Wednesday, August 09, 2006

MerleFest finds sponsor in its back yard

I've been quiet on the blog the last several weeks. Let's post a little MerleFest news to get back in the swing. The festival announced today that the home-improvement retailer Lowe's, based in MerleFest's home town of Wilkesboro NC, will be the "presenting sponsor" for next year's event, scheduled for April 26-29, 2007.

“Wilkesboro is not only where Lowe’s got its start, but is also a place where bluegrass music has deep roots,” said Bob Geller, Lowe’s senior vice president of marketing. “Many of our customers are music lovers, and we’re proud to support the passions of those customers, as well as support the culture and heritage of this world-class music event in our back yard.”

2 comments:

ZC said...

Corporate sponsorship always makes me nervous. It's easy to visualize this morphing into NASCAR-style sponsors. I forsee Lowes decals on banjo heads. :)

Dan Ruby said...

I tend to agree. I asked festival marketing director Art Mineus about this some months back, and he claimed that MerleFest has not received significant negative feedback from its aggressive sponsorship program.