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Isn’t it time we all had a corporate sponsor?

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Times Staff Writer

Heard the news? The Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino is now the Hyundai Pavilion of Glen Helen.

Same amphitheater, same parking lot, same hot dogs, same range of rock, pop and country bands, just a new sponsor and new name.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. April 12, 2003 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday April 12, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 0 inches; 23 words Type of Material: Correction
Musician’s name -- The Here and Now column in Thursday’s Calendar Weekend misspelled the name of R&B; musician Swamp Dogg as Swampp Dogg.

I can hear the anticorporate whiners now: Can’t they leave well enough alone? Isn’t there some place we can spend our leisure time and be spared the commercial hype?

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I used to be one of them.

I cringed a few years back when the attractively alliterative Anaheim Arena was dully rechristened the Arrowhead Pond with the signing of a check, as I did when the poetically monikered Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre turned into Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, a name with the aesthetic charm of a graffiti scrawl.

What once was the exception is now the rule. Rock bands’ tour itineraries read like the Dow Jones industrial averages: Pepsi Arena, Target Center, American Airlines Center, Hifi Buys Amphitheatre and my current favorite on Ticketmaster’s Web site: Sleep Train Amphitheatre (Formerly Auto West Amphitheatre).

Now, to those who would gripe about Hyundai or Sleep Train getting their names in front of the public any way they can, I say: Get over it.

More to the point, get with it.

The marketing idea behind this trend is consumer impressions. The more often we see a company’s name, the theory goes, the more likely we’ll trust that company and, in turn, buy its products or services when the opportunity arises.

Thus, we get corporate names on the sports facilities and concert venues we attend, ubiquitous product placement in the movies, TV and cable shows we watch, even in the air we breathe (thanks, Fuji blimp).

But as I look around, I don’t see rampant greed; I see missed opportunities galore.

The baseball season is upon us. I see tremendous marketing potential in the seventh-inning stretch.

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If sponsors can get products placed in movies, why not in a song?

“Take me out to the (Rawlings official major league) ball game

Take me out with the crowd

Buy me some (Planters dry roasted) peanuts and Cracker Jack (product placement waaaaay ahead of its time)

I don’t care if I ever get back

For it’s (frosty A&W;) root, root, root (beer) for the (Walt Disney Co.-owned) Angels ....”

Well, you get the idea.

The problem, as I see it, isn’t creeping commercialism, it’s that each of us isn’t getting his or her fair share. R&B; musician Swampp Dogg nailed it a couple of decades ago with an album he titled “I’m Not Selling Out -- I’m Buying In!”

The biggest untapped avenue for sponsorship may just be us. Individuals. You and me.

Here in Southern California, most of us drive, right? A lot. So while tooling down the 405 the other day, I counted: Every two seconds, 10 to 15 cars passed me going the other way. That’s 300 to 450 cars per mile.

Even with the modest 15,000 miles I put on my Camry (a Toyota product) each year, that’s 4.5 million people whizzing by me, each a valuable consumer impression waiting to be made.

Why should NASCAR drivers be the only ones with company logos plastered over every square inch of their vehicles and their clothes?

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I’ll lobby Coke for a deal to place one of its emblems on my car’s roof; you negotiate for a Del Taco sign on yours; your neighbor gets a Nike logo on his. Everybody wins. Those companies’ sales soar; you, I and Tiger Woods are all in the same tax bracket; and none of us ever again experience the spiritual void of a commercial-free moment in our lives.

I’m living in Fantasyland, you say? In fact, New Jersey-based AdWraps is doing exactly that. They’ve got 30,000 to 40,000 folks across the country ready and willing to wrap their car in ad copy -- for a price.

Corporate America, get on the stick.

Now I bid you good (courtesy of Sleep-Eze) night.

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Randy Lewis may be reached at randy.lewis@latimes.com.

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