So you’ve heard about the Ottawa Palladium? How about the Corel Centre? Scotiabank Place? Well forget about them all. As announced Tuesday, Ottawa’s professional hockey stadium is about to change its name for the fourth time since 1996.
By Dennis Van Staalduinen.
The good part:
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OK, I’m a branding guy. So I get the naming rights game. I’ve been part of boardroom decisions around JetForm park, and I worked at Corel during 1996. Big brands will pay a LOT of money to get their moniker on the side of a stadium, and into the mouths of fans and broadcasters. And that’s all good.
And we could choose a much more embarrassing corporate partner than Canada’s iconic automotive / hardware / electronics / now grocery brand. We could have a “Sleep Train Arena” like the NBA team the Sacramento Kings, or “Dick’s Sporting Goods Park“, the home of the Colorado Rapids soccer team.
And it sounds like the Senators ownership team actually chose this partnership, according to media reports:
“Senators owner Eugene Melynk said of the discussions leading up to Tuesday’s official agreement. ‘The possibilities kept growing and growing and growing. They made up their mind pretty quickly. After that, they moved so fast. In the end, it’s very extensive. You’re going to see a lot of big changes.’”
The annoying stuff:
Here are a few reasons this name change is annoying to me – and if Twitter is any guide (and it is) – it’s annoying many other Ottawa fans as well. Yeah, we’ll get used to the new name. Again. But before the anger dies, some thoughts on stadium branding.
Another name: It’s hard to really develop affection for a brand – any brand – if it keeps changing its name every few years. I had just gotten used to saying “Scotiabank Place”…
Generic corporate blandness: Eighty-six out of the 111 stadiums for the “big four″ professional sports leagues have generic brand names. That’s 78 per cent. A massive majority of hard-to-differentiate place names. Try this test: tell me where the Pepsi Center is. Minute Maid Park. Gillette Stadium. See? They could be anywhere.
Back to “Centre” again? The word “Place” wasn’t exactly rocking anyone’s world, but I counted: 17 out of the 30 NHL teams play in a building called “The <Brand Name> Center” or “Centre”. That’s more than 56 per cent of teams in the same league calling their building the same boring thing!
Lack of emotion: Distinctive names aren’t just more interesting and unique, they are durable. San Francisco sports fans demanded the return of “Candlestick Park” after 3M, then Monster.com bought, then abandoned the naming rights. That’s a strong brand!
You can be creative: Scotiabank also sponsors the Saddledome in Calgary, or as they call it “Scotiabank Saddledome.”
Palladium is a strong name: This is the kicker. We once had a strong, completely unique name for the stadium, and it’s still used as the street name for the stadium itself. There is no other Palladium in North America. And “Canadian Tire Palladium” isn’t so bad is it?
Dennis Van Staalduinen is president and chief storyteller of Brandvelope Consulting. This column originally appeared on his blog, Beg to Differ.
