Friday, July 01, 2005

how there's too much advertising

this is from sfgate.com:

San Francisco's Warfield Theatre, a Market Street venue for popular music, will be renamed the SF Weekly Warfield under a three-year promotional deal between concert promoter Bill Graham Presents and the SF Weekly newspaper.

for those of you who don't know, the warfield (along with the fillmore) are not only the meccas of music in san francisco, but also the world. i can't count how many shows i've seen in this city where the band said "i can't believe we're playing in the warfield!" (or the fillmore). it's famous.

in the warfield's foyer, you pass by countless photographs of all the rock stars who've performed there - from the stones to bob dylan to hendrix to joplin to nirvana...it's endless, really.

you haven't arrived until you've arrived at the warfield.

not the "sf weekly" warfield.

look, we live in a capitalistic society. and companies should be allowed to make as much money as possible. what i'm saying is to have a little couth.

is it too much to say "the warfield, presented by sf weekly"? since when does "sf weekly" take precendence before the warfield? do bands perform here because of the sf weekly part? i don't think so.

is it arrogance or stupidity?

i understand that this is an advertising gimmick. but usurping a name that means so much to so many people doesn't seem like good advertising - in fact, it's gotta raise emnity.

wouldn't it be better for a company to sponsor a ballpark or whatever and then name it something else?

my roommate and i were on the way to mcafee coliseum. yeah, what? it's where the a's and the raiders play. surprise! anyway, i brought up a point that the people who would use mcafee already know what mcafee is. there's no point in advertising it as a stadium name. but wouldn't it be something that during baseball season, mcafee announces that they bought sponsoring for the stadium name, but they decided to name it vida blue coliseum instead? or charlie finley coliseum? and during football stadium, they name it lester hayes coliseum? wouldn't that be a great pr campaign? hell, you could put mcafee all over the place inside the stadium.

it would bring up a good feeling about the company. and isn't that the point of advertising?

i just wish someone thought about this.

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