A marketing ploy to turn humans into living adverts is proving a hit with thousands of people who have applied to change their name to a computer game character in exchange for £500.
Within 12 hours of an offer appearing on a website, www.mynameisturok.co.uk, more than 3,000 people had applied to change their names by deed poll to Turok, the hero of a cult dinosaur-hunter computer game, the British company pioneering the scheme said this afternoon.
Each new "Turok" will be paid 500 pounds and given a Microsoft X-Box games console and Turok games in exchange for changing their name for a year.
"I thought it was a really cool idea. Five hundred quid is a hell of a lot of money," Andrew Nettles, a 21-year-old London business student.
"I never chose my name -- my parents gave it to me," said the student who will receive his degree certificate in the name of Turok if he is chosen.
The identity marketing concept was dreamt up by Simeon Cantrell of Britain's Institute of Science in Marketing, which has patented the idea.
"There could be thousands of people called Pepsi, Brylcreem, Toyota and Yahoo happily going about their everyday lives whilst subtly communicating the virtues of their brand namesakes," Cantrell said.
PA