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June 30, 2012
Government Gets Branded
Noticing New York
Think about the appropriateness of naming New York City subway stops “Barclays Center” (while receiving virtually nothing of value to do so). “Barclays,” nothing but a name being advertised, is simply one more name in a sea of distracting ads. The “Barclays” bank didn’t build the arena that advertises its name; it’s being built by Bruce Ratner with the financial assistance of a Russian oligarch, Mikhail Prokhorov. The bank contributed nothing to the city or the borough of Brooklyn in order to build it. It has nothing to do with the arena. “Barclays” is not the name of the name of the basketball team planning to play there. It is not even necessarily the name of an honorable bank. Just of now the bank has been fined £290m ($450m) for manipulating LIBOR rates to benefit its traders and cook its books. Chief executive Bob Diamond is under pressure from British politicians to quit over the rate rigging scandal.
Perhaps the bank can certainly use the advertising at this time given its bad acts, but the public finds itself much in the same position as when, in the middle of the fiscal crisis, the new Mets “Shady Stadium” found itself opening with the name "Citifield," after an apparently failing bank. Barclays was also deeply involved in various scandals throughout the fiscal crisis. Citibank survived 2008 but was just downgraded by Moody’s. The message from the Moody’s downgrade of Citi and several other banks is that the banking system isn’t more sound than in 2008.
How long will any of these banks be around and by what names? Remember Chemical Bank? Manufacturers? One day it may cause substantial confusion when “Barclays” isn’t around either. Perhaps the most recent scandal will take its toll. Perhaps the Euro crisis will. Maybe, given the scandal, Barclays will have to rebrand with a new name or merge into a bank with another name. It may go bankrupt. The AOL Time Warner Center is no longer the AOL Time Warner Center, but for a building that is just a corporate headquarters, to endure a name change is of far less consequence than for the names of two subway stops to change in a subway system that is obscure and complicated enough to understand already.
When the Barclays name fades away there will be no residual sense of history associated with its passing because it was, after all, just an advertisement for something that had no association with its place or moment in time. There was no reason for government to confer upon it the very special honor of making it a place name in the city. It makes no more sense to name subway stations “Barclays” than to put KFC logos on Baltimore fire trucks.
Posted by steve at June 30, 2012 6:28 PM