A rose by any other name

I recently rode in the “Cape Town Cycle Tour presented by Cape Argus, Pick’n’Pay and Momentum”, the worlds largest timed cycle race with well over 30,000 riders. It covers 109 kms from the centre of Cape Town, around our beautiful coast to the Cape Peninsula and then back to the Green Point stadium. Took me over 6 hours last year on my mountain bike but this year I managed it in just 2 hours on my new Specialized Roubaix road bike. Impressive eh?

Not really – the race had to be shortened to 47 kms because of the damage caused by the terrible fires we had the week before. Many of my cycling chums were very disappointed about this, I was mightily relieved. Wiggo and I do not have a lot in common.

Everyone refers to the race as “The Argus” because for many years it was sponsored by the Cape Argus newspaper. It now has three principal sponsors – Pick ‘n’ Pay (our local Tesco look-alike), Momentum (our local Bupa) and the Cape Argus. I think despite the name change – we must now call it the Cape Town Cycle Tour, presented by etc etc etc – it will be known as the Cape Argus for some time to come.

It’s hard this title sponsorship thing. You really want to achieve full billing – the Heineken Cup in rugby, Barclays Premier League, the Investec Series in cricket. The owners/organizers want to have a non-branded title – Champions League, FIFA World Cup, the Olympics – so they can rope in more than one high paying sponsor and then hold them to ransom come renegotiation time.

On the subject of Barclays Premier League we have a bizarre situation over here. A while back Barclays bought one of the big banks, ABSA. The Premier League is incredibly popular in South Africa, we get all the games live and the club fan base is bigger than for any of the local teams. But ABSA don’t get the full benefit. Over the last year or two they have been upping the size of the Barclays logo in their ads. It started off as a small footer – “Part of Barclays”. It is now the bigger of the two logos – ABSA MEMBER OF BARCLAYS. But you can’t help feel they are missing a trick – just change the name from ABSA to Barclays. Who is advising you on this? Is it a slow migration strategy – JFDI say I.

The branding experts have been at work with Vodafone and Vodacom. The latter is our local network, the former are now the full owners. So they have totally harmonized the identity but the names are still different. Are they getting the full benefit of the global Vodafone clout, all that money spent on sponsorship? Am I missing something – just change the name.

Another quick anecdote about Vodacom. They went a bit mad on sponsorship naming rights in rugby. So at one point you could watch two teams compete in the final of the Vodacom Cup, the game would be played in the Vodacom stadium between the Vodacom Bulls from Pretoria and the Vodacom Stormers from Cape Town. Think they must have some slack in their marketing budget, don’t you?

We all know the story of the World Series in baseball. It is not American myopia and hubris, it dates back to the sponsorship by the New York World newspaper. Well in fact this has been disproved. There is no evidence of the World Series ever being sponsored by the newspaper so maybe it does have something to do with hardly any of them having passports or perhaps a dispute with the International Rounders Association, who knows.

How much would it cost Coke to get naming rights for this most American of sporting events? Or the Coke Olympics? Would it be worth it? At least they have the global brand name to pull it off. If I was the brand manager for a bread I’d change the name to Daily and let the Pope do the rest.

Powerade were one of the lesser sponsors of the Cape Argus (aka Cape Town Cycle Tour) and we were being given the stuff for free. Most people I know ask for an Energade and don’t much care which one they get as long as they have the popular Nartje flavour. Nartje is what we call a tangerine over here, it is also the name of a popular clothing range. See, my Daily Bread idea is not so daft.

All this naming stuff, it just makes your head hurt. I think I’ll relax by doing some housework. I’ll do some hoovering with my Dyson. Just kidding – the maid will do it. This is South Africa after all. Now there is a big brand brief waiting to be given – South Africa. You can surely improve on a country that is named after where it can be found on the continent. Or maybe England should renamed West Europe, that would go down well with UKIP. We could keep the logo, the rose, because surely it would smell just as sweet.

Read more from Mark Sherrington in our Clubhouse.