PressEthic

Sponsorship and advertising seems to have reached an all-time high. Sporting events are the easiest targets. With the upcoming college bowl season, viewers will see half-time reports sponsored by Tostitos and two-minute warnings by other, large corporations. A recent article in Advertising Age reports that sponsors and advertisers have found a new area to spend their money—national landmarks.

According to the article:

It won't be renamed the Golden Arches Bridge, but the directors of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge are looking for corporate sponsors to help subsidize the landmark's $87 million deficit.

The project is drawing mixed reaction. Some of the bay area’s ad agencies are concerned with companies that are not San Francisco-based sponsoring the project.

One example: Rice-A-Roni, which is known as the San Francisco treat and still uses a cable car as its marketing icon, but is now owned by a Chicago company.

Others are concerned that the 1,200 people who have committed suicide from the bridge will deter potential marketers. It isn’t until the end of the article that the author addresses the elephant in the room. Does anyone think we are crossing a line here? Sponsorship of a national landmark? What’s next? I expect this from the Super Bowl, but not from the Department of Parks and Recreation.

While this is not exactly a media issue, it seems relevant to the lines advertisers are crossing in newspapers and other media outlets. As consumers are inundated with mediums to search for news and information, clever advertisers will find new ways to reach them. In this case, it means sponsoring a construction and maintenance project on a historic, national monument.