Stadium-name spoof has city counsel Mighty mad

Business First

By James Fink

Mighty Taco, the Amherst restaurant chain, got a spicy mouthful from the City of Buffalo for ads poking fun at the city's sale of the naming rights for the downtown baseball stadium, once Pilot Field and now North AmeriCare Park.
In Mighty Taco's wisecracking tradition, its placemats refer to the stadium as "Mighty Taco Field" located on Mighty Taco Boulevard, not Washington Street.  The restaurant chain uses placemats depicting Mighty Taco Field as the "home of Buffalo Burritos Baseball."  A similar radio campaign ran this spring.
The city was not amused.
In a July 17 letter to Mighty Taco, Edward Peace, Buffalo corporation counsel, told the chain to stop the placemat campaign since the city had just sold the stadium's naming rights to North American Administrators Inc. for $3.3 million.  Peace said his letter stems from the city's protecting its intellectual rights over the stadium name.
"With intellectual rights, you either have to police them right away or risk losing those rights," Peace said.  "We consider this a relatively serious matter.  Consider it this way: Rolls-Royce protects its name.  Why?  Because it has some value attached to it.  It's the same principle here."
Karla Remmington, Mighty Taco vice president of operations, said the campaign was a satire on the stadium-naming issue.
"I think the city is being a little overprotective on this," Remmington said.  "We certainly didn't set out to infringe on any city right."
Ronald Zoeller, North American CEO, said the city is taking action on its own behalf and not at his request or urging.
"Most people know the real name of the stadium," Zoeller said.  "And, besides I'd like to think I have a sense of humor about these things.  Personally, I'm not nearly as concerned about it as others were and I don't take it as seriously as others would," he said.
Paragon Advertising of Buffalo created the ad campaign.  The radio ads featured Pete Weber, the Buffalo Bisons' play-by-play man.  The radio ads ran in the spring and stopped about six weeks ago.
"Doesn't anyone at City Hall have a sense of humor?" asked James Gillan, Paragon creative director.  "Aren't there more important things that need addressing in the city?  There's got to be more important things on their agenda."
Buffalo sold the baseball stadium's naming rights this year after a multi-year dispute with Pilot Air Freight Corp. over payments and use of the stadium's name.  Pilot won the naming rights in 1987 for $51,000 per year.
Under terms of the 13-year deal announced in early July, North American will pay $175,000 annually for the first three years; $225,000 annually for the next three years and $300,000 annually for the last seven years.  In addition, it offered to contribute $50,000 annually in in-kind consulting services to the city.
"There is a great deal at risk in protecting the naming rights of North AmeriCare Park," Peace said.  "The prudent thing for me to do was to protect one of the city's assets."
Peace credited Mighty Taco for working out a settlement.
Remmington said the restaurant agreed to not print more placemats and to turn the remaining placemats over to hide the stadium wording.
"The city was actually very nice about it," Remmington said.  "They let us finish out the stock so we didn't have the expense of ordering new placemats."
Paragon is working with the Buffalo Stampede roller hockey team and has renamed the city-owned Aud as "Mighty Taco Palace" during home games.  The change took effect Aug. 1.
"It's just a takeoff on everyone selling off their naming rights," said Dan Wilkins, Stampede general manager and owner.
The Mighty Taco Palace name only appears on the roller hockey playing surface, which is owned by the team and not the city.  For all events, the Aud is still the Aud.
"I'm sure the city's not amused but we're a small business and someone, in this case Mighty Taco, came forward and made a nice offer for the renaming rights," Wilkins said.