An American from Florida who held an online auction has received more than $40,000 from a company to change his name for a year, advertising company’s name. It is not uncommon for a woman to change her last name when she marries, becomes a movie star or wants to circumvent the law. An American entrepreneur had a completely different reason: he accepted to bear any name that the auction winner held on the Internet will decide, according to RIA Novosti.
Thus, Jason Sadler, aged 30, from Florida, will become starting January 1, Jason HeadsetsDotCom after the company, the largest U.S. provider of headsets for office phones, offered him $45,500 to change his legal name.
“Throughout life I’ve had three different family names and none meant anything to me or my sense of identity. So this year, when my mother told me that she will divorce, I realized that giving up my name makes sense to me,” Sadler said on his website buymylastname.com.
He came up with the idea to hold an auction for companies that wanted him to change his name after them for a fee. Voting started on November 1 and ended on Wednesday night, with Headsets.com offering the highest price. Sadler announced on its website that he “will become a mobile advertisement platform” for the company and that “he is ready to come up with marketing ideas” for additional income.
“We also had previously eccentric marketing ideas,” said Mike Faith, President of Headsets.com for CNN, adding that the idea is a perfect fit for the company. 25 companies competed in the auction; PawnUp.com and Headsets.com fought until the very end of the auction.
Sadler said he would donate 10% of the money raised in the auction to a non-profit organization called Cheerful Givers, which give gifts to children in need. The money left over will be invested in other marketing ideas.
The concept of the campaign is not entirely new for Sadler. In 2009, he launched a campaign to wear shirts of several companies, for which he was compensated with $66,000.
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