Here’s a piece someone tried to sneak into the media on a Friday evening with the hope that it would elude most news editors over the weekend and become “non-news” by the following Monday. Haha! They weren’t counting on the good old BCS Blog, though, and so now I’m here to expose the story of the century.

Ok, not the century. Or the decade. Or the year.

Not even the story of the day. But it caught my attention and I’ll tell you why. (Of course I will, that’s the purpose of a blog, isn’t it?)

A bunch of real estate investors from New York are working on purchasing the Sears Tower in Chicago from MetLife – a very nice company who currently owns a building with their name on it in the Big Apple. The purchase of the Sears Tower by a bunch of out of towners isn’t news, though. That’s been going on for just over a decade once Sears decided to move out to the suburbs and into an office building without so many flights of stairs.

What is news, however, is that after years of discussion and consideration, the new owners are expected to pursue naming rights as a potential source of revenue to offset the purchase price of the tower, some $840 million. The cost for the naming rights? As much as $10 million a year.

Huh?

Now I’m no real estate mogul (I proved that early on in my career), but it seems to me that these guys are estimating the value of the name on the building to be worth approximately 5% of the value of their purchase. (NOTE: I did some high-level math to figure out approximately what they would pay on a $840 million mortgage over a set period of time, blah, blah, blah – until my eyes glazed over.)

I think you’d have to be dealing with some major self-esteem issues to justify spending ten mil to re-name the Sears Tower after you or your company or your pet poodle or whatever. After all, couldn’t you make a bolder, stronger, more high impact statement about yourself or your brand with $10 million a year some other way?

That got me thinking … are there any brands for whom the purchase of the naming rights to the Sears Tower might make sense? There was only one I could think of …

Viagra.

If you have a suggestion for who should purchase the naming rights to the Sears Tower, let me know. E-mail me at: mbawden@brandcentralstation.com

Later.

Chicagobusiness.com

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