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Originally Posted by manny_santos
The John Labatt Centre, or JLC, has become a well-known brand in London and even Southern Ontario. Why the sudden need to change the name?
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Because the current name is not pushing a specific corporate product, nor a part of any specific marketing strategy the company is pursuing. I'm sure that they consider the lack of a specific product name in the current title makes it an underutilized asset from a marketing standpoint. And here is the key issue in regard to getting their brand of choice in the facility name: The 2013 World Figure Skating Championships and its
150 million worldwide viewers. One can imagine how many thousands of times and in how many languages the word
Budweiser will be uttered on worldwide television during the week-long duration of the broadcast of the event. And for the parent company of Labatts,
Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V., Bud is a brand of theirs that they market all over the world, including China. Outside of Canada and some regional markets in the U.S., almost no one has ever heard of Labatts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos
From my standpoint with my marketing background, I think it's a really stupid move, a waste of time, and a waste of money to re-brand what has only recently become a well-known facility
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Agreed that the name recognition has been huge for not only the facility, but the city as well. After the figure skating championships are over, the name change to a bland and very unexceptional product will hurt the image of the facility and the city and cause confusion to the event-going public. After all, the traditional image of the product's market demographic is primarily one of working-class mid-western Americans. Budweiser Gardens sounds like a place that sweaty, dirty steelworkers from Gary Indiana go to for cheap cold beer after a hard day in the coke mills prior to heading home and beating their wives. This is not the image that London needs.
Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V. is not however going to be concerned about the current
"JLC" local name recognition value for the facility, or the city - as it is headquartered 6,000 km's away. Their concern is about their brand of choice being up on yet another lighting standard that will receive global attention for a week.
Quote:
Originally Posted by manny_santos
I almost guarantee the JLC rebranding was invented by a 20-year-old in another city who has never been to London.
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Like I said, they are 6,000 km's away. I'll go one further and guess that the marketing people at
Anheuser-Busch InBev that pushed this had never even heard of John Labatt, London, or for that matter Ontario until the WFSC was coming to London. The 2 million or so people that the JLC, er...
Budweiser Gardens serves is an insignificant beer market to them. I suspect that there is simply a broader strategy that has them pushing Bud real hard in several key global markets (especially Asia), and the diktat from head office to their regional offices (such as Labatts in Toronto) is to simply get a Bud label attached to anything that they can get their hands on that will support that strategy.
I'm sure that if their strategy was to get different one of their brands marketed hard, the arena would be named after that brand... perhaps their Ukrainian
Chernigivske beer brand for example. The JLC could then be renamed as the
"Chernigivske People's Hall For Glorious Sport Competition And Cultural Exposition"
There is an important lesson in this: things that people consider part of their community (such as in this case London's proud association with the Labatt heritage) have in fact been sold to powerful corporations who frequently have no reciprocal feelings towards that community. A company headquartered out of Holland owns all things Labatt, and on their whim that name could all be ended tomorrow if that's what they wanted.
There is nothing good in this re-branding for London or the facility. It will in fact in the long term cause confusion amongst the event-going public, likely hurting sales and attendance - especially from out of town visitors. The image of the product in this part of the world is one of American mediocrity - not helping the image of the facility or city.
This is about a giant multi-national corporation purchasing week-long global exposure for one of their key brands.