Monday, July 14, 2008

Orange crush

In which I kick the arses of King Billy and brand consultants simultaneously.

Towards the end of the last century, I worked for the Guinness Book of Records. Then, one day I discovered that I'd stopped working for the Guinness Book of Records, and was working for a shiny new entity called Guinness World Records. It was something to do with expressing the cross-media aspirations of the brand, but my eyes glazed over halfway through the explanation. Not much else changed: we still produced a book with lots of records in, which people still insisted on calling the Guinness Book of Records, even when we asked them not to. Still, the new stationery was nice.

A similar non-event appears to have occurred in Northern Ireland; since last year, the celebrations surrounding the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne have been rebranded as Orangefest. One can imagine the initial reactions from the more dyed-in-the-wool Lodge members...


Ulster says: read the whole thing here.

PS: More rebranding daftness here.

PPS: If anyone wants to rent a nice two-bedroom house in Ealing, please drop me a line.

12 comments:

Dick Headley said...

I expect the Catholics will be having their own Pope Festival.

Billy said...

Renting houses now? Are you becoming a landlord...

And the Catholic festival is called Pope Idol. Obviously.

Tim F said...

Dick: Well, the previous pope was named after Lennon and McCartney, wasn't he?

It's my sister's house, Billy. I just stand to get a bottle of wine from the deal.

And my father wishes it to be known (re the CiF article) that he has never referred to the United States as 'the colonies'; he has, however, referred to Americans as 'colonials'.

Rimshot said...

Ooo, I think a 'what needs rebranding' contest is in order!

garfer said...

One of my favourite confections the Dime bar has been re branded as 'Daim'. This is wrong and sounds slightly camp.

The Royal Black Preceptory are much camper than Orangeman, although they probably don't like Catholics very much either.

Unknown said...

Why not go for broke and rebrand the whole spectacle LOLfest, which would chime nicely with the various emergent online communities?

Rog said...

The Heinz decision was half-baked.

Mike Giggler (via email)

FirstNations said...

Orangefest?

ORANGEFEST?

Spinsterella said...

Orangefest? Eh?

Not a single one of my entire family or network of Old Friends who live there has mentioned this.

Really?

In rebranding news, the place I work for was rebranded two months ago and I still haven't been able to bring myself to say the new name out loud, it's *that* embarrassing.

Spinsterella said...

Oh, and *please sir me me me"

I did notice the LOL 987 badge!

Tim F said...

Rimshot: Can one rebrand rebranding itself?

Garfer: They're also not black.

Marsha: But in a few years they'd have to go one better and call it ROTFLFest.

Murph: continued on p. 94

FN: Yes. It's for people with bad fake tans.

Spin: But that's because you're a Fenian agent of Popery, innit?

Rog said...

I see EJ Thribb has nicked my comment on page 19 of PE1215.

Art imitating life, eh?