How to Make Rest Stops a Viable Sponsorship Opportunity
Posted: 3/30/2010 3:22:08 PM by
Vinu Joseph | with 0 comments
Plenty of bandwidth has been spent on this site discussing how government entities get it wrong when dealing with corporate sponsorship. And this Philly.com article on a plan to sell naming rights to rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike will do little to reverse that trend. The stops are already named for New Jersey’s most famous sons and daughters, so corporate naming rights can be expected to inspire particularly heated backlash.
But the end of the article offers a glimmer of hope, with this suggestion from Sandy Levins, board president of the Camden County Historical Society: "You could keep the name and add a corporate sponsorship . . . The corporation could add a sign that speaks of sponsorship. That way they could be seen as getting behind the history of New Jersey."
While a naming rights deal is generally more about eyeballs than emotion, building on Levins’ suggestion could help make this plan far more valuable to sponsors and palatable to the residents of New Jersey. Rather than treating a rest stop like a billboard, treat it as a vehicle for companies to engage actively with consumers—not unlike a mall, airport or any other high-traffic venue. A few quick ideas on what a rest stop “sponsorship” could entail:
- Branded displays featuring regularly updated info on New Jersey history and the figure the rest stop is named for;
- Sponsor-provided amenities, like picnic tables, playgrounds, dog runs, wireless Internet areas, etc.;
- Sampling and giveaways through a stop’s retail locations
These deals would still probably require a fair amount of on-site branding to appeal to media-centric buyers. But both sponsors and government officials could reasonably point to features like the ones above to illustrate the value such deals provide to rest stop patrons along with the cash they provide to the state.
Certainly no one will mistake a Turnpike rest stop for a museum or an amusement park, but there’s no reason the state shouldn’t draw from those property genres when crafting this program.
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Filed under: government/municipal, naming rights, backlash