1Password Park – St. Thomas Ontario | Hacker News Reader

1Password Park – St. Thomas Ontario

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47 pointsdonutshop45 comments

I think people are missing the point a ton. This isn't Bank of America buying the naming rights to an NFL stadium.

Not a single person will sign up for 1Password because of this park, and they know that. It's not marketing.

Someone with decision making power at 1Password loves this park (or this area) and is using the money they've collected via 1Password to keep it alive and going.

This is wonderful and I love it. It reminds me of how my (venture backed tech) company sponsors the Barnesville Potato Days every year in Minnesota. Not because we think we'll get a sign up, but because one of our employees loved it and talked about it all the time and when they needed money one year we were happy to part with it.

EDIT: Yup, they have an office near there and the founder is from the area: https://dteare.medium.com/14-years-of-growth-the-1password-s...

> Not a single person will sign up for 1Password because of this park

I'm not saying they made it for marketing purposes, but that seems very naive to me. How is this any different than any other type of marketing supposed to increase name-id?

If you want to save a park, save it without putting your name on it...

I don’t think that you clicked the link.

How so? You can go right to Google maps and see "1Password Park" right there. Do you not think that thousands of people seeing "1Password" on maps and other signage as they pass by will one they lead them to choosing 1Password as their password manager instead of something else? Not even a single person?

That's exactly how name-id advertising works.

If someone at 1password loves this park and wants to keep it going, that is indeed great and it deserves respect and should be emulated. But it could have been done without renaming the park. Renaming the park is undoubtedly marketing.

They didn't rename it. The funded the building of a new park entirely.

This may be true but this will be labeled as marketing for tax purposes

Sure, it's not marketing but it's PR, otherwise they wouldn't name it 1Password Park. No need to be cynical about it, though. It's a nice thing to do.

St. Thomas is a small city (less than 50k, and it's not a suburb of a bigger city) in Ontario, Canada that is probably almost devoid of any tech or startup action, so it's cool to see one that stuck there and made it work instead of moving to Toronto or SF.

I would doubt anyone in that city isn't aware of the one big success in tech they have going right now and are probably happy to see them actually giving back to help out the folks who live there (which likely include the founders and employees). It's not like they are buying the naming rights to an arena in downtown Miami, it's a small park on the outskirts of their hometown.

I live an hour away in Kitchener-Waterloo, we have RIM park and there has been a culture around these parts of companies putting money back into the community, sponsoring events and helping develop areas and I would view this more in that realm than anything shady. I've been all over South Western Ontario and I still haven't made it to St. Thomas because it's out of the way (even when visiting nearbyish London) and there is like nothing there, so I don't see this as something dirty or they would have spent their money on somewhere that it would make any marketing impact at all.

Good on them for trying to help out their own community.

I get the opposition to corporate branding in public spaces. But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good. I’m guessing David Teare didn’t want it named after him. You could have it named after a significant historical local figure but that still doesn’t address the issue of how to foster goodwill by demonstrating your company acts in ways that benefits the public good.

Can't they name it something else and simply mention somewhere that it is paid for by 1Password?

1Password Park brought to you by Agilebits

They probably cannot write off the expense if they get no clear value from it

> But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good.

Then there's the complaint that corporations will do things like spend X dollars on a park to show what great guys they are, and then engage in tax-dodging like registering their trademark to a foreign entity and coincidentally every year the "royalties" on the trademark just magically work out so the domestic company doesn't make any money...and they end up avoiding Y taxes, where Y is probably several orders of magnitude greater than X.

And then there's all the tax breaks companies get when they make noise about thinking of moving somewhere else.

I don't know if 1password does any of this, primarily because I can't find the slightest bit of tax information about 1password (or "Agilebits", the actual corporate name.)

What do you want then?

> how to foster goodwill by demonstrating your company acts in ways that benefits the public good

Can't you just have a sign there that mentions the generous donation? Maybe even a big sign? Multiple signs? Naming the park might even backfire and do the opposite of fostering goodwill. It’s dystopian.

Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.

> I get the opposition to corporate branding in public spaces. But there’s also the complaint that corporations don’t contribute to the public good.

I don't have an opinion about this particular park but usually what people ask for is to tax corporations and use the funds for public good. This means that the public gets to decide how the funds are used rather than the corporation.

Though my preferred economic arrangement is an economy comprised primarily of cooperatives, and perhaps some federation of cooperatives to decide on allocation of funds for public good.

I grew up about 20min from St Thomas. Neat to see successful software come out of that area. Good job, 1Password team!

Seems like a good place for people who want to be near the USA, it's in between two of our major cities.

I hate to say it, but branding a public space is disgusting. Advertising just won't quit.

"Now when you step outside, you can enjoy fresh Nestlé air blowing through free standing Burt's Bees sycamore trees at 1Password Park. Bring your whole nuclear family!".

You can do good in your community without being gaudy.

Yes. I think the classier version is to name it something else that seems like a normal park name. That way the employees and users can enjoy knowing the inside secret, but it doesn’t look gaudy to the world.

The way they’ve done it is very black mirror vibes.

https://youtu.be/ZAKrb9b4s28?t=103s

This one too: https://www.facebook.com/100066178766049/videos

Yup, pretty easy to just give the money, put a small plaque, and not put your name everywhere.

I would agree, purely on aesthetic grounds "1Password Park" sounds terrible. An example of how this can be done better would be something like the Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, VA [1]. The building itself is known as the "Markel Center" (Markel being the large insurance company that paid for it), and they have a small sign out front. I don't mind that at all. It helps that the name is a proper name, after the founder of the company, and it's not a well known B2C brand.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/9Abqu6yRH5NygJJa7

Juan Password Park would sound better. Or Juan Pass Park if there is anything approximating a pass.

Just imagine googling around and see the name of this park. I’d probably think it’s a joke.

It'd be even funnier to have a pond stocked with phish.

I totally agree. Instead of advertising, a much more effective way to get a company's brand recognized using small towns is to dump hazardous chemicals in them and light them on fire. We should do that more. Who needs parks anyhow? Less land for parking lots!

I think corporate branding of train stations, etc is an excellent way to raise money.

I haven't understood why this isn't used more often. If there's a station next to a corporate HQ or mall, let the company/mall pay for naming rights. They get publicity, the transit system gets money, it's a win-win.

Now we just need a KeePass Park. Or better yet, a keepass.info park.

I hear the LastPark has no fences in it.

LastPark has child predators under the bridge that the park officials haven’t noticed yet

https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/05/1-hacker-way/

And when you enter you're taken back to the early 2000s...

Good on them for investing in their community.

Good on them for *advertising in their community

There’s also an Angry Birds park in Rovaniemi, Finnland https://www.visitrovaniemi.fi/attraction/angry-birds-activit...

Actually this makes me nervous. Tech companies often put their names on non-tech venues right before they run into problems.

ftx pt 2

Okay, interesting. Care to elaborate?

TIL Roustem Karimov is Canadian

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