To end Your World on Wednesday (5/9/12), Neil Cavuto offered up his “Common Sense” prescription for Greece’s economic woes: Commercialize its antiquities. It was hard to tell just how serious he was or was not. “You’ve got temples like they’re going out of style… All this talk that you can’t pay your bills? …You, my friends, are sitting on a gold mine. I say, start sponsoring it… Slap company logos on it. Each and every antiquity part of it.”
Here’s the longer version:
“Austerity obviously ain’t cutting it, so I say, cut to commercial. And commercialize what you’ve got. And, my fellow Greeks, you’ve got a lot: The Acropolis and the Parthenon, Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics. Crete, Santorini, the temple of Zeus, the Temple of Poseidon, the Temple of Delphi. I mean, you’ve got temples like they’re going out of style. Which in your case they have… been out of style for the last few thousand years. But you know what? They still look pretty good to me.”
Because all this talk that you can’t pay your bills? It’s all Greek to them. All Greek to me. Here’s why. You, my friends, are sitting on a gold mine. I say, start sponsoring it… Slap company logos on it. Each and every antiquity part of it… Trust me, if the Mets can swallow Citi Field, and both the New York Giants and Jets can share MetLife stadium, and no less than our bank -bashing President can make his big re-nomination speech this summer at Bank of America Stadium, you my drachma drama queens can live with Pep Boys Parthenon. Or Olympic Paint Olympia, or Crate and Barrel at Crete, or Mickey Dees at Mykonos. And you, the folks who invented Greek diners, could hardly take umbrage to a bunch of those diners taking turns sponsoring – hello! – the acropolis. It’s a natural. I’ve even got an ad campaign for that one.
Eat up the history, but first, just eat. You’re telling me Pepsi would pass on promoting the Parthenon? Or Zappos anything Zeus?
Get with it, and slap a billboard on it… You can’t do any worse… And if you truly believe you’re facing a financial apocalypse, at least have a company underwrite the cost. At the - you guessed it. Monsanto Monastery of the Apocalypse… You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to realize – hello! Start hawking.
Or I’m telling you, your whole country’s the pits. Olive pits… So quit whining and start making more wine. And by the way, the Delphi Automotive folks are on line one. Take a wild guess what they want to sponsor.”
Imagine what Cavuto might want us to start hawking to pay off our deficit. The White House? Capitol Hill? The Lincoln Memorial? The Grand Canyon? Mount Rushmore? Come to think of it, maybe he can start hawking his own shows and himself.
On the other hand, perhaps Cavuto would answer what exactly all these corporations are achieving with all their “branding.” Their “sponsorships” don’t translate into the venues becoming profitable. It’d also be interesting to know why these corporations aren’t asked to actually, you know, BUILD all these venues. Many (if not most) of the venues were built with TAXPAYER money, only to have some corporation to come along months after the site’s opened and pay a small fraction of the original cost to get its name on the place.
Hell, watch the college bowl games—with all those grand corporate names attached—and see how many of those “corporate sponsors” are the SOLE “sponsors” of the games. The game may be called the “State Farm Boring-as-Hell Bowl Game” but the TV ads include ads from car companies, beer companies, etc.
{Well, that and eliminate all regulations and unions}
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