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How to completely f**k up a company's branding. By Elon Musk

GOT a website with internationally-known and instantly recognisable branding? Here visionary tech bro Elon Musk explains how to f**k it up for no reason.

Choose a sinister new name

Has your brand got a fun and friendly name that also works as a description of the service it offers? Screw that. Ditch it and choose a faceless, menacing one that sounds like the kind of thing a 13-year-old boy would choose for an evil villain in a sci-fi story he’s writing. Pretty cool, huh? Maybe I’ll change my name to it too. X Musk. Awesome.

Remove the friendly logo

Everyone likes birds right? They’re cute and fun, cartoon ones anyway. Well, not me. I could crush birds with my bare hands if I wanted to. I don’t want anyone to think X is a nice place where you can have a pleasant chat. I want them to think it’s a polarised hellhole full of bellends with too much time on their hands abusing each other. Well, I’m not wrong, am I?

Change the logo but not the web address

People like things that are cohesive and easy to understand, but that’s because they’re simpletons. I, on the other hand, am a genius, which is why I have renamed my website and put the new logo on it, while not changing the web address. This means it’s called two different things and looks like shit. But you just don’t understand my vision, because you’re an idiot.

Don’t tell anyone it’s happening

Brand trust is incredibly important when it comes to retaining customers. But who cares about that shit when you’re a billionaire who builds space rockets as a hobby? I changed my brand overnight without making an announcement for a laugh. People were furious but they won’t leave X, because they’re addicted to being horrible pricks to each other.

Hammer it home with a dickish stunt

When you’ve pissed off lots of people online with your sudden rebrand, why not piss some off in real life too? I put a giant, incredibly bright, strobing and pulsing sign in the shape of an X on top of our headquarters in San Francisco. It stopped people sleeping and generally got on their tits. Do I care? Do I f**k. I’m disgustingly rich. Well, until everyone realises I am incredibly shit at everything and it’s all pretend share value money.

Bubble tea cafes and other shops men will never go into

MEN enjoy going to manly shops like Screwfix and the butchers. They will only enter these five establishments if they are dragged into them against their will.

Bubble tea cafes

Men do not know what bubble tea is, and they do not intend to find out. And why splash out on a mysterious trendy drink that costs a fortune when they could make a proper brew at home? The little waving cat figurines in the window are tempting… but no. For the sake of their masculinity they must resist setting foot through the door.

Lush

Everything about Lush, from the staff to the smells, is man repellent. It’s where wives duck into for a ten minute break from their husbands while they leave them to browse the DVDs in CEX. At a push, a man might venture in once a year to pick up a last-minute Christmas gift, but it’s an ordeal they would rather do without, like going to the dentist.

Superdrug

Men go to Boots if they want to purchase Lynx body sprays and overpriced disposable razors. Meanwhile Superdrug, with its feminine branding and associated hygiene products, is something of an unknown quantity. Men don’t even register it on the high street. When they look at Superdrug they see a strange haze, then their gaze drifts off to something reassuringly familiar like a fishing tackle shop.

Anthropologie

Just as poisonous frogs warn off predators with their brightly coloured skin, Anthropologie keeps men at bay with its designer shabby chic clothing and vaguely world-inspired home furnishings. Not that it needs to, because men take one look at the price tag on a scented candle in the window and involuntarily yelp ‘F**k that!’.

Russell & Bromley

There’s a men’s section in Russell & Bromley, but it’s a token gesture. Blokes are often dropped off there like kids at a ball pit while their wives spend hours deliberating over identical pairs of flats, even though the more respectful thing to do would be to bar them entry. The men don’t want to be there. Their partners and staff don’t want them to be there. Everyone should drop the charade.

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