SAINTS PRESERVE US

Eye-watering Sponsorship

One of the factors that reduced the depths of Canada’s nadir during the great 2008 economic downturn was our well-regulated banking system. Simply put, what happened on Wall Street because of its own greasy machinations as depicted in the film ‘The Big Short’ is not allowed to happen up here.

For the business quarter ending July 31, 2017, each of Canada’s six major banks reported earnings and profits which exceeded other financial experts’ expectations; they’re in with the in-crowd. Happy banks are a good indicator of the direction of the nation’s economy, certain sectors are coming around, feeling their oats and pointing upward.

When I think about my bank I think about being nickeled and dimed to the point of bankruptcy in the guise of customer service and I suppose that would be worthwhile if only I could find a branch outlet with competent people in it. All in all, my perception of Canadian banks is neutral. They provide me with services I require. They may as human constructs make poor decisions about loans and investments from time to time, but generally, it’s safe to say, they’re not prone to pissing money away.

The Bank of Nova Scotia, more commonly known in advertising and marketing patois as Scotiabank, just paid a sports and entertainment company $800-million CDN for a 20-year lease on the naming rights of its prime facility in downtown Toronto, Ontario. “Wow, Scotiabank’s ATM fees must add up and multiply faster than those compound interest crumbs it doles out to paying customers like me.” And a colossal question looms: “Wait, if you consider this a wise investment, what exactly are you doing with my funds, my life’s savings?”

Since 1999 the hockey Maple Leafs and basketball Raptors have played their home games at the ACC, more properly known as the Air Canada Centre but nobody ever called it that which may be why the airline decided to pull its sponsorship plug. Scotiabank is the Official Bank of the National Hockey League and each of its seven Canadian teams. Scotiabank wants to be Canada’s hockey bank because every single Canadian adores hockey and all of us will project those positive feelings onto a massive publicly traded financial institution because the grandly renamed Scotiabank Arena will resonate from sea, to sea to sea.

Travel has become more democratic. Many of us now can afford to go places once considered too distant, too exotic. Upon arrival, I’m always mildly dismayed by how generic much of our world has become, global brands proliferate. A Budweiser in a British chain pub is cold comfort. Corporate branding of ostensibly public buildings simply enhances existing uniformity and blandness. Scotiabank Arena could be anywhere, Wolfville or Slave Lake. In this country there is a Rogers Centre, a Rogers Arena and a Rogers Place. One of Canada’s most despised companies is at once everywhere and nowhere. The company’s brand is now linked to the fan experience in each building: expensive tickets, expensive food and expensive booze; teeth swimming bathroom lines; losing teams. So what does an $800-million exercise in brand awareness buy for Scotiabank?

Essentially signs for these times. Big ones. The bank’s wordmark will be prominently displayed proximate to its competitors’ towering headquarters on Bay Street, Canada’s de facto financial district. Scotiabank signs will glow in all their LED glory in tourism beauty shots of downtown Toronto.

Beyond the bright lights, there will be cursory and hasty mentions of Scotiabank Arena in sports media. There will be the incalculable bonus of a sustained Internet presence because sports fans visit the site of their favourite team to learn more about its corporate sponsors, really. Concertgoers who now print their venue tickets at home from a desktop unit low on the cyan cartridge and who only care about their section, row and seat numbers may note the new name but they already know where they’re going. No citizen in the Greater Toronto Area will ever utter the phrase “Scotiabank Arena” in real life conversation. Ultimately some hipster vernacular will kick in: “Let’s go to the Sco,” or “Scrote” maybe.

Existing Scotiabank customers are likely to be indifferent or appalled. Potential Scotiabank customers may not buy into the manufactured hockey mythology, especially opera or baseball fans. Why should they? And people like shortcuts. We’re good at filtering the extraneous. Scotiabank Arena will quickly cease to register in any medium, a phrase to skim over or tune out because we’ve heard and read it all before.

Branding is voodoo. The ultimate result of a strategic rationale, whether reasoned, passionate or half insane, however well executed, is difficult to quantify. Branding initiatives are often ephemeral too. Corporations tend to look no further ahead then the next quarter: logos, tag lines and mission statement platitudes can change in a frantic hurry in quest of an immediate bump. In a way they’re a lot like I was as a teenaged drug experimenter: “Nothing happened after a minute, so I took more.” Twenty years is an eternity in modern business and $800-million seems a high price to pay for forever.

This deal will not run its duration. It will crater in one of two ways. My hunch is that down the road Scotiabank will invoke an exit clause because its philosophy has changed and hockey and pro sports in general will no longer be a “synergistic” fit with its new direction, and anyway, the marketing team has studied the optics from 30,000 feet and decided that a relationship with sport and its inherent violence might be a poor fit for a family-friendly bank. Equally possible is that the ACC or Scotiabank Arena, already 20^th century, will be deemed decrepit and inadequate by its residing teams during the next decade and the only sustainable future lies in a new building with more amenities, revenue streams and 23,000 parking spaces. Either way, another foolish corporation with money to burn will bid on the naming rights.