It’s time for my company to get its name out there. And I mean really out there. Just think of the sales we could be missing because of the hundreds of millions of people who haven’t heard of us yet.
This concept used to be known as “name recognition”—the simple theory being that, if people have heard of you, they sort of subconsciously assume you must be somewhat credible. This works particularly well for politicians. In recent years, you may have noticed certain individuals running for president with last names that may seem, shall I say, presidential. I’m not sure who I mean, but there might be a candidate out there—or perhaps a president out there—with a name we’d heard before he or she came along.
This works particularly well, it seems, if you want to run for judge! I’m really not sure why we choose judges through elections anyway, since no one really knows what a judge’s job is, and no one really knows who’s qualified. The best-qualified voters in judge elections fall into three categories: prosecutors, criminals and people who watch afternoon judge shows on TV. If you limited the electorate in judge elections to these people, you’d probably end up choosing some pretty good judges.
Unfortunately, they let everyone vote, so the most powerful asset, if you’re running for judge, is the same last name as another judge. In Detroit, where I grew up, there are a great many judges named O’Brien, Kavanagh, Callahan and Cahalan. If you have one of these last names, and you don’t have a job, what the heck is wrong with you? All you have to do is run for judge and you’re guaranteed to win. My favorite example of this occurred many years ago, when a man named Mel Ravitz had already served a long tenure on the Detroit City Council. When a certain judge position came up for re-election, some dude named Justin Ravitz—not related to Mel—a cowboy-boot-wearing Marxist with virtually no legal experience whatsoever, ran for the position.
He won. He had a political-sounding last name, and that was good enough for Detroit voters. By all accounts, he wasn’t too bad a judge either, which might go to show that you could do all right just picking the first 435 people out of the phone book and sending them to Congress. But just think how mad the last guy on the alphabetical roll call would be, as he sits there impatiently and thinks: “My last name starts with A! This never happens to me!”
At any rate, if this Ravitz guy can become a judge simply by having a familiar-sounding name, I really need to do more to get my company’s name out there. One currently popular method is to get a stadium named after your company. This, it seems, works better in some cases than it does in others.
Monster.com paid big bucks to have the new San Francisco 49ers stadium named Monster Park. I know that because I researched it. When I first heard that they were naming the stadium Monster Park, I though of that blue furry fellow from Sesame Street who always eats cookies.
It still hasn’t quite sunk in for me that, whenever I hear the word “monster,” I’m supposed to think of the website where you look for a new job on the computer you’re supposed to be using to do your existing job.
Enron bought the naming rights to the Astros’ stadium in Houston, which made everyone think Enron was a stadium-naming company—until the company made the news for other reasons. Then, suddenly, the stadium was named Minute Maid Park, which I guess means they serve orange juice at the games.
Comerica Bank paid $66 million to have the Detroit Tigers’ new stadium named Comerica Park for 30 years. Six years later, Comerica Bank moved from Detroit to Texas.
Naming a stadium may not be for you. It depends what you do, I suppose. The New York Yankees are getting a new ballpark soon. I’ll be a little surprised if it ends up being named Summer’s Eve Disposable Douche Ballpark, but you never know.
College football bowl games will sell their naming rights to absolutely anyone. There’s even a Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl—and don’t try to tell me you’d heard of the Poulan Weedeater before that came along. I’ve never even watched the game, but if I needed a weedeater, I doubt I could go wrong with a Poulan. They have enough money to give a bowl game the most ridiculous name ever! How bad can they be?
Unfortunately for me, my company is too small to buy the naming rights to a stadium or a bowl game, so I need to look at more practical options. I could buy the naming rights to a segment on public television for about $150, and not only would at least eight people see my company’s name, I’d get a tote bag to boot.
One of our local banks has secured the naming rights to an annual 5K race. I’m not sure how many more races are for sale. Perhaps I could take a brisk walk and claim that.
Hovering above this discussion is the question of whether name recognition sells anything. The more sophisticated marketing types religiously use the term “branding,” which I guess means your name is more than just known. It stands for something—presumably the right something—in consumers’ minds. If my company’s name was well known by millions of people, but they couldn’t make a connection with what we do and why they need it, what good would all that notoriety do me? As far as all these people know, I could be a Marxist walking around in cowboy boots.
That probably wouldn’t stop them, however, from calling me offering financial services, cleaning services, a water cooler and so forth. You can always do things to make sure your name is recognized. You could hire skywriters. Stand atop a tall building and threaten to jump. Marry Britney Spears for a couple of days. Join O.J.’s casino-robbing gang.
When you find the idea that makes it unnecessary for you to get on the phone and try to actually make sales, let me know. Then again, you don’t know the name of my company, so you don’t know how to reach me.
Ironic, isn’t it?
