Thousands calling on developer to dump Trump name from downtown building
Posted December 10, 2015 4:21 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Outrage over a developer’s decision to push ahead with naming its new downtown Vancouver tower after Donald Trump is growing following the US presidential candidate’s latest round of offensive comments. A marketing expert thinks there’s potential for online backlash to turn into a real problem for the developer.
Thousands are signing petitions demanding the name be removed from the project going up on Georgia Street. One petition has nearly 50,000 signatures. Others are using social media to voice their displeasure. There’s a Facebook campaign to report Trump for violating the sites terms and conditions. And both Trump and developer Holborn Group are getting countless tweets on the subject.
SFU Marketing Strategy Professor Lindsay Meredith calls this a PR nightmare for the Holborn Group. “Social network systems have allowed a critical mass very quickly of individuals to coalesce and bring pressure on politicians and everybody else. Right now, I would suspect Trump has made himself one whack of a pile of people who really don’t like his name very much.”
Meredith says Holborn Group likely has a licensing agreement in place, but the damage done by staying the course could be worse. “There are an awful lot of Muslims in this world and an awful lot of those Muslims have money. Do you really think any of them are going to be actively staying at a Trump hotel or buying suites in a Trump building?”
Both a former City of Vancouver planner and City Councillor Kerry Jang are calling on Holborn Group to break ties with Trump so his name isn’t part of the Vancouver skyline.
The developer of Toronto’s Trump tower is not going to remove the Trump name from its building. There is one golf course under construction in Dubai that has been stripped of the Trump name in light of the candidate’s latest comments on Muslims. Trump has said all Muslims, even US citizens, should be barred from entering the country.
Holborn Group has not granted our requests for interview.
