=== What's In A Brand, Dept. ===

A few months ago, we did a seminar on the concept of "brand" in Corporate America. 

How much do you think you know about branding?  Test yourself with a question first:  what would you estimate that the Coca-Cola "brand" is worth, in cash money?

In other words, supposing Coca-Cola had to change its name to Zesti-Cola, use green instead of red, and change its font and swirl and contour bottle.  It did get to keep all of its factories, distribution lines, management, etc etc.

The "brand" is completely intangible.  It is a reputation, a set of associations that the human mind makes when it sees the Coke bottle.

.................

What's the intangible "brand" worth?

$67,500,000,000.00 USD.

Right after them, Microsoft's brand at $59.9 billion -- that's not what its software is worth, dude.  That's what its name is worth.

Disney's brand -- not its cruise ships, not its movie industry, not its amusement parks, but its name -- is worth $26.4 billion.  McDonald's golden arches are worth $26 billion, etc.

.................

ML teams speak in terms of brand constantly, if you listen to them.  It's in the way that free agents look at them, it's in the way that corporate sponsors work with them, it's in the TV and radio and the people they can hire and everything else.

It's no good to say, "The TV deal isn't up for four years."  In four years, the Rangers and Mariners will have a brand -- a set of associations in peoples' minds when their names are mentioned.

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=== Revisionist History Dept. ===

Here is Seattle Sports Insider's 4-part article estimating what the Mariners would gain in a Cliff Lee trade.  Here is a fangraphs article "calculating" Lee's value to be about 30% of what we estimated.  The actual return?  Higher than SSI's estimate.

That's okay :- ) but we does peeve us a bit to see guys go back later and say, "no, Smoak and three guys is pretty much within shouting distance of what we thought...."   C'mon now.  Justin Smoak is a whale of a lot more than I thought the M's would get.

Prospect Insider manned up big time, and simply said hey.  We had no idea Jack would cash in like that, our bad.  Great!  So let's all move to the afterparty.  Capt Jack kicked tail and took names.

.............

And the Mariners kicked tail sooner rather than later.  Cliff Lee's radio interview spit all over the Seattle Mariners' brand.  Zduriencik, cutting his losses, changed the subject and Right. Now. 

Like we sez, the man can do it all.

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Part 2