The Quail Hollow Championship

Eg, Wachovia Championship. They're still paying for it, but prefer to hope that folks won't notice the name change. Wells Fargo to pull Wachovia name from PGA event

Behold, from the press release:

"In the current environment, we also believe that promoting this event with our brand could send mixed signals about our priorities to many of our stakeholders." said David Carroll, head of wealth management at Wells Fargo

Call me confused.

Of course, as I mentioned a few posts ago, golf sponsorships are sooooo 2008. But let's at least look at this from a corporate POV

There was never an issue with the thing being named "The Wells Fargo Championship". It's Wachovia, and is pretty much the single best branding Wachovia ever did in its attempts to attract HNW folks. And the thing is widely known as being the best-run of any golf tournament outside the majors. But Wells, soon to ditch the Wachovia brand (one can only presume), is semi-desperate to appeal to common folks, after its disastrous scolding of all of us for being annoyed at their frantically-and-hastily-cancelled Vegas boondoggle for mortgage peeps (Big bailouts for 'higher-ups' anger left-out middle class). So we are now confronted by Wells ditching Wachovia while snippily defending 'recognition' boondoggles for themselves in full-page national ads taken out by the CEO in a fit of pique...

Why not just let the thing be Wachovia for now, keep quiet, keep Wells out of the conversation, and then emerge after with a clean slate qua Wells? But no. Now they've endlessly muddied the waters, and completely unnecessarily.

These dudes are so freaked and stressed over sponsorships and boondoggles that I can only fear for them as the real stress test approaches....

Courage Wells Fargo, courage. I like you better than this.