Want your name seen by millions? Here’s your chance
The Dorito? The Chevy? How about the Trump? We’re talking putting a new name on one of the most prominent buildings Downtown.
It’s the Memphis Cook Convention Center.
The name is up for grabs on the block-long beige monolith standing near the riverfront. Memphis’ convention board decided this week to explore selling the naming rights. They hope to get as much as $1 million a year. Maybe more. That’s a lot of money. Once there was a big sign near the Cook telling the world Memphis was “Home of the Blues, Birthplace of Rock n Roll.” It was one of the first greetings for motorists driving over the Mississippi River into the big city on the bluff. It appeared on a silo that is gone now, though it looked good, conveyed a terrific sense of place.
Now a major uplift is about to start on the convention hall. With it could come another name.
Memphis officials figure the additional revenue can help cover expenses running the city. AutoZone, of course, could step up. Or FedEx or St. Jude or any of a few hundred Memphis brands with the budget for a prominent name on a big building.
So could snack food makers, car companies and hotel chains.
Chris Foy expects he’ll find considerable interest from folks who want their brand name inside and outside the convention hall.
“Memphis is an emerging city, and a growing city. This is going to be something very visible for the party able to benefit from it,” said Foy, president of Impression Sports & Entertainment LLC of Denver.
Foy’s firm was hired to figure out what the naming rights are worth, who might want to lease them for 10 or 20 years and craft a strategy to sign them up.
Part of the firm’s handiwork: The venerable football stadium long known as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is now known as the United Airlines Memorial Coliseum, courtesy of a $69 million naming rights deal.
Impression will partner on the Memphis task with Donegal Associates, a local firm founded by former Memphis Grizzlies senior vice president Mike Humes.
Seeing brand names proliferate on arenas, sports jerseys, parking lots and buildings are part of the times. It was different not too long ago.
Memphis Cook dates to 1968, an era when wealthy benefactors were content to be remembered simply by having a building named after them. In this case, it is the late Everett Cook.
He was once prominent, although it was his fabulously wealthy son who really wanted his father’s name on the convention hall. The son, the late Memphis commodities dealer and manufacturer Edward “Ned” Cook, was instrumental in aiding the growth of FedEx Corp. when it was an untested idea just starting out at Memphis International Airport.
After Ned’s death in 2001, an editorial by The Commercial Appeal pointed out: “Ned Cook’s influence on the growth and maturity of his hometown will be forever felt.”
Well, that was then. As the Memphis Business Journal reported, today the city is striving to find every dime it can, including by selling naming rights.
“We think we need to look under every opportunity to maximize revenues,” said Doug McGowen, city of Memphis chief operations officer, according to the Journal.
We see naming rights unfolding more often now. Gossett Motors is on the sign at the FedExForum parking garage, replacing Toyota. And naming rights are probably going to become more common, especially as television and print audiences get smaller, and advertising gets spread over a welter of smaller digital sites.
“The world of media is changing with cord cutting and streaming and overthe-top, on-demand programming people are watching,” Foy said.
Getting a name up on a building that is permanent and highly visible to drivers and pedestrians is worth something to brands, he said.
That goes for selling naming rights inside the building on elements such as Wi-Fi stations and the big electronic screens visible from the convention floor.
“As much as people see on the outside of the building, there are also specific objectives companies want to achieve inside the building when they are aligning with the venue,’’ Foy said. How much is all that worth? We’ll find out soon. Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com and (901) 529-2292.