A Hard Cell

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? cheat Tecwen Whittock may have infamously coughed his way into the headlines, but now it looks like he’s laughing his way to the bank. Richard Brass looks at the lucrative world of criminal branding.

Nasty things, coughs. Unless treated, they can give you a sore throat, keep you awake at night and make speaking very difficult. Leave them too long and, as in the case of British college lecturer Tecwen Whittock, they can land you with a criminal conviction and a suspended prison sentence.

If anyone ever regretted the lack of a lozenge, it must be Whittock, who famously used a particularly bad case of the coughs – 19 well-timed ones to be precise – during filming of the British quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? to signal the correct answers to a contestant. The resulting conviction for Whittock and two others left him jobless, facing huge fines and with a reputation worth less than a sweet-wrapper.

But it looks like Whittock paid proper attention to the business studies courses he taught, because he’s since discovered what could be a very shiny silver lining to this particular cloud. Having registered his name as a trademark, he’s now on the lookout for manufacturers – preferably of cough sweets, but anything will do – to license his very own infamous brand. It’s a marketer’s dream, and no doubt before long ‘Tecwen Cough Drops’ will be soothing throats all over the world and refilling his empty pockets. Using the brand created by your crimes to turn a buck is nothing new. Plenty of crooks have emerged from jail to pocket fat publishers’ advances for best-selling accounts of their crimes, securing that income through IP protection. The legality and morality of these books is always under question, but the copyright side is clear.

Leeson Financial Advice may not be far off and Tecwen Cough Drops could be even closer, but the opportunities for criminals to benefit from the branding are endless.

But some criminals go beyond the one-off book, turning their reputations into genuine brands to bring in the profits. In Australia, the notorious underworld enforcer Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, earned a stiff criminal record after a shooting, a stabbing and an attempt to kidnap a judge at gunpoint. But following a book and a film of his life, he has since become such a reliable national brand that he was recently hired to feature in an award-winning series of road-safety advertisements, based around the theme that ‘a killer is a killer’, whether using a car or a shotgun. It was a prime piece of brand development, and anyone planning a little passing off had better think twice.

Another legendary figure, from Britain’s gang world of the 1960s, is ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, who spent decades in prison for countless acts of violence and brutality. He has also made a healthy career from branding his dark past. In addition to guest appearances reminiscing about the good old days of torture and murder, and books and CDROMs on the subject, he also offers guided tours of the more blood-soaked spots of the gangland of London’s East End, a snip at only £35 (US$63) a head.

A less violent, but perhaps more significant criminal is Nick Leeson, the British rogue currency trader who single-handedly brought about the collapse of Britain’s 230-year-old Barings Bank. Nick has made the most of his bad name since his release from a Singaporean prison. He has followed up a successful book – turned into a star-studded movie – with conference and TV appearances hinging on the question of risk and, in another masterstroke of branding, has recently begun writing a column on poker for a gambling magazine.

Leeson Financial Advice may not be far off and Tecwen Cough Drops could be even closer, but the opportunities for criminals to benefit from the branding are endless. Al Capone never got a chance to develop a Valentine’s card business, but there’s still plenty of time for Tonya Harding Marriage Guidance to get off the ground, or Mike Tyson Introductions – the firm that doesn’t take no for an answer. Lorena Bobbitt’s Weight Loss Program, on the other hand, might never quite crack the big time.

This article first appeared in IP Review, issue 7

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