Dear Editor,
By agreeing to collect from U.S. Bank only what amounts to a “finders fee” for each new customer in the recent corporate sponsorship deal, UC Davis officials gave away far too much.
One component of the deal can be described simply as an ad buy: putting the U.S. Bank logo on all student and faculty identification cards. Typically, advertising space is expensive. For the sake of comparison, let’s look at prices for the Davis Enterprise, which has a daily circulation of 10,000 readers. Imagine U.S. Bank decided to place a full-page color ad of their logo in the paper specifically on page three every day of publication for one year. According to staff in the Enterprise’s ad sales department, this would cost $479,232 per year.
So what will UC Davis get by selling prime advertisement space on the personally identification cards of 31,160 students and all faculty? Only about $280,000 annually
In short, this is a bad deal, even if the only thing sold was ad space. U.S. Bank is getting much, much more than UC Davis is in this deal. The bank has been given premier access to a key target market-group, prime real estate for a branch office, and six ATMs. This is a gold mine for a bank, as students and faculty all have some money and a level of banking needs – like needing a convenient place to deposit their financial aid or pay checks.
It seems the national trend to bail out banks. Here at UC Davis, while student tuition fees continue to rise, corporate sponsors are given the farm.
ETHAN EVANS
Doctorate Level 1, Sociology
