shrewd marketing or spam?

Couple of moves worth commenting:

- The Chicago White Sox home games are going to start at exactly 7:11pm. Not 7:10 nor 7:12. That's because the convenience store chain 7-eleven has agreed on a US$ 500,000 a year sponsorship through 2009. Viewers are now going to be asked to tune in at exactly 7-eleven, or rather at 7:11pm, by TV announcers. See the team's press release here.

- More recently and still in sports sponsorship, State Farm, an insurance company, closed a deal to put its logo on more than 40 college basketball courts across the US. Aside from the usual sideline boards, they'll now have their logo on the back of backboards, affixed to the support arm.
- Starbucks is being targeted by an online campaign that aims to have the coffee chain's Forbidden City store in Beijing closed. See the story in The Guardian, here (reg. required). Check out this flickr page as well for more pictures.

Reference:
Elliot, Stuart (2007). State Farm Is There, Right by the Backboard. The New York Times. January 31, 2007. (see here)
Watts, Jonathan (2007). Starbucks Faces Eviction From the Forbidden City. The Guardian. January 18, 2007.