RELEASE: Branding expert backs down on birthday rebrand, blames ‘current market conditions’

Jerry Daykin, a 25 year old marketing manager at an East London charity, woke up today one year older but with the same name and wardrobe despite plans published earlier in the week to completely rebrand both. Jerry, who was a featured commentator in the Independent following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, pointed the finger of blame at the credit crunch itself.

Speaking exclusively to anyone who will listen, Jerry responded, “Early, pub-based focus groups had been very positive about the suggested changes. When the news broke to a wider audience we were taken by surprise by the public outcry, at best we’d hoped the change might have jogged the memories of a few distant relatives.”

“In these current market conditions the public takes a cynical view to rebranding efforts – even fairly inconsequential ones such as using your full name and buying new clothes.” He went on to admit that their early calculations had underestimated the shoe leather costs of hand delivering ‘change of name’ notifications to all 750 of his Facebook friends.

A source close to the story, who chose to remain anonymous to protect their credibility, told us, “I don't see why everything needs to be rebranded these days, some of the biggest success stories in history are people who simply nailed their brand and stuck to it- people like Jesus will always outlast name changers like Norwich Union.”

Managers at the Hollister store in Westfield were unavailable to comment but were presumably delighted that he could now continue to shop from their wide selection of similar polo shirts, items which would otherwise have been blacklisted under new branding guidelines.

Asked if the whole rebranding was in fact a cynical publicity stunt to launch his new ‘press release’ blog www.thepressreleased.co.uk Jerry was surprisingly adept at avoiding the question.

“The experience has opened my eyes up to what I already have - I've only just become an Uncle so it's an irresponsible time to start changing anything except nappies. If the Royal Mail can resist switching its name to Consignia then keeping mine the same shouldn't be too hard. I’d hoped that blaming it on the credit crunch would have tapped into a general public acceptance that nothing works anymore and that would have been the end of it.”

Our own investigations however suggest that public reaction to the story has been indifferent at best, a hassled looking banker that we managed to stop as he arrived at Canary Wharf Station this morning summed up the sentiment, “I’ve never met the man, or even heard of him. Why should I care less if he uses a nickname or his full name?”

@jdaykin refused to comment on whether he was saving his middle name (Francis, which he prefers to shorten to Frank) for a more radical rebranding come 30. '5 years is a long time for anyone in this industry to look ahead, will we even be using full names then or just referring to one another by our Twitter IDs?'

---Ends--

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