For reasons I find inexplicable, high contrast negatives are currently in fashion. I find that they scan and print with more difficulty than negatives with what we might call medium contrast. So unless I specifically want high contrast images, that's not what I aim for. But just because I don't understand it, doesn't make it wrong.
I often point out that I am uncomfortable with AW's claim that they stock over 200 different films....when several of these are the exact same film under various names. But....they do have educational posts on social media and videos on youtube. They do reach out to novice film users to educate. And they do it in ways that appeal to a late teen or twenty-something film user, not us old farts who might appreciate an old man with a beard telling us how to bulk load and use an enlarger.
I like how Nik & Trick fit closer with "my" way of doing things...but then they also have been banging on about Fuji's "imminent" complete exit from the film market for at least a decade now.
In this case, I fail to see that AW have done anything wrong. This was clearly a fun stunt, no harm was done, nobody in their right minds who read any of the blurb will have been misled. It didn't even cost that much. Happy 5 years in business, AW.
FWIW I do see this as a rebrand. Not all rebrands are attempts to pass off an existing product as something different. Everyone here surely knows that currently Arista Edu is Fomapan...there's no attempts to pass it off as something unique or in any way materially different to Fomapan. But it is a rebrand. As is this. CatLabs was something different because there was, to my mind, deception practised by them. But it was still rebranding. That my .02, and I don't see any point in arguing. Not all rebrands are equally deceptive.
AW's current posting on Facebook and Instagram is some sort of teaser "something's coming". Now I am old and farty enough to think of the rock group Yes when I read that tag line. But it appears to be a teaser for some sort of camera....though the camera in the images is clearly a Samsung and I am under no impression that Samsung are entering the film camera market.