prPOPS!

Adios, Jacob’s Field. Hello…Progressive Field?

If you don’t live in Cleveland, you might not care when the Jake, home of the Cleveland Indians, sold its naming rights for an easy $3.6 mil to Progressive Insurance in January. According to Progressive’s site, it is the third largest auto insurance group in the country.

One thing’s for sure, there are a lot of aaaaangry Cleveland-ers, and they are not afraid to speak their minds, especially in the form of online comments.

Maybe if we hadn’t lost the Gund to Quicken Loans people wouldn’t be feeling as dejected or let-down.

Trendy Cleveland news magazine, Scene, recently ran an article titled, “How Progressive insurance lost what made it progressive,” which garnered over 35 passionate comments and responses.

The comments either:

• Defended the Mayfield insurance giant
• Negatively back-lashed it
• Complained (or b****ed) about the name change, or
• Yelled at the people who were b****ing.

So what’s the big deal? What’s all this hoopla and uproar about?

For starters, apparently people, more importantly, its employees, aren’t too happy about little ol’ Progressive Insurance. It’s no secret the company isn’t doing as well as it did in the past. Shares have nose-dived and over 300 employees were shooed out since November.

It’s rumored that ever since “Peter B.” Lewis passed on his Chief Executive Officer title to Glenn Renwick, Progressive has turned into the land of the Iron Fist, and this does not make for a happy work environment.

Progressive’s branding and marketing strategy has also taken some heat. Lisa Rab, author of the Scenearticle, describes Progressive’s high-tech and unoriginal commercials as no match for Allstate’s notable spokesperson (Dennis Haysbert) or GEICO’s funny cavemen or cute Australian gecko.

I couldn’t even tell you what Progressive’s slogan, tagline, or jingle is.

I’m thinking that splashing its large block letter name across Cleveland’s downtown Indian’s stadium (and all other stadium materials) won’t cause people running…or driving their uninsured cars…to Progressive.

A company cannot solely rely on building a brand name and then put aside the creation and implementation of a concise customer and employee message, a strategic public relations and marketing plan, and strong and rememorable advertising.

I’m interested to see if Progressive unveils a PR campaign once baseball season gets underway or if it continues to rely on corporate stadium ads…

And if Wal-Mart buys the naming rights for the Brown’s stadium, I’m outta here.