Firstly, when I said “fools and their money” I was using the standard saying. I did not mean to suggest that McDonalds patrons were uniformly fools (that would make me a very occasional fool for a start!).
I’m not going to get into an argument with you about the qualities of McDonalds, that would be a whole field in itself. I will only say that there are a number of brands (Nike, Coke, and McDonalds are the ones that spring to mind) whose advertising budgets rival the GNP of a minor country, and whose popularity seems to me to outstrip the objective advantages of their products by a very large margin.
And on that basis, I think it is hard to justify your assertion that “…if you get a crummy product are you going to buy from that company again? Probably not.”
A lot of IMHO stuff here. I don’t like this, I just don’t care for that. Really, unless you’re advocating some kind of new law or laws to deal with advertising, it would seem the debate is over matters that are largely subjective.
I am surprised though, that IIRC only one person mentioned the fact that it is advertising that pays for stuff that we get for free, or for less than what it costs to make. Take tv advertising for instance. If you don’t watch broadcast tv then it doesn’t affect you. If you do, then whatever show it is you like to watch (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” perhaps) is being delivered to you at no cost to you (basic cable fees don’t count; what you are paying for there is improved reception, you can still get it for free on broadcast).
Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn’t work for free. Her salary is paid for by advertising revenue. So, as I said, if you don’t watch 'em they don’t affect you; if you do, and complain about the ads, you are essentially complaining about a gift.
Well let’s face it, there aren’t many objective standards when it comes to taste preferences. Now when it comes to things like shoes and automobiles I suppose we can make some more objective criteria.
I don’t think what you’re basing it on is applicable. But I’ll grant you that my statment is more of a personal observation and not scientifically determined.
I’m a consumer as are most of the people I know. It seems to me that if someone gets a bad product or bad service that they are less inclined to go there in the future. Of course this applies more to larger purchases then it does to smaller purchases. If I get a bad order at McDonalds then that isn’t such a big deal. If I have a bad experience buying a computer then odds are I won’t be inclined to shop at that store in the future. (I hate Circuit City.)
I’d like to expand on something that Ankh_Too touched on, partly in response to one of Kimstu’s and delphica’s points. It doesn’t sum up the whole question of advertising, but it’s an important component.
The italicized part is, in my opinion, one of the key points to consider. More and more sports and entertainment facilities are being built with public money. (If a facility is built with private money only, then AFAIC, the builder can name it whatever he or she wants.) There’s obviously a strong argument that, if the taxpayers are footing the bill for the facility, they should have some say in how it gets named. And I partially agree with that argument. But there’s an equally strong argument that, by bidding off the naming rights to the facility, the government either taxes less than it would otherwise need to, or recovers its costs more quickly. Either way, bidding off naming rights is a powerful tool for reducing the burden to the taxpayers.
Once those naming rights are bid for, the question then becomes (for some), “Does the corporate entity that wins the rights have a responsibility to stick to certain kinds of names?” Well, I don’t think so. For one thing, if they’re going to lay out that kind of cash, they’re going to want to see something back for it. Corporations exist primarily to be profitable, and you will find few corporate boards of directors willing to toss out millions of dollars for stadium naming rights only to leave the old name up there (or to put someone else’s name up there). This is true of anything in which they engage. If, rather than name a stadium, Pro Player decided to endow an academic scholarship for college athletes who did not receive NCAA scholarships, you can bet they’d call it the “Pro Player Student Athlete Scholarship Fund” or something of that nature.
When the Gateway complex was built in Cleveland, the owners of the Cavaliers and the Indians bid for and won the naming rights for the arena and ballpark, respectively. And they used their own names, ending up with Gund Arena and Jacobs Field. Takes you back to the old days, right? Well, Dick Jacobs also happens to own one of the biggest real estate development groups in the country. And the Gunds head up Gund Investment Corp. Even Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium were named to help sell gum and beer. Nearly every stadium or arena name is an advertisement for something. Yankee Stadium is an advertisement for the Yankees, after all.
But most importantly, the name above the gate does not, as far as I can tell, affect the nature of what is being played or performed inside. You’re going to see a baseball game whether you see it at Jacobs Field, Fenway Park, Shea Stadium or Comerica Park. You’re going to see a concert whether you see it at the Meadowlands, Madison Square Garden, MCI Center or Nissan Pavilion.
Maybe I’m underestimating my own susceptibility to advertising, but I honestly don’t pay much attention to it. I nearly never listen to the radio in the car, and when commercials come on, my wife and I talk over them. On TV, I turn down the sound when commercials come on, unless it’s something really clever and eye-catching. If someone wants to defer the cost of their wedding by putting Nike swooshes on everything, so what? Good for them, having the ingenuity to find a way to save themselves some money.
Actually, the standard tactic is to make claims that are provable in certain, narrow circumstances.
<Broad example>
Our soap cleans better than any other brand we tested. (We tested two no-name brands).
Implication: The soap is the best available.
Actual: The soap is best of a limited choice.
</Broad Example>
When a product doesn’t measure up to the competition, the tactic is to apeal to emotion using a number of standard claims, either boldly stated or insinuated. For example:
(Look! Our car is fun to drive!)
(Look! Our SUV will help you win the race for the parking spot! {aimed at suburban women, no less!})
(Look! People who drink our beer are good looking and have lots of fun!)
(Buy a diamond! You’ll have life-long marital bliss!)
People buy from one of four central emotional motives:
To Live and Be Healthy.
To Feel Important.
To Love and Be Loved.
Variety.
(Source: The Arts and Science of Sales, US Naval Recruiter Orientation, Pensacola FL., 1996)
Look at the commercials out there. Every last one of them appeals in some way to one of these motives. The best do so with honesty, humor and information. I like them. Most do so with information and a minimum of dishonesty (“Dishonesty” being defined for this pupose as weasel-worded claims and comparisons). I’ve no general problem with these. Some just are annoying as all hell, and they suck. But an increasing (though still in the minority, for now) number of ads are seriously weasel-worded, insulting, condescending and flat-out rude. Those piss me off.
pld: *But most importantly, the name above the gate does not, as far as I can tell, affect the nature of what is being played or performed inside. You’re going to see a baseball game whether you see it at Jacobs Field, Fenway Park, Shea Stadium or Comerica Park. You’re going to see a concert whether you see it at the Meadowlands, Madison Square Garden, MCI Center or Nissan Pavilion.
[…] If someone wants to defer the cost of their wedding by putting Nike swooshes on everything, so what? Good for them, having the ingenuity to find a way to save themselves some money. *
The trouble with that, I think, is that when we become overly dependent on commercial sponsorship for funding aspects of our private or civic life, the commercial sponsors acquire an excessive amount of control over them. If we depend on such sponsors to build all our stadiums and concert arenas and so forth, and the sponsors naturally want to retain some control over how those spaces are used, what happens if a city wants to book Les Ballets Trockadero or some other group that the sponsor doesn’t feel is appropriate for its “wholesome image”? We’ve effectively awarded commercial sponsors a lot of practical censorship power. We can pat ourselves on the back all we like for having been smart enough to score a big freebie from the corporate advertising budget, but if the sponsors are still calling some of the shots then it’s not really free.
Similarly, many school districts now rely on corporate sponsors to provide them with teaching supplies that include promotional materials for the sponsors’ products. Yay for us, we reduced our textbook budgets and now can charge the taxpayers less, right? Well, for one thing, commercial promotional materials are perhaps not the best or most objective sources of information for teaching kids. More importantly, commercial sponsors tend not to want to get embroiled with controversial issues like evolution or sex ed, so no sponsorship funds for those subjects. It would be nice if the school boards would say “oh well, we’ll just have to spend a little more of our own money on the controversial subjects in order to provide a good education.” But in practice, of course, there will be a great deal of pressure to increase taxpayer savings by simply avoiding the subjects that we can’t get commercial funding for.
Sure, everybody loves to get something for nothing, and it sure seems like getting something for nothing when a company hands you some money in return for nothing but a little advertising space or sponsorship acknowledgement. But they’re not in business for their health, and they don’t allocate funds from their marketing budget just from the goodness of their heart. Companies spend money on things that they think will make money for them. The more we come to depend on commercial sponsorship for the means to do what we want in our private or civic life, the more pressure there is on us to make “what we want” conform to “what will make money for the sponsors.” I’m happy to see companies making money, but I don’t believe that that should be a major goal of all aspects of human life.
I would be very surprised to discover that naming rights confer any rights whatsoever to questions regarding who/what gets booked in the arena or stadium in question. My instincts tell me that this would be disastrous for the group actually running the stadium, and that the contracts for naming rights are an all-or-nothing deal. But, I’m in a position to be proven wrong, if you or anyone else has information to the contrary.
I’m with you 110% here, and I would go even farther to exclude not only corporate sponsors, but advocacy groups like the Dairy Council or, for that matter, PETA. Allowing such groups and corporations to sponsor and provide educational materials prevents any semblance of a complete, unbiased education.
To build on what Phil just said, I believe that when a company buys naming rights, all that they are getting is the right to name the venue whatever they please. The company (or public authority) that owns the venue is unlikely to confer the right to dictate anything about the operations of the venue, as complete control is worth far more to the venue owner than to anyone else. Also, from what I know about the sale of naming rights, they are generally a one time purchase, paid up front, so the venue owner is not at all dependant on the owner of the naming rights to renew a contract.
For example, IIRC, Shawmut Bank bought the naming rights to the new arena in Boston that replaced the Boston Garden from Delaware North (the owner of the arena) for a one time cost of $30 million. Of course, Fleet Bank then bought Shawmet Bank, before the facility was built, and it’s always been known as the FleetCenter (the bank is now FleetBoston, and also apparently owns the naming rights for the FleetBoston Pavillion). Of course, if people refer to it as the Garden, everyone knows what they’re talking about.
waterj2: *I would be very surprised to discover that naming rights confer any rights whatsoever to questions regarding who/what gets booked in the arena or stadium in question. *
I took a look around and I think you’re right. But apparently the sponsors can get other types of privileges in a naming-rights deal, such as exclusive contracts to supply their product to the venue’s vendors (no Coke for sale at the “Pepsi Stadium”, no Champion brand t-shirts at the “Pro Players Arena”!) and the right to exclude competitors from advertising there. In addition, when a sponsoring company goes under, the naming rights go up for sale again—apparently some stadiums have been renamed more than twice in a twelve-month period because of industry turmoil. So sometimes the sponsor’s brand name doesn’t even last long enough to become a meaningful part of the place’s identity (I wonder what the locals do during a spate of successive renamings, I suppose most of them still refer to the place by its original name anyway).
Is this really a good thing in the long run for a team or for a sport? Doesn’t fandom work better when there’s some continuity? Even I, no sports fan in general, have heard the names “Yankee Stadium” and “Shea Stadium” and “Madison Square Garden” and so on enough to develop a clue about what’s going on when someone mentions them. If one of them started going through the naming-rights kaleidoscope and became “Intel Stadium” or “Subaru Field” or something, I wouldn’t even know what country it was in. Admittedly, authentic fans will remain more alert, but are we really willing to sacrifice all such long-accumulated associations in the minds of the general public just for the sake of the sponsorship buck?
The answer, of course, is yes, and considering how expensive it is for cities to support professional sports teams these days, I don’t really have a better alternative. But I still am not particularly happy with a trade-off that makes the survival of traditions of community life dependent on their turning themselves into a marketing opportunity for a company with deep pockets. I suppose professional sports are so thoroughly commercialized anyway by this point that it doesn’t much matter. We don’t expect any other branch of the mass-market entertainment business to survive without commercial sponsorship, why should the entertainers known as sports teams be any different?
That all seems rather reasonable to me. I wouldn’t expect Pepsi to be served at the Coca-Cola Starplex in Dallas. Uh, now known as the Smirnoff Starplex.
**
There’s a mercenary quality to players and owners these days. Each one threatening to go to another city for more money or to get other perks. I think the names of stadiums was inevitable.
**
I really love football. But I really hate it when teams attempt to blackmail by threatening to leave if they don’t get what they want. I have no objections to tax breaks or things of that nature for statiums and what not. But no tax money should go directly towards any concert center or stadium.
Marc
Are you really claiming here that these shows (and other typical PBS fare) are geared toward people with no significant disposable income? Lots of immigrant workers rushing home from day loboring jobs to catch “The Story of the English” are they? If the job of Public TV is to provide television fare for the poor and voiceless in society, it’s doing a pretty poor job.
This is not to say that there are millions of working or non-working poor who aren’t perfectly capable of enjoying Masterpiece Theater, nor is it to say that Public Television doesn’t have an important function in society, but I don’t think your chosen example supports your thesis very well.
McDonald’s doesn’t promise that they make great hamburgers. Their “brand identity” is a fast, cheap, family-friendly place to get food. None of their commericals promise a culinary experience that’s going to reawaken your taste buds to the flavor possibilities of ground beef or deep-fried potatoes.
Branding and positioning are major components of what advertising’s about. It’s not just, “Hey, we’ve got burgers.” Each corporation tries to establish an identity that distinguishes it from its competition.
Example:
McDonald’s, the dominant fast food chain, sells convenience and consistency.
Burger King sells flame-broiled flavor (taste). You’ll notice that they’ve also worked on creating “better tasting fries” in the not-too-distant past. And now they’re hyping the meatness of their experience. (Burger King is #2, and they’re trying anything to make them more noticed than #1.)
Wendy’s is open late. And Dave Thomas is a nice guy. You’d like to eat there.
Taco Bell has fast food – but hey, it’s tacos! And burritos!
KFC sells chicken – it’s healthier than beef! And tastier!
“Is advertising bad or is advertising good?” This is like asking, are Christians bad or are Christians good? Or Jews? Or Italians? Or Norweigans? Or panda bears? You will find admirable and horrible examples within any group, advertising included.
I am probably a bit of an oddity: I work within the scope of the advertising/design world, but view many large corporations and their manipulation of media onto the unsavvy consumer as villianous. Although I think Nike television spots are among some of the best creative televised, I abhor Nike’s exploitation of 3rd world workforce (anyone see Michael Moore go head-to-head with Phil Knight, Nike CEO in his movie the Big One?)
Moreover, I hate the way that a Phillip-Morris owned Miller Lite Beer truck decked out with a specially designed logo to “promote diversity” rolls down the street at the San Diego Pride fest. I feel people will think that Miller (Phillip-Morris) really cares about gay rights. Bullshit. They want people to buy their beer. Period. You ask the Phillip-Moris board of executives where they stand on gay marriage. If they say they’re for it, I’ll eat my words.
But on the other hand, advertising by big corporations allow me to watch “Malcolm in the Middle” and the “Simpsons” etc. for FREE!!!
There are always ways to escape advertising. I agree that the recent boom in pre-movie advertisements is unwelcome, especially with raising ticket prices. So instead, I wait til the flick comes out on video and pay $3 to rent it and Fast-Forward through the advertisements. There are very few movies that are so -earth shattering and need to be seen right away. Plus, I don’t have to pay for overpriced popcorn and soda or to be kicked in the back by the guy sitting behind me.
In the final analysis, I feel I have a brain capable of fairly critical thought and am always skeptical of anything anyone tells me who has something to gain from it. I say to the nation whose inhabitants are not called citizens so often as consumers: If you don’t like what the ad is saying, don’t buy it. It is the only language that a corporation will pay attention to. Turn the TV off and remember that there is a stack of good books that you haven’t gotten to reading yet.
You may say “The typical American may not be so savvy. They can’t see through the sophisticated propaganda of the advertisers. They’re helpless against the assault.” I would ask in return, “How is this so different than nature’s process of natural selection?” ‘Canada Bill’ Jones opined, “It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.” I think there is some relavence here. If someone is fool enough not to learn that he gets burned when he puts his hand on the stovetop burner, and contines to put his hand on the stovetop burner, he deserves to get burned.
