From the bad moments in corporate marketing file:
San Francisco renamed its most storied sports stadium "Monster Park" on Tuesday, with a Bay Area electronics cable company agreeing to pay at least $6 million for the naming rights to Candlestick Park."It's a only-in-San Francisco-name and San Francisco prides itself on being different and this is just another example of us standing out in a crowd," said Sam Singer, spokesman for the San Francisco 49ers, who play at the stadium.
The name, which becomes effective in time for Sunday's game against the St. Louis Rams, comes from the stadium's new sponsor, Monster Cable Products, a San Francisco-area company that sells audio cables such as those connecting guitars to amplifiers.
Now I'm sure the folks at Monster thought this was a great way to get their product line top of mind with millions of consumers. But I don't think it will work.
The first thing I thought when I read the headline was that the online job site, Monster.com, had purchased the naming rights. Which undoubtedly is what millions of others of unsuspecting individuals will think when they hear the name Monster Park.
You can almost hear the Monster.com marketing cackling in the distance.
Can you say absolute waste of marketing dollars? I knew you could.
Whoever came up with this idea better get ready to upload his/her resume to Monster.com.
Wow, I thought the same exact thing – especially because it was San Francisco Monster.com was the first thing on the brain. Of course, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t call it either Candlestick or Balco. This has always been one of the biggest wastes in marketing money a company can make IMO. You can take that $6 mil and just advertise on tv and probably make a much bigger branding impact.
MONSTER MIS-BRAND?
Naming-rights deals don’t get much more fun than this: Candlestick Park (once, briefly, 3Com Park), home of the San Francisco 49ers, will now be known as Monster Park, to the tune of $6 million.
Why Monster Park?
The name comes from its new spon…