Naming Rights

A woman sold the space on her cleavage on ebay for $15,000 for 30 days promising to wear revealing clothes so the ad placement would get the exposure it deserved. Another woman sold her bare very pregnant belly space on ebay saying she would walk around the Daytona 500 with it exposed. She was on the Today show Sunday morning, lifted up her belly and there was a temporary tattoo for Golden Palace.com plastered right there, on the belly, on the Today show. Was it worth the money they paid? You bet, you can’t get better exposure than that (no pun indented).

Now with me being in the marketing/advertising/PR arena that I might find these practices distasteful, but you know what? I don’t.

Professional sports teams sell the naming rights to their stadiums all the time (I believe that the only stadium that hasn’t sold its’ name is Lambeau Field) so why shouldn’t the average person be able to sell some ad space and capitalize on this new trend?

Apparently naming rights make all the difference to a business, so why not have your name associated with a venue in hopes of having that name plastered all over the building, not to mention TV, and all of the endless sports highlight shows.

Makes sense.

So then why did ebay pull a woman’s ad for wanting to sell the naming rights of her child? What better way to get your name out there then paying the $750,000 asking price and being the first company to pay for the right to name a child? She was just offering the first 5 years for that price. Half the time during the first five years they aren’t even called by their real name anyway. Most of the time it’s they think their name is “No.” PNC may have the naming rights to a stadium, but BankOne could name an actual living person, who in most cases would outlive a stadium anyway.

I can see it now . . . time for roll call in 2010:

“Comcast Burton. Alltell Daniels. FedEx Garrison. FedEx Garrison? Has anyone seen little FedEx? Elmer's! Stop eating the glue.”