cease to exist or who struggle with brand recognition due to cognitive decline. Repositioning the product as hip beyond the sense of orthopaedic replacement could be achieved via advertisements featuring iconic figures such as Johnny Depp playing air guitar at the foot of the stairs or a pulchritudinous social media influencer straddling a wipe-clean seat, naked. Product safety benefits may resonate with younger generations sharply attuned to H&S considerations, such as use of the handy remote to transport numberless Amazon packages, at speeds approaching 0.34 miles per hour, to upper levels thus avoiding the risk of repetitive strain injury and guaranteed safe descent of the stairs while focused on mobile phone screens.