What’s in a name? In the case of the Perrier Awards, 25 years of sponsorship by the sparkling bottled water manufacturers of Edinburgh comedy’s highest honour has made the brand synonymous with the genre. Now, however, Perrier have finally withdrawn, citing that “25 years is a record sponsorship and we felt that it is time for us to explore new opportunities for the brand”. The comedy awards are to be renamed the if.comeddies, in a puzzling nod to new sponsors Intelligent Finance, an Edinburgh-based division of Halifax plc. But can the awards maintain their status and brand-recognition, in every sense, with the name change? The re-financing may be intelligent to sustain the awards, but there’s a danger in playing with a winning formula like this. Perrier may yet have the last laugh, literally.
But then corporate theatre theatre sponsorship always comes with its own price and costs attached. On Broadway, this has led to theatres changing names as fast as shows: the Ford Center has become the Hilton Theatre, the Selwyn re-opened as the American Airlines, and the Winter Garden was redubbed the Cadillac Winter Garden. At least we’ve not quite sucumbed to this tendency in the West End just yet, though we’ve already got the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs and Upstairs at the Royal Court….
