Issue 21, Fall 2001

William A. McEachern, Editor

Evidence Files
THE ECONOMICS OF ATTENTION

Invesco, the Denver based mutual funds company, will pay $60 million over 20 years for the right to call the new Denver Broncos's stadium Invesco Field at Mile High. Paying big bucks for such attention is nothing new. Most sports venues have high priced monikers. Denver also has Coors Field and the Pepsi Center. The man-bites-dog part of the story is that the local paper, the Denver Post, has said it will not use the name Invesco Field and instead will simply call the place Mile High stadium, the name of the Broncos's former stadium. If this becomes a trend, especially on TV broadcasts, the value of naming rights will crash. If only the Denver paper drops the name, Invesco may still get the attention it seeks even in Denver. It's like me telling you not to think about an elephant. Are you thinking about one? I told you not to. While you're at it, don't think about Invesco Field either.

Bulgari, the Italian jeweler, paid author Fay Weldon an undisclosed sum for the prominent placement of its jewelry in her new novel. This appears to be a first in the book industry. The agreement required that Weldon mention Bulgari at least a dozen times. She decided to make the jewelry the centerpiece of her book. She said she initially had qualms about the proposal, but then decided, "I don't care. Let my name be mud. They never give me the Booker prize anyway." Apparently she believed she did not have a vaunted literary reputation to protect. The Bulgari Connection was published in October by Flamingo Books.

The poet Edna St. Vincent Millay apparently believed she did have a literary reputation to protect. When she worked as a foreign correspondent for Vanity Fair, a position she accepted after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, she would not let the magazine use her real name. The magazine wanted to capitalize on her fame and offered her twice the pay to use her real name, but she continued to write under a pseudonym.

According to Harper's magazine, there were 332 entertainment award ceremonies held in 2000. Herbert Simon's words again come to mind: "When there is a wealth of information, there is a poverty of attention."
students.

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