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July 17, 2005
Field's Watch: Roger Ebert isn't a fan of a name change
Source: Chicago Sun-TimesMarshall Field's a city icon -- leave it alone
July 17, 2005
BY ROGER EBERTThe historic and honorable Chicago name ''Marshall Field's'' is headed for the Dumpster. How do I know this? Sandra Guy, a business reporter for the Sun-Times, reports that the name ''hung in the balance'' as Federated Department Stores approved a $17 billion takeover of the May Co., which owns Field's. And the balance is tipping, she added ominously.
This is an abomination on a par with renaming the Chicago Cubs the Chicago Mets. To pave the way, Federated is ''surveying customers'' and has hired an ''independent company'' to conduct interviews at malls, online, on the phone and by mail.
I can save Federated the trouble by informing them:
1. No one in Chicago wants Marshall Field's to be named Macy's. Absolutely no one.
2. The ''survey'' and the ''independent company'' will uncover a surprising groundswell of support for the name change.
This is because such surveys always produce the results desired by the people paying for the survey, a truth well known in business.
Everything depends on how the question is worded. For example, if I were to ask a Chicagoan, ''Do you think the name of Marshall Field's should be changed to Macy's?'' the result would be 100 percent negative. If I were to ask, ''Does a company have the right to choose its own name for a store?'' the result might be 100 positive.
So let me just assure Terry J. Lundgren, the three-headed chairman, president and chief executive officer of Federated, that I have been discussing this subject for several months at dinner parties, in line at the movies, on airplanes, while walking in the park and while engaging in brief but rewarding conversations with countless citizens of our city, and every single person has responded with outrage.
Lundgren believes he must ''brand'' his stores as Macy's or Bloomingdale's as a ''declaration'' to his shareholders that his company is built around the two national chains. How would his shareholders react if the Chicago flagship of his company found itself hated, shunned and reviled?
Marshall Field's is a name as closely associated with Chicago as Macy's is with New York -- an excellent reason for not making the change. Chicago is a world-class city, more beautiful, better mannered and cleaner than New York. We do not pile up our garbage on the sidewalks, and we do not trash our heritage. We even value a living and breathing Marshall Field among our population.
When Donald Trump came to town to tear down the venerable Chicago Sun-Times building and erect another of his phallic grotesqueries, I was sentimental but serene, because the Sun-Times building was homely and outworn, and because Mayor Richard M. Daley made Trump revise his plans until they were finally up to Chicago's architectural standards.
But as the holder of a Marshall Field's charge card and a citizen who takes out-of-town visitors into the building just to gaze upon it, if I should ever see the name ''Macy's'' under the clock at the corner of State and Randolph, I would never darken its doors again. I would be joined, I can promise Mr. Lundgren, by thousands if not millions of other Chicagoans.
Posted by Tannerman at July 17, 2005 06:45 PM | Categories: Anchors | News