By Alissa Von Bargen
“I think that in the future, clocks won’t say three o’ clock anymore. They’ll just get right to the point and call three o’ clock, ‘Pepsi.’”
This prediction from Douglas Coupland in his novel Microserfs seemed ominous and bizarre to me when the book was published in 1995. Surely, I thought, not everything had to be brought under the corporate umbrella.
Then I saw my first commercial at the movies, for Coke, just before the previews began for Seven. I’m not sure if I was more frightened by Gwyneth Paltrow’s severed head or Cineplex Odeon trying to sell me Coke in the theatre. I already bought it at the concession stand. But like all things new and offensive- cell phones and Mousketeer pop stars spring to mind- it seems we’ve become used to the corporate invasion.
And so, it appears, has the arts community in Ottawa. The Great Canadian Theatre Company is currently searching for a corporation to sponsor a new building for their productions. In return the corporation’s name will grace the new structure.
This kind of integration of corporations and the arts has become the norm, reducing the stain of corporate sponsorship to a light wash.
Any corporation that will pay to combine its name with the GCTC will likely be more interested in advertising than some outdated notion of artistic patronage.
“There’s a movement away from pure philanthropy,” says Charles McFarland, managing director of the GCTC. “The money for sponsorship comes in from a marketing budget now.”
As cold and impersonal as this may sound, it’s a bonanza for arts groups.
Artists can maintain creative freedom while making money, just by putting a corporation’s name on a building.
In return, corporations are spending on a tax-deductible “contribution” that doubles as an advertisement while projecting themselves as good citizens of the community. The fear of corporate money interfering with the creative vision of artists is surprisingly non-existent.
“(GCTC) decides on projects in terms of artistic directions first, and then we look for sponsors,” McFarland says. “People are either interested or off-put by the theatre.”
Although the arts have always had to scratch for cash from companies and individual sponsors, it’s never been quite so blunt, or, for that matter, realistic.
The concept of a “Wal-mart GCTC” is less strange than it initially sounds. Commercials are so inescapable that they’re part of our vocabulary: tissue is Kleenex, pain reliever is Tylenol and even though three o’ clock isn’t Pepsi yet, it probably will be soon.
Corporate sponsorship is more and more a marketing proposition, with a strategic advertising focus on how many pairs of eyes see a corporation’s name and whether patrons of the theatre fit into a corporation’s target market, McFarland says.
At least both sides are being honest about the transaction now. But this new attitude should be as far as the arts and business merge, because if an actor ever downs a Mountain Dew during one of Hamlet’s soliloquies, I, too, shall take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
Or holler “Do the Dew!”