My name's Marketing Mike.
YOU are a consumer.
So let me ask YOU a question.

When is the best time to rebrand?
When your product has hit rock bottom?
When you are still on sale, but the consumer glances over you?

This happened to Marks and Spencer and Laura Ashley, Babycham and Southern Comfort. This is when they chose to rebrand.

Or when you are still riding the crest of your peak?

This happened when Pepsi turned blue and Tango changed to its epochal exploding orange logo.

Let me tell you. 
It does NOT matter. 
The best time to rebrand is when the public is willing to accept a rebrand.

The public is more likely to accept one when they LOVE the product.

The secret of a rebrand is to give the public an excuse to LOVE the product more.

Therefore, I believe it is best to rebrand when your product is at an all time high.

And this is the advice I give to Osama Bin Laden, CEO of international terrorist organisation Al-Quaida. Now, Mr Laden, now is the time to rebrand.

Mr Laden is exponential right now. Since his brand went global on September 11 2001, he has managed to stretch its reach across the entire world - aided and abetted by some astounding press coverage. It just goes to show that no news is worse news than bad news.

Don't believe me?
Well - let's take a peek at the evidence:

Al Quaida targets for this business year have all been achieved:

1. The removal of the US army from Saudi Arabia.
2. The destruction of the secular Ba-athist regime in Iraq.
3. The fracturing of New York as a favoured centre for international commerce.

Its aim to abolish Western democracy and create a world-wide Wahabist Islamic state modelled on the Taliban's monotheistic atavism is still, however, a goal too high to pitch our brand ball over.

But not impossible - with a little help from Marketing Mike and his coven of logo-mullahs.

But right now, if terrorism had a stock exchange, Al Quaida would be Microsoft or Dell in the money-shot years of the Internet bang.

So let's go rebrand Al-Quaida.

Start with the name. The problem, in its English form, is inconsistency. In the press, Osama's organisation is referred to as Al-Quaida, Al Qaida, Al Queda or Ol-Kooida. This disparity dilutes the terrorist organisation's brand value.

It reminds me of the mainland European consumer flummoxed when, on a trip to 1980s Britain, he could not find his bar of Snickers in a newsagent in Canterbury or his bottle of Cif in a supermarket in Saffron Walden. Although in a display unit in the same category, he could see the same packaging showing bizarre brands with crazy names like Marathon and Jif.

The new name must make it simple for a consumer looking for a terrorist organisation that corresponds with their life values. Also, we must have one that consumers in the West can recognise because the Occident is the largest market by value. Therefore I suggest Al-Quaida's real name: "The Base". This is cool as it has connotations of Drum 'n' Bass music - tunes that hip kids groove to.

This is a sure-fire root to capturing the hearts of the fickle 17-25 year old consumer. And, as all marketeers know, if we can recruit an early adopter from that age group as our brand ambassador, the whole market sucks on our toe.

At a brainstorming breakfast, we chucked around some ideas for a suitable tagline such as "The Base: Murder on the Dancefloor", "Hear Osama get wicked" and "The Base: How low can u go". But this last concept was just too close to a Public Enemy lyric. And although Osama may be willing to take on the US Military, their Government and the billion-strong Christian population of the West, he sees a far greater threat in Chuck D's lawyers.

So we decided on the following:

TURN IT ON
TURN IT UP
RIDE WITH IT
"THE BASE"
RHYTHM OF LIFE

But young dudes that like Drum 'n' Bass tunes also enjoy spelling the English language badly as they feel this gives them their own vernacular and thus a greater sense of "street" identity. So we suggest a wrongly spelt tagline that responds to the speech patterns of the ghetto massif:

TURN ID ON
TURN ID UP
RIDE WID IT
"DA BASE"
RIDDIM OV LIFE

But the 17-25 age group gets older by the second. This is why we have to recruit the more youthful generation - the Teens and the 'Tweens'. Just like the Scout movement has the Cubs, the Guides has the Brownies, S Club has S Club 8 and Tesco has Tesco Express so Da Base must have its own youth division.

As a brand, we have to get our foot in the nursery door.

At first, we came up with "AQ Juniors" but, after much debate, everyone in our consensus agreed unanimously on "Al Qids".

As the under 17s' favoured method of communication is mobile phones, I suggest a viral campaign through text message as the best sales promotion technique to pull the covers over this demographic.

It would look something like this:

H8 DA WEST? TXT ALQIDS + WN KORAN

This could be backed up by an on-pack promotion. Perhaps we could link up with a well-known snack brand and create special limited edition crisps: the "Tastes of the Taliban" range with flavours such as Halal Chicken, Illegally Grown Poppy or Burnt Face of an Infidel Whore.

The next stage would be to get Tweens to join the exclusive AlQlub. We could ask kids that text into the promotion to come up with interesting ideas for obliterating secular society and causing everlasting damage to free-trade capitalism. Winners would gain a month's free training as a recruit of Mr Laden in one of his secret camps while runners would receive a Koran signed by Mr Laden himself.

We also thought of a pilot club for the younger Tweens that wanted to be a part of what their older sibling's activity. The name for this membership club for kids would be the Wahababies.

We would target this age group with a special packet of licorice sweets. Each coloured confection would be moulded into the shape of an armament involved in a suicide bomb mission - such as a hand-grenade, a utility belt or a dirty bomb full of sherbet that fizzes on contact with the tongue. On the back of the packet would be cut-out-and-keep "little bomber girl" tokens. When the Wahababy collects 50 tokens, he or she could send off for a special Hamas action figure.

The feedback from the focus groups was positive:

"Phat!"
Ibrahim, 6

"Who do I stab first?"
Winston, 13

"I was thinking about supporting President Bush's War on Terrorism, until I saw the cool stuff Al Qids offered!"
Theresa, 12

"Get wid da riddim - da base."
Omar, 4

When we showed our teenagers some of these ideas, the results were surprising. The young black urban boys with the baseball hats and the big noisy coats sat through our presentation, yawning, chatting and fidgeting. But the white boys from wealthy suburban areas, with ambitions to be breakbeat DJs or marketing gurus, were captivated and, afterwards, wanted to know where they could join up.

Hugo, 17, from Sutton:

"It's hard to know what's underground. Everything now is - like - commoditised. There's a killer record right by a cool artist. And as soon as - like - more and more people start buying it, the record - like - sells out. Osama would never sell out."

Or Edward, 16, from Sevenoaks:

"Music's dead. Cinema's dead. The Internet's dead. It's all manufactured. We need something new. Something explosive. We need Da Base."

LIKE DA MAN SAY - U GOT IT!

Ciao!