Independent Perspective News

Translation by Carolina Friszman.

A British advertising firm has just launched a contest that consists in selecting five people who will change their names to "Turok", which is the name of the game's protagonist. The winners will receive 800 dollars, an Xbox console and five episodes of a video game, in exchange for becoming “Turoks”, officially, for a year, and indroducing themselves to whoever they meet with the phrase “Hello, I'm Turok, the dinosaur hunter.”

It may be crazy to change one's name for a sum of money. But since the reward climbs up to 800 dollars, hundreds of Brits are willing to put their whole lives' John away to become Turok, the protagonist of a video game that has just been released in the UK. The idea is simple: for 365 days, at work, school and the bar and, most important, in the eyes of the State, volunteers must stop being who they used to to respond to the dinosaur hunter's name, the protagonist of the video game “Turok”, the spring of a comic set in a wild and primitive land. It seems silly, but it is not: we are standing before the new frontier of extreme advertising, the “human branding”, which puts forward the conversion of human beings into physical and spirituals vehicles of a message (www.mynameisturok.co.uk/).

The original idea, which is being applied to video games for the first time, belongs to the Institute of Marketing Science (www.mynameisturok.co.uk/about.htm). Its advertisers offered the project to the British branch of the American Acclaim (www.acclaim.com/), the producer of “Evolution” (www.turok.com/evolution/translations/spanish/index.html), fifth episode of the Turok saga. “It's not a joke”, says Andrew Block, from Acclaim. “Volunteers must be willing to change their whole personality: they will have to walk, talk, live and breath the advertisment”. The macanics is simple too: in the same Internet site where the campaign is explained, a link offers a “identity change form” and, besides, it asks the candidate to state “why we should choose you” (www.mynameisturok.co.uk/apply.php).

The contest will select the five people who will be awarded, apart from the money, an Xbox console (www.xbox.com/default.htm?det=1) and the five episodes of the Turok saga (www.turok.com/index2.html). The legal and judicial expenses of the two identity changes (from “X” to Turok and from Turok to “X” again), will be on Acclaim. Maybe u$s 800 is too little money to give up something as precious and symbolic as one's name. It takes pretty much courage to introduce oneself at a meeting saying: “Nice to meet you, my name is Turok and I'm a dinosaur hunter”. However, Block emphasizes the fact that those who agree to change their identity to become a flesh and blood commercial “don't do it just because of the money”. The chanllenge is turning into a sort of embassador of a game they identify with.