Thursday, October 08, 2009
Metro columnist Dan Casey: Naming rights will give ad firm an edifice complex
Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
dan.casey
@roanoke.com
981-4423
Dan Casey
Recent columns
- Southerners scoff at shoveling sidewalks
- Hey, winter, quit it already
- Honest numbers could spur real donations
Read Dan's blog
There are some sales jobs you shouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
Like selling crab bait in Arizona.
Or sunglasses in London.
Or whiskey in Mecca.
That's why we should all feel a little sympathy, or perhaps awe, for Sponsor Hounds, the Roanoke event and advertising company that has accepted the monumental challenge of selling the naming rights to the Roanoke Civic Center.
Don't hold your breath. That's going to be no easy task.
Let's face it: Our coliseum/concert hall/exhibition complex is a monstrosity. It's easily the ugliest public arena in the East and maybe the whole nation.
It looks like it was designed by an ex-Soviet commissar who, as a child, calmed his fits of attention-deficit disorder with a smuggled-in Lego set his mom bought on the black market.
If Sponsor Hounds can sell the naming rights to that ugly edifice, they are geniuses who deserve our eternal salute.
"People challenge me all the time," Waynette Anderson, the company's president, told me Wednesday. "When people tell me it can't be done, it just makes me more determined to do it."
Here's my challenge: I will shred and eat this column, on camera, if they manage to do it in the next year.
And if I have to choke down that newsprint, it raises all sorts of other possibilities for profiting off pockets of unsightliness in this mostly gorgeous region.
We all know they're out there. Why not exploit them, good-old American capitalism-style, for buckets of cash?
A few of us newsroom wags have come up with a short list of those ugly places. Here we go:
n The MeadWestvaco paper plant in Covington tops the list.
That stinking jungle of pipes, conveyor belts, belching smokestacks and buildings is piled over the small city the way Mill Mountain rises over Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. Wouldn't it be fitting if Greenpeace bought its naming rights?
n West Main Street in Salem is a two-mile gantlet of artery clogging, obesity encouraging, greasy fast-food stands.
Perhaps Sponsor Hounds could offload that horrid commercial stretch to the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer. They could name it Lipitor Lane after their best-selling cholesterol drug. (Salem could use the cash to spruce up its own civic center, which is attractive compared only to Roanoke's.)
n Shaffers Crossing in Roanoke is an affront to the eyes. Just go up on the 10th Street bridge and gaze west at that sea of tracks, huffing locomotives and graffiti-plastered rail cars. The community of Elliston might want to buy its naming rights, however. In the ensuing confusion, perhaps Norfolk Southern Corp.'s intermodal rail yard would wind up in Northwest Roanoke instead of Montgomery County.
n Who would buy the right to name Exit 150 along Interstate 81 in Botetourt County? That bastardized cloverleaf is the most spectacular example of failed traffic engineering in the commonwealth.
The General Assembly's House Republican caucus, which has doggedly fought a highway-improving gasoline tax increase, might be interested in putting its name on it. Or maybe the Democrats could buy the rights and slap "GOP" up there.
n Looming over that interchange is the giant antenna array that crowns Tinker Mountain. It looks like a 5-year-old went wild with a huge erector set.
Can't you envision a huge, glowing-blue WDBJ7.com up there, even bigger than the Mill Mountain Star? A bidding war with WSLS.com could produce big bucks.
So, Sponsor Hounds, there's a list chock-full of strong leads, and I'm certain readers will suggest more on my blog.
It's time to get cracking on turning this region's "ugly" into some bill-paying green.
Good luck pawning the Roanoke Civic Center's name.
Only in America, eh?
