We're accustomed, nowadays, to having our football venues decorated with the names and logos of the corporate great and good. Globe-straddling PLCs pay fortunes to wash our brains with smart, colourful, repetitive hoardings shouting their brands. Just another sign of the corporatisation of the game - gone are the days when football grounds advertised only local merchants and homely products like OXO or Bovril.
Well except, that is, at Turf Moor. What a delight, yesterday, to see the best hoarding in the house at Burnley - directly behind the right hand goal as the TV cameras looked - devoted to Lancashire's leading* minibus and van dealership, David Fishwick.
Forget your millions-a-season, centrally negotiated deals with Barclays, Smirnoff Ice, Santander and their ilk. Down at Turf Moor, the local van salesman probably paid £350 a year for five years' right to place his prosaic sign behind the goal. It probably seemed like an expensive gamble at the time.
Now, less than a week into the season, he must be the most famous van salesman in the country. I bet traffic to Fishwick's website (which I am happy to promote - http://www.davidfishwick.com/ - it's a good deal more professional than his sign) has doubled overnight.
It gets better. When the camera panned back for a goal kick, I couldn't help but notice that one entire end of Burnley's ground is named "The David Fishwick Stand". Move over Emirates, move over Reebok. Goodbye, Allianz.
In this modern world starved of eccentricity, companies and brands who can be associated with an actual individual - or the idea of one - can acquire almost heroic status. Look at long time Carlisle United shirt sponsors, Eddie Stobart plc. Thousands of roadhoppers forget the PLC and build their own, invariably genial image of Eddie as they pass his cheerfully-liveried trucks on the motorway.
Will David Fishwick - whoever the hell he actually is - achieve the same status? I predict he will.
* Note: I have no idea if this is actually the case. There might be three larger van and minibus dealers in Morecambe alone, for all I know.
No comments:
Post a Comment