SO WHAT'S IN A NAME...
As a vegetarian, I was more than a little concerned some years back when a (short lived) trend seemed to be emerging with regard to "crossing" one species of fruit with another and giving it some new fictional (marketing) name. Whilst unaware of it at the time, this was perhaps one of the first deployments of a "niche" segment strategy, where the gullible shopper would buy a kilo of this and a kilo of that as well as a kilo of thas if not thit...
This can, of course, all back fire with the less gullible family provider buying only thit if not thas. But the seed of thought had been sewn, if not thrown before swine, for it got me thinking about the progressive detachment that seems to have crept into the "science" of product branding, not only in the recent scandals surrounding meat product content and description (as I said, I am vegetarian, so don't come cry on my shoulder), but in the automotive world of tight suited marketing savvy and the still all important badge identity stakes.
As any marketing man (what do they do actually?) worth his salt (also not good for you) will tell you, history and provenance, not to mention packaging, be it a truffle or a Testa Rossa, are the main contenders in the "how many where for how much" equation, whereby the one ingredient that cannot be whisked (or spun) is history, because it is what it was.
So consider this. When is a plumb not a plumb, but a banana, or a tomato a pomato rather than totato if content and context (in the sense of consumer credibility) are not thrown out of the window? When does a product wonder so far off its hereditary track (DNA?) that it can no longer be recognised as the legitimate (natural) descendent of former generations?
The automotive world in particular is dotted, if not besotted, with examples of over levered "wishful thinking" in the interest of "stretching" the brand if not the imagination. Bearing in mind that this discourse started at the fruit stall, the whole conundrum gets doubley complicated when one attempts not only to resurrect a deceased brand (acca Maybach by Mercedes-Benz), but transform a singular product from a mere model into a brand (as has been the case with MINI by BMW).
