How much do the naming rights for the City and Borough of Juneau cost? No less than $15,000 dollars, apparently, but that\u2019s only good for a loan for a few hours.<\/p>\n
On Friday morning, the city announced that the toy company Mattel Inc. had purchased the naming rights to Juneau, renaming it the City and Borough of UNO. The city\u2019s website was changed to reflect the change, and a banner was hung from City Hall, welcoming people to UNO, Alaska.<\/p>\n
The name change was an April Fool\u2019s prank, but was also a marketing push for a new version of UNO, featuring more wild cards. Mattel\u2019s brand team came up with the idea for the prank, according to company spokesperson Candice Jacobson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey thought, \u2018What could be a cool, fun partner to promote these new wild cars? Alaska, duh! It\u2019s one of the most wild places,\u201d Jacobson told the Empire Friday morning.<\/p>\n
To get the city to go along with the joke, Mattel donated $15,000 to the Juneau Community Foundation\u2019s Mayor Greg Fisk Memorial Fund, which supports youth programs.<\/p>\n
Fisk\u2019s son, Ian, oversees the fund but has not decided exactly what the money will go to yet, according to JCF Executive Director Amy Skilbred. The fund is specifically set up to help at-risk kids in Juneau.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a great vehicle for people who want to help at-risk youth, but don\u2019t know exactly who to donate to,\u201d Skilbred said. She didn\u2019t know the exact amount of money in the fund as of Friday morning, but she said that Mattel\u2019s donation would \u201cdouble it easily.\u201d<\/p>\n
City Manager Kim Kiefer said that when Mattel asked where the money should go, the Mayor Greg Fisk Memorial Fund seemed like a natural choice.<\/p>\n
As Jacobson handed a giant check to Kiefer and Skilbred in Assembly Chambers Friday morning she assured them that, unlike the name change, the money was for real.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough this is an April Fool\u2019s Day prank, this check is not a joke,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kiefer said the fairly elaborate prank was a couple weeks in the works, but it only required about two hours worth of staff time \u2014 one to change the website, and another to hang the banner from City Hall. Mattel took care of the rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important that we have some fun,\u201d she told the Empire Friday morning.<\/p>\n
Representatives from Mattel handed out UNO cards in the Assembly Chambers. Jacobson brought 500 decks of cards with here \u2014 about $2,000 worth of UNO cards \u2014 but the first two dozen decks were already spoken for.<\/p>\n
About 25 kids from Juneau Community Charter School took a trip to the Assembly Chambers Friday morning to watch the check presentation and play UNO.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been so fun,\u201d Jacobson said shortly before awarding the check. \u201cI think you can see that from the reaction of everybody in this room.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city changed its website back to normal later Friday afternoon, Kiefer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How much do the naming rights for the City and Borough of Juneau cost? No less than $15,000 dollars, apparently, but that\u2019s only good for a loan for a few hours. On Friday morning, the city announced that the toy company Mattel Inc. had purchased the naming rights to Juneau, renaming it the City and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":6296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6295"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}