RETAIL RANDOMS

BEFORE YOU GO...

KY REBRAND RUBS US UP THE WRONG WAY

Marketers have got a lot to answer for, they really have. How else could you explain the bizarre decision by KY Jelly to rebrand its upstanding and iconic product with a new name that had to have been created by a marketer. Or, more likely, a committee of marketers – or whatever the collective noun is for marketers. Only a marketer would come up with one of those annoying modern brand names that sticks capital letters in the wrong place or replaces Cs with Ks for no apparent reason.

‘You don’t happen to have a wee skoosh of Kynect handy, do you?’ just doesn’t carry the same sense of excitement and foreboding, does it?

Your mother isn’t even going to raise an eyebrow at finding a tube of Kynect in the pocket of your jeans.

Thornton & Ross, the company that makes the brand, says the new name will “communicate intimacy and connection”. But let’s be frank here. Nothing communicates intimacy and connection quite like the letters “KY”. You hear a prospective partner utter the letters ‘KY’ and you know intimacy and connection are in the offing.

Most CEOs (the male ones at any rate) would give their left testicle for a brand that’s become a generic name for the category. What’s next? Is Hoover going to change its name to KleanZer?

Will Sellotape become Konnected? (And if they do, remember you read it here first.)

HEADS UP FOR 2021...

We’ve seen the future – and it’s not looking good. As if it wasn’t bad enough trying to serve customers who insist on leaving their infernal Apple AirPods in, even when standing at the till and looking blankly at the cashier, an email dropped into our inbox this morning that gave us a terrifying insight into what 2021 is set to bring.

No doubt destined to be The Next Big Thing, Apple AirPods Max look like they should just about entirely ensure that the wearer won’t be able to hear a bloody word the cashier is saying, even when it’s important. “You haven’t given me enough money,” for instance, or “No, we don’t sell KY Jelly any more... but we do have Kynect.”

You have been warned.