Those things that are most valuable in this world can turn immediately worthless once you try to sell them.
To comprehend the truth of this, you need only to look at two famous structures here: the Trans World Dome, home of the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League, and the Gateway Arch, the monument on the Mississippi River commemorating America’s westward expansion.
The Trans World Dome has been in town for only a few years. To drive by it is to be taken aback by the glaring, garish advertising signs that are mounted on its exterior. NationsBank. Dodge trucks. Coca-Cola. Southwestern Bell. The Missouri Lottery. Budweiser. And, of course, Trans World Airlines.
The advertising signs are so intrusive, so blatant, that the football stadium itself seems almost an afterthought. It appears to be there only to hold up the signs. Whatever games are played inside become immediately–before the kickoff–secondary to the commerce that is the evident reason for all of this.
The Gateway Arch–opened 30 years ago–is not sponsored. Operated by the National Parks Service, the Arch is its own symbol, its own logo. It is the symbol of St. Louis–and most likely will be long after the Trans World Dome is torn down and replaced by the next billboard-disguised-as-a-sports-arena.
It is easy to imagine corporations wanting to sponsor the Arch–the Coca-Cola Arch, the Toyota Arch, logically the McDonald’s Arch. But once you sell something that you know is valuable, you sometimes realize that it has no value left.
The situation the American Medical Association finds itself in is case in point. The AMA–this country’s largest organization of physicians–entered into a deal with Sunbeam Corp. to provide exclusive AMA endorsements for Sunbeam products. Sunbeam would benefit by being associated with the prestige of the AMA; the AMA would benefit by making a great deal of money.
But it backfired. Many people–including many of the doctors who make up the AMA’s membership–objected to the deal. Whatever prestige the AMA has, those people believed, would be diminished by selling the use of the AMA’s seal. That seal has immense value–until you try to sell it.
The Heisman Trophy, too. College football’s most hallowed award–presented for the last 62 years to the U.S.’ best college football player– has represented all that is worthy about intercollegiate sports. It is what it is–simply the Heisman Trophy, presented by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York.
But this year, it has been reported, the Downtown Athletic Club has licensed the image of the trophy to a big national beer company. What the company gets for its money is the right to run a “Name the Heisman Trophy Winner” contest. In addition to associating itself with the Heisman Trophy, the beer company will be allowed to send eight winning contestants to the Heisman ceremony in New York.
The trophy has value beyond any dollar amount–until you try to sell it. The corporation that owns this newspaper also owns the Chicago Cubs. When Tribune Co. bought the Cubs, it took over ownership of Wrigley Field–one of the most celebrated pieces of property in all of sports.
The name of the ballpark didn’t change. An argument could have been made that Tribune Field would have been no more commercial a name than Wrigley Field–after all, the Wrigley family, during the years it owned the Cubs, was not-so-indirectly putting the idea of buying a pack of chewing gum into the head of every person who bought a ticket or watched a Cubs telecast or read the name of the ballpark in a newspaper.
The people who run Tribune Co. don’t always share their boardroom reasoning with those of us who work for them– but it would seem that someone may have realized that by changing the name of Wrigley Field, they would have been doing away with a precious piece of equity–good will squandered. Wrigley Field means something, as is–to change that, even if you can, even if you own the place, would in the end be a bad business decision.
Not that the people of St. Louis are guaranteed that they will never someday awaken to the sight of the Microsoft Arch. Not today, though (we think).
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MORE ON THE INTERNET: Bob Greene reports on the ryhthms of American life at chicago.tribune.com/go/greene
