"Wells Fargo's $7 million secret?"

Thanks to Jonathan Wall at From The Rough for alerting me to Erik Spanberg's Charlotte Business Journal story on Wells Fargo continuing to maintain a low profile from the event it is sponsoring at Quail Hollow.

Wells Fargo has offered few details of how it will use the tournament this year. What once served as a rallying point that included private concerts for top clients featuring the likes of James Taylor has now become a platform for promoting literacy campaigns and appearances by bank executives and PGA Tour players at area schools. Philanthropy has always been a major part of the bank’s tournament sponsorship through annual donations to Teach for America. But the former Wachovia also invested heavily in VIP parties and receptions.
Those days are gone, with signature events such as a private block party at Phillips Place on hiatus each of the past two years. “There won’t be any large-scale off-course events,” says Matt Wadley, a bank spokesman. “It’s pretty conservative” compared with what the bank used to do, he says.

And...

It seems all but certain that neither the bank nor the club wants the tournament to last beyond 2014. In the meantime, Wells Fargo has four more years to figure out how to get the most for its money — and, perhaps, become part of the tournament name. With the bank’s full changeover from the old Wachovia name to the Wells Fargo brand anticipated in 2011, it could be just the time to go back to the (Wachovia-inspired) future.

Don't they almost fuel the notion that sponsoring a golf tournament is a bad thing by going incognito? Last year was one thing, but carrying that approach on this year seems a bit silly, no?