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Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York
University’s Stern School of Business, tells Co.Design
that it’s not shocking that Citi Bike would have difficulties
finding additional sponsorship. “When the first member on
your team is A-Rod, it doesn’t leave a lot of opportunity or
budget to other players,” he says. “When your first sponsor
is Citi and it’s called Citi Bike, there’s not a lot of value for
other advertisers. They should have known upfront they
were selling one sponsorship, and should have planned
accordingly.” (According to Bloomberg Businessweek,
Bloomberg administration officials initially asked Citigroup
for more, but were negotiated down.)
WHEN YOUR FIRST SPONSOR IS CITI
AND IT’S CALLED CITI BIKE, THERE’S
NOT A LOT OF VALUE FOR OTHER
ADVERTISERS.
Citi has branded the bike-sharing service in New York so
fantastically that trying to separate the bikes from their sponsor
can be confusing. “It’s the visual and the verbal,” explains
Kevin Lane Keller, a marketing professor at Dartmouth’s
Tuck School of Business. First, Citi Bike and Citibank sound
so similar that in announcing the partnership, then-Mayor
Michael Bloomberg got them mixed up.
Then there’s the physical branding: In addition to the Citi
logo, the bike-share network is plastered with the bank’s
distinct shade of cobalt blue (a hue screenwriter Delia
Ephron decried as having “distorted every view” in the city).
website looks just similar enough to Citi the bank’s actual
site (again, that blue!), to make me briefly question whether
I was looking at a Citi-owned product. I’m not the only one
who gets confused. Vandals have smashed Citi Bike docking
stations in protest of Citigroup. Some