Hurricane Burger King -- Have It Your Way, Louisiana!

Over at HuffPo, Josh writes:

With Rita barreling towards Galveston and the likely potential for Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma to materialize out of the Atlantic, the National Hurricane Center is preparing to resort to Greek letters in case of a fifth storm. It would be the first Hurricane Alpha, and at this pace, Alpha may be followed by Hurricanes Beta, Gamma, and so on.

But doesn't that seem like a waste when you think of all the money that could be made opening up the process to corporate sponsorships? That's right: let's bring the market to the final frontier and start selling weather. If nature hands us a few meteorological lemons, I say let's make some corporate lemonade! It'd be great exposure; just attach your company name, new product, or catchy slogan to a budding storm for a week-long blitz of name recognition. Boeing needs to promote a brand new plane? Just think how many people will hear about Tropical Storm Boeing 797 as it picks up windspeed, threatens the eastern seaboard, only to dramatically veer north at the last minute. Then Europe would have to get in on at least a Cat 3 to promote the latest Airbus model. People could finally launch new products in August. It's a win-win -- and whole new revenue stream!

He's missing the beauty of his idea. The opportunity here isn't in straightforward corporate marketing, it's in tarring your competitors. So Apple could pay to brand the next destructive, massive behemoth Microsoft, unions could pay to have NBC tell viewers this "this storm was brought to you by Wal-Mart", and so on.

But why stop there?

The media brands thousands of events: The Runaway Bride, BTK, Operation Iraqi Liberation...let's open them all up to the will of the market! The opportunities for cross-corporation sabotage are simply too delicious to pass up.