Pioneer Square shilling corporate goods?
All last week, Red Bull was in town sponsoring an art exhibit in both Pioneer Square and along 5th and 6th street. While I would agree that this is shilling for a corp, at least we get something out of it in the form of entertainment.
Today, while Red Bull was tearing down, I eyed two brand spankin’ new Cadillacs. One sedan and one large SUV. They were parked in the corner of the square and sales/marketing people were handing out lit. So, is Pioneer Courthouse Square now a car lot? I know it used to be a parking lot in the past, but had missed the memo about its re-purpose. I wonder when Walmart or Safeway will setup isles of food for your shopping ease.
Also, both vehicles were idling with the doors open. In Portland, don’t they know that alone could cause a riot?
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I’d like to see Camel stump up enough cash to run a promotion down there and have the rent-a-cops hold off enforcing the smoking ban for a day. What do you think? $50,000? $100,000? How much does a law cost?
Although I’ve been annoyed numerous times by some of the “programming” of the Square, the square is freely available for private parties to rent (in portions or in whole) for special events and promotions (according to some minimal set of cover-your-ass criteria, I’m sure) and the presence of a particular corporation doesn’t necessarily constitute “shilling” on the part of square management.
It’s interesting to see how square management markets the square as an “interactive billboard” to corporations… see:
http://www.pioneercourthousesquare.org/hold_event.htm
Bob, I realize it is totally fine for this to go on. We see it all the time. Yet, this one was so blaringly selling of cars. Normally, it is some corporation doing an event and trying to sell you a car or something. There was no “event” associated with the Caddies and that just struck me as off.
Corporations are filled with people. People who have kids, love rock, take hikes, ride bikes and plan vacations with family. Corporations provide jobs and benefits to employees. They provide rejuvenation to areas long lax. That said, many also overpay executives with the wrong incentives. Portland is known for dumping on corporations but we might be more credible if we took the time to be specific about what practices each corporation uses that make us antagonistic.
I’d rather have cars for sale than the Scientologists recruiting there.
Lady,
You are right. In the end, a lot of individual who support families work for “corporations.” Whether right or wrong, they pay the bills.
I guess my thought here was that there wasn’t an added benefit other than them showing off the cars. If there was a performer or a juggler, hey, even a clown would have been fun, I would be ok. Yet, it felt like a car lot and that just struck me as wrong for a public park.
Imagine cars parked in Laurelhurst or Grant Park. What about the entire length of Waterfront park being covered by cars with salesman all over the place?
Just a thought.
Dieselboi - I feel your paint. A decade or more ago (I can’t remember the year because I was an on-again off-again student for a long time) at OSU I remember a Chrysler-sponsored “technology” event in the OSU quad which was entirely and obviously a car-selling event. The only “technology” they showed was an undriveable concept car that itself was several years-old and would never see production. I wrote a short guest editorial (a glorified letter-to-the-editor, really) in the OSU Barometer about it at the time.
The event would have been fine if it somehow did something with one of the engineering departments. Heck, there were enough loan officers there that they could have done something for accounting majors, but no, it was pure selling. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but nobody in Corvallis was unaware of what the local car dealers already had to offer — just seems like a complete waste of time educationally speaking.)
- Bob R.
Yikes, Holy Late Night Blog Typo, Batman! That should be “I feel your pain”, not “I feel your paint.” Although, depending on the texture of the wall, it could be interesting…
- Bob R.
How did you know we have texture paint on our walls?
Are you watching me?
:)
> How did you know we have texture paint on our walls?
That would be telling.
- Bob R.
From the Pioneer Courthouse Square Events listing:
Cadillac Auto Display | 12:00pm-6:00pm
Cadillac will be onsite at the Square with two of their brand new 2008 vehicles to introduce to the public!
I really like the use of language (introduced to the public) and the exclamation point at the end, as if Portlanders are going to be SO EXCITED to meet these new cars.