Well, it beats Wal-Mart New York
It isn't so much the self-centered audacity of corporate owners naming teams after themselves that bug me so much as the lack of creativity that such practices show. It's not that I mind naming rights, it's just that the right to name should come with a mandate of creativity. I get the idea behind branding a team. I protested the concept of the FedEx Orange Bowl for years before I finally got the idea that hey, it's money to keep the tradition going, you gotta get that advertising in there one way or another. But shit like the GMAC Bowl or the Insight.com Bowl just irritate me. Slapping on the corporate brand instead of coming up with a name that supposedly sums up the team's essence is just plain boring. It kind of takes me back to my Little League days when I played on such teams as Stanley Farm Equipment and Tractors and Lair Rock and Gravel. But I suppose as soccer in the US grows out of the youth movement, that kind of corporate naming is at least familiar to soccer players and soccer moms.
Red Bull New York doesn't sound too bad, really -- at least Red Bull is a team sort of moniker, so it's in a very blurry spot -- something that I don't care for but don't really hate. But lordy, what happens when a corporate owner with a clunker of a name decides to do the same thing? Could such a thing as Sierra Mist United as D on the DCenters blog joked be far off? And it's not even an original US thing, since they already did it with Red Bull Salzburg.
Oh well. Corporate branding is here and it's always been here and it will always be here. May as well accept it and move on. But y'know, I may have actually been prompted to try a Sierra Mist because they support MLS, but I keep drinking it because, darn it, it's actually very tasty and Sierra Mist Free is about the best caffeine-free diet drink out there. But sorry Red Bull, your product sucks, so that and your uncreative naming will never get me to quaff a Red Bull, despite the MLS team ownership.
And don't even get me started on Budweiser. Oooh, I hate Bud.
Red Bull New York doesn't sound too bad, really -- at least Red Bull is a team sort of moniker, so it's in a very blurry spot -- something that I don't care for but don't really hate. But lordy, what happens when a corporate owner with a clunker of a name decides to do the same thing? Could such a thing as Sierra Mist United as D on the DCenters blog joked be far off? And it's not even an original US thing, since they already did it with Red Bull Salzburg.
Oh well. Corporate branding is here and it's always been here and it will always be here. May as well accept it and move on. But y'know, I may have actually been prompted to try a Sierra Mist because they support MLS, but I keep drinking it because, darn it, it's actually very tasty and Sierra Mist Free is about the best caffeine-free diet drink out there. But sorry Red Bull, your product sucks, so that and your uncreative naming will never get me to quaff a Red Bull, despite the MLS team ownership.
And don't even get me started on Budweiser. Oooh, I hate Bud.
posted by MLS Fangirl @ 2:23 PM
4 Comments:
At 3:25 PM,
Anonymous said…
Fangirl - it's getting crazy. With all that money floating around they can't some up with something halfway creative? Don't they have any marketing folks with creative minds. I mean come on - you know that the Red Bull emblem and the like will be plastered all over everything at their home stadium anyway. They HAD to use the team name too?
Naming stadiums rides the edge of acceptability. It's tolerable to a point because it's not mentioned as much. But couldn't they have just been the NYC Bulls? it HAD to be the Red Bulls?
Of course they obviously aren't shooting for the smartest customers out there. Anyone who pays $3 for a tiny little can of cough syrup tasting soda spiked with oodles of caffinee needs their head examined anyway.
At 4:05 PM,
MLS Fangirl said…
I probably wouldn't have even minded if they had called them the Red Bull New York (team name). Yeah, it's a mouthful, but the public would just call them by the name and be done. I think I'll just start calling the team New York just to avoid using the Red Bull name.
At 7:54 AM,
D said…
The Metrologist's campaign to have fans only refer to the team as the New York Reds doesn't seem that bad to me.
At 6:37 PM,
The Metrologist said…
Well thank you!
As only a part of the supporter-led campaign for symbolic independence from Red Bull the company (huh - that's a mouthful), I'm one of those who just aren't going to say "Bull" anything. But apart from that...a hypothetical "NY Bulls" would make a very bad impression among a lot of NYC fans anyway. Don't underestimate the link a lot of NYers would make between "Bulls" Chicago, and that wouldn't be good at all.
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