Attack of the cloneworthy
The prize giveaway is an old PR tool that PRs and editors alike can have fun with. Last week was a particularly good week for competitions, with some highly original prizes on offer.
On Friday 19th June a Guardian competition invited readers to identify the most ludicrous MPs’ expenses claim from a very long list. The finder will be rewarded with… an £800 floating duck house.
This truly inspired prize made Forsham Cottage Arks rightly proud, but amazingly they and the Guardian were outdone: just two days earlier, BioArts International brought James Symington’s pet back to life. Sort of: Symington received five clones of his late dog, Trakr, as the prize in BioArts’ essay competiton.
The winning essay recounted Trakr’s involvement in the September 11th rescue efforts. The heartwarming tale also earned Trakr a posthumous title: World’s Most Cloneworthy Dog.
It may have been unintentional, but “cloneworthy” is a marvellously sinister new adjective, and this blogger would like to see it enter the Oxford English Dictionary, preferably via its repeated use in a number of disturbing futuristic gameshows. In fact this blogger would probably start lobbying for commercial human cloning and a relaxation of Ofcom’s regulations just to make it happen.
Symington’s prize puppies would normally cost around $144,000 (£87,800) each. By comparison £800 seems a small price to pay to protect our MPs’ pets from foxes. We should be thankful that mallards are not considered more cloneworthy.
