Sounding Off: Are you a walking billboard?

Is there any limit to the lengths the advertising folk will go to part us from our daily dirham? Recently I saw the Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, set in the year 2054, when personal privacy has flown out of the window and everybody is immediately identified by scanners which read their eyes, no matter where they might be.

This, of course, is an advertiser's dream. So we find Tom Cruise's character, John, walking into a department store and the ads on the wall and even the merchandise itself start addressing him personally, because they have identified him from his eyes, and they know all about his buying history and his credit rating.

"Hi there, John!" says the billboard suddenly coming to life. It goes on to ask him how he liked the new shoes he bought the other week, or something like that.

I must say I'm not looking forward to the year 2054. I can just see myself right now in that futuristic department store...

"Hi there, Al," screams the ad for the hair-restoring cream for all to hear, "how was your last shipment? Your supply must be getting low by now. Can we recommend our new super-strength cream? By the way, don't worry about the bounced cheque. Your credit is still good with us..."

I thought this could be the ultimate in personalised advertising. But no, for, as usual, fact is stranger than fiction. Here we are, still stuck in little old 2003, and already there is moving among us an advertising ruse more ambitious and more sinister than anything in Cruise's futuristic sci-fi epic.

A British advertising outfit called Acclaim has achieved the last word. It has made people actually become the product they are pushing. It is paying five people $785 each to change themselves into the main character from a video game. They have to legally change their names by deed poll to the fantasy hero, called Turok, and live for a whole year as him. They will sign cheques as Turok, and talk to their friends and strangers as Turok. All vestiges of their previous identity will apparently be erased.

"Every form of their identity will have to change," says Acclaim spokesman Andrew Bloch. "They will be walking, talking, living, breathing ads."

The Institute of Science in Marketing believes this so-called Identity Marketing will be the next big thing, since people are bored with conventional ads.

I see this also as one solution to the unemployment problem. The jobless could be put to work as fish fingers, crowds of mobilised baked beans, or toothbrushes, pink for a girl and blue for a boy. All they will have to do is register at the Labour Exchange, now renamed the Identity Swap.

The trouble is, have these advertising people thought about the identity crises and other psychological trauma they could inflict on their employees?

The scene: the queue of hopefuls at the Identity Swap, where Fred and Bill are receiving their assignments...

Fred: "Beep-beep, Beep-beep."
Bill: "Hi Fred, what's all this Beep-beep then?"

Fred: "Shhhhh!... I'm not Fred. I'm a a Car X today. Tasteful light grey with matching grey upholstery. Let me show you all my goodies...central locking...electric mirrors...electric windows..."

Bill: "Well, X, you'd better get out of the way quick. Big George has got withdrawal symptoms from last week. He still thinks he's a four-wheel drive with blacked-out windows. AND HE'S STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU!"

Fred: "Phew! That was close. They really ought to do something about these slow withdrawals."
Bill: "You mean like poor old Pete. He spent a whole year as a Dalmatian for that dog food ad, and just couldn't get out of it. Still thinks he's a dog to this day."

Fred: "Didn't he get therapy?
Bill: "Sure, but he's in too deep. When the psychiatrist said 'Just lie down on the couch please,' all poor old Pete could say was: 'I'm not allowed on the couch!."

Fred: "Nasty. But it's the split personality cases like Steve that I really feel for. Imagine - six months as a budgerigar for the birdseed ad, then a year as a ginger tom for cat food, with just a week between them to adapt."

Bill: "Yeah, chased himself up a telegraph pole then broke his neck trying to fly off it. Last I heard he was still in intensive care, until they cart him off the schizo ward."