Is Bimbo a Nova?

MLS announced at the end last year that in the 2007 we would see advertisements on the fronts of team uniforms. This is common practice among most European teams, though surprisingly has never been tried in uber-capitalist America. While only Real Salt Lake has announced a deal on shirt advertising (the “mangosteen” beverage company Xango), speculation has been rife about which teams would follow.

One of the most interesting, or at least funniest, pieces of such speculation is that Chivas USA would soon be sponsored by Bimbo, the Mexican bread consortium. Some on Big Soccer even went so far as to post what such a jersey would look like:

I can’t decide whether I think the idea of putting Bimbo on the Chivas uniforms is a potentially genius move or as ridiculous as it seems on first impression. I mean, the name of the company is Bimbo, for God’s sake. Does the company really think it can break into the American market with that name? It made me think of what I had always heard about the failed attempts by Chevrolet to take its car, the Nova, to Mexico (“no va” means “it doesn’t go in Spanish). So, in doing a bit of research, it quickly became apparent that this story is, in fact, an urban legend. According to the urban legend busting website Snopes, it just ain’t true. The car was sold in Mexico successfully for several years (perhaps until people there realized it was a crappy car, regardless of its name).

So, given this, can Bimbo succeed as the name of a bread company in the US of A? Perhaps. Not only because, if the brand is successful enough to establish itself in the mainstream, people will come to associate the word Bimbo more with the bread than with, say, Kelly Bundy, to use an example provided on Wikipedia. But one major factor playing in Bimbo’s favor is that there is such a large Hispanic population already in this country. Mexicans in this country know Bimbo as bread. Putting it on Chivas USA jerseys is not a risky move because most fans of the team are Mexicans or Mexican-Americans. The Bimbo company may be aiming more for these customers than gringos.

In fact, it turns out Bimbo already has some footing in this country. Just yesterday, I saw a Bimbo truck doing deliveries to stores in my almost exclusively Hispanic neighborhood. There’s a new bread company in town, and its placement on Chivas USA jerseys may just redefine what you think of when you hear the word Bimbo.

Then again, if Chivas USA decides to incorporate the Bimbo sponsorship deal into the uniforms for its Chivas Girls (across the chest, perhaps?), all attempts to redefine the word may be for naught.

P.S. According to the same Wikipedia article on bimbos mentioned above (I love the fact that Wikipedia even has an article on the word bimbo), bimbo is a “derogatory term for a person with african [sic] roots.” So perhaps not the ideal sponsor for Bayern Munich, then.

P.P.S. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term bimbo originally came from the Italian “bambino” or baby and only took on the connotation of “loose woman.” So any potential transformation of the word bimbo by placing it on soccer uniforms would be its second such change.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Economics, General, Latin America, North America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.