GM to salute the Detroit Lions with special lighting atop the RenCen

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General Motors will pay tribute to the Detroit Lions as the Lions look to stomp out the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Ford Field in Detroit in Sunday’s playoff game.

To show its “#onepride” spirit when the TV cameras pan the Detroit skyline, GM will be animating the lights at the top of its world headquarters at the Renaissance Center on Detroit’s waterfront to include a lion’s tail, said GM spokeswoman Tara Kuhnen. She said the change will take place sometime Saturday.

“It’s an exciting time for Detroit,” said Joe Jacuzzi, vice president of Cross Brand Marketing, in a statement. “At GM we are excited to share our Lion’s pride with the city, and our fellow Lions fans.”

In case you’re wondering what the term #onepride means, it has a double meaning. In the wild, a group of lions is called a pride. So Detroit Lions’ fans are a group all in together who have pride in their hometown team. In fact, the Lions filed for a trademark on “One Detroit One Pride” on April 23, 2015, and registered the trademark on Dec. 15 that year to use the phrase for clothing and in the stadium, according to ESPN.

As for GM, this is not the first time the company has changed the lighting on the building to mark a special occasion in the Motor City. In August 2018, the automaker and its luxury brand Cadillac paid tribute to Motown legend Aretha Franklin after she died by lighting the top of the building pink with the word “Respect.” The pink referenced her hit song “Pink Cadillac” and “Respect” was the title of her classic 1967 hit.

After Prince died in 2016, GM lit the top of the RenCen purple to honor the musician. In Detroit, Chevy ran a full-page advertisement in the Free Press that was praised and subtly played off one of the artist’s songs, “Little Red Corvette,” which was released as a single in 1983. In white letters on a black background, the ad said simply: “Baby, that was much too fast.” It gave the years of Prince’s birth and death, “1958-2016.”

In 2011, GM saluted the Red Wings after they won a playoff game by changing the top of the RenCen to the red-and-white Red Wings’ logo, according to MLive. That same year, an old English “D” topped the RenCen for the Tigers’ Opening Day.

The lights atop the RenCen are a standout feature of Detroit’s skyline. So much so that, as the Detroit Free Press reported last November, some people on social media started to worry that GM had vacated its world headquarters when the three neon-blue GM logo signs went dark. But GM, which owns five of the seven glass towers that comprise the RenCen, is merely swapping out the old LED icons for newer technology as a part of routine maintenance. That upgrade of LED technology is still to be completed, Kuhnen said.

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