Purist Desire
November 24th, 2007I’ll leave Chicago if this follows all the way through.
Might visitors to the Windy City someday ride the Lowe’s Chicago El, shop on the Microsoft Magnificent Mile and tour Old Navy Pier? The city has hired a marketing firm to explore the potential for selling naming rights and sponsorships as a way to bring in much-needed city revenue, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
The Daley administration has awarded a $285,000 contract to Octagon Inc. to examine what the city has to offer and, by next spring, produce a marketing plan that will attract corporate sponsors and advertisers. Octagon will inventory city programs, events, buildings and other physical assets and determine which would be most attractive to companies that might want to affix their names in some way.
The contract states that any plan must ensure “the integrity of the city of Chicago’s brand image,” and ideas must be presented to an advisory group of civic leaders, which has not yet been formed. Mayor Richard Daley’s press office and Octagon did not return telephone messages Friday from The Associated Press inquiring about the contract.
Chicago wouldn’t be the first city to offer municipal names for sale.
Nextel has sponsored the Las Vegas Monorail and New York has entered into partnership agreements with such firms as Snapple, Verizon and Pepsi Cola, according to city budget office spokeswoman Wendy Abrams. In Canada, the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, announced plans two weeks ago to sell naming rights for city pools, arenas, buildings and even city services in an attempt to offset a $2 billion shortfall. Similar programs are operating in Calgary, Ottawa and Toronto.
I could tolerate certain sponsorships and would encourage others as practical, like an increase in private-private/public partnership with the CTA transportation service (unbeknownst to most people, CTA is mainly private but semi-public) but I would under no conditions accept a city that renamed Navy Pier to Old Navy Pier or which re-named Lake Michigan Lake Enron or any other remarkably crude and careless tagging. I understand that private sponsorships are probably necessary in most major cities, and I can accept this, but I will refuse to accept it beyond a certain level. What that level will be, I don’t know, but we’re not going to re-name the Water Tower the “Gatorade Water Tower” or anything like that and still count on me to pay Daley’s absurd taxes.
What I won’t accept is anyone putting advertisements on the back of Major League Baseball jerseys. At all.