Way off target: Fuss over a two-word sign

There is a brouhaha developing over a sign by our lovely new baseball stadium. It might even be a fracas, depending on how bad this gets. The Timberwolves have announced plans to put a piece of advertising on Target Center that will be visible from Target Field, and some people are complaining that it ruins the aesthetics of Target Plaza -- because it's advertising? You could understand their point if we were talking about a sign on the Non-Specific Entity Stadium ruining the view at, say, We'd Prefer You Infer Our Sponsor's Name from Our Color Scheme Plaza, but really.

The Wolves released a picture of what the ad might look like. It's for a health care system. You may think: a picture of a guy clutching his chest, with the slogan "If it's not a reaction to that last triple play, you might want to drop by." But no. Neither does it have the usual health case imagery, which consists of smiling young women with stethoscopes and a slogan like "We're here when you need us," which distinguishes the hospital from those that hear of a mass outbreak of food poisoning, and lock the doors and turn out the lights. No, it's just the name of the company.

I understand the need for branding and customer awareness, but how much does this work, really? You feel a hot stabbing pain in your side, you figure it's appendicitis, and you tell someone, "I have appendicitis, take me to that North Dakota hospital whose name I vaguely recall from an enormous sign." And the other person says, "I don't think it's appendicitis. Looks more like you've been stabbed. I mean, the knife's still there." And you say, "The details don't matter! It's complicated!" I seem to have gotten far afield of my argument, but you know what I mean.

The old beloved Met had plenty of ads. The new stadium has ads. When they start projecting 30-story pictures of Snooki on the IDS Center as an ad for "Jersey Shore," then we can talk.