Rebranding, Reputation and Risk

Logos of any kind appeal to the emotions. Add sports, ethnicity and race to the mix and you have the makings of a conflagration.

One of American football's most storied franchises is the Washington Redskins. They have a winning tradition, a history of developing famous athletes and they represent the nation's capitol, a heady combination.

But their name and logo have become increasingly controversial in a multicultural age. Native Americans and others who believe the name is an anachronism in modern times want it changed. Die hard fans and those concerned with preserving a legacy meant to evoke pride and ferocity are equally adamant about keeping it. The reality is that a number of universities and minor league teams that have had such names have, in recent times, capitulated and surrendered such monikers, not wishing to offend, to be perceived as anti-anything - and not wanting to be tied up in legal battles for years.

However, there is considerable risk in changing a logo or name. The brand equity among fans and customers is often greater than anticipated, especially when the possibility arises that it may be removed. This loyalty can sometimes reach absurd heights: the New England Patriots recently released a prized player, Aaron Hernandez, who has been arrested on multiple murder counts. The team offered to refund any fans who purchased his replica jersey. To their amazement, league and team officials have found the Hernandez jersey has increased in price on eBay - due to its value as a collector's item.

The reality is that some rebranding efforts founder and some marques never recover. The enterprise involved can only be sure of one certainty: someone is bound to be offended no matter what they decide. JL

Scott Cacciola reports in the New York Times:

“Any time you try to reinvent yourself or improve yourself or cater to the needs of some, you run the risk of ending up as new Coke,”

said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. “You’re talking about a wholesale change of a global brand, and that’s pretty substantial. It really depends on how the new name is embraced. If they took something that people could rally around, then there might be tremendous upside.”

Few teams in the N.F.L. have faced more pressing off-season concerns than the Washington Redskins, whose star quarterback, Robert Griffin III, hopes to be ready for training camp as he continues to rehabilitate his surgically repaired right knee.

But the hand-wringing over his injury has helped to mask a more polarizing issue for the team: its name.

With a group of American Indians engaged in a lengthy legal battle over the team’s trademark protection, the chorus calling for change broadened last month when 10 members of Congress condemned the franchise for using a “racial, derogatory slur” as its mascot.

Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, and Daniel Snyder, the Redskins’ owner, have been adamant about holding firm to tradition — the team has had the name since 1933, when it was based in Boston. But the team, one of the league’s wealthiest franchises, could eventually find itself grappling with the risky business of a name change. How much would a makeover cost? It is impossible to know for certain, sports analysts and league executives said, though it would be measured in the millions of dollars.

The process would start with the enlistment of lawyers and focus groups to vet a new name. When the N.B.A.’s Grizzlies relocated to Memphis from Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2001, the franchise spent about $125,000 on research alone, said Andy Dolich, the team’s former president for business operations. That figure included the work of a graphics team, which went through several mascot iterations. Memphis ultimately decided to keep the old nickname while updating its bear logo.

It would be dangerous, though, to draw too many parallels to the Redskins’ situation, Dolich said. Unlike the Grizzlies, who were new to Memphis and benefited from almost unconditional support, the Redskins have been part of Washington’s civic fabric for decades. Any changes would need to be carefully calibrated.

“You’re not just going to Larry’s T-shirt Store and saying, ‘Hey, Larry, we need to change this,’ ” Dolich said. “In terms of merchandise and the team’s presence on the Internet and all their corporate sponsorships, the Redskins have millions of exposure points. So there’s a dollar figure attached to any sort of overhaul.”

A big chunk of the budget would be directed to the fairly rudimentary process of replacing all the old logos with the new one, including on the scoreboard at FedEx Field and on the stationery that the team uses. Carl Bassewitz, a sports marketing and branding expert who has worked with several professional teams, uses a 300-item checklist whenever he helps guide a franchise through the logistics of an identity change. “It’s a massive undertaking,” he said.

Redskins officials, who declined to comment for this article, could minimize some of those costs by keeping the same color scheme, which would spare them having to replace thousands of burgundy-and-gold seats at the stadium. Still, any rebranding effort would require an investment from the team and the league.

For example, the Charlotte Bobcats of the N.B.A. recently estimated that it would cost them $4 million to become the Hornets (again) in time for the start of the 2014-15 season. When the Washington Bullets decided to call themselves the Wizards in 1997, it was a similarly painstaking process.

“We anticipated needing two years to wipe the slate clean, and it never really is clean,” said Matt Williams, a former Wizards executive who now heads communications for the Washington Animal Rescue League. “You had to change everything, from court design to uniforms to luggage. It was almost like starting up an expansion team.”

One huge caveat is that the Redskins, with their zealous fan base and lucrative revenue streams, are neither the bottom-feeding Bobcats nor the Bullets. The Redskins make a lot of money. Last year, Forbes magazine assessed the Redskins’ annual revenue at $373 million. They ranked third in home attendance last season, behind the Dallas Cowboys and the Giants. Just as important, the Redskins share in the swollen coffers of the N.F.L., which generated $9 billion in revenue in 2012. The league receives more than $4 billion in annual television rights fees, which is split among its 32 teams.

So even if the franchise were to spend $10 million or $20 million to drop its nickname and rebrand itself, how much is that really?

“A drop in the bucket,” said Gabe Feldman, the director of the sports law program at Tulane University. Consider that the N.F.L.’s salary cap for the coming season is $123 million.

The larger issue is how the team’s fans would react, and that is much more difficult to forecast. Would fans protest the change by shedding their RGIII jerseys? Would they stop going to games? Would the new, unfamiliar name — everyone knows the Redskins — lessen the franchise’s appeal to corporate America and cost the team sponsorships?

“I think you run the risk of heavily damaging your brand if you change your name,” Dolich, the former Grizzlies executive, said.

Although there is no precedent for a change of this magnitude in pro sports, two marketing professors at Emory University recently studied the economic effect on college athletic departments that moved away from Indian mascots. The professors, Manish Tripathi and Mike Lewis, found that these colleges tended to have a year or two of marginal financial losses before quickly recovering. In fact, the move typically yielded positive returns in the long run.

Just as important, ditching an Indian mascot had no effect on an athletic department’s all-important “brand equity,” Tripathi said — that is, the willingness of a consumer to pay a premium price to support the team, whether that meant ordering season tickets or buying a sweatshirt.

“You could make the argument that the Redskins have brand loyalty that’s not linked to the logo at all,” Tripathi said in a telephone interview. “It could have more to do with growing up with the team and feeling a connection to the franchise. If that’s the case, people will just go out and buy the new jersey.”

Ultimately, the financial stakes would have more to do with the psychology of the sports fan than with the costs of printing new business cards. John Maroon, a former spokesman for the Redskins who runs a public-relations firm based in Maryland, said any sort of move would be bad for business.

Maroon cited a recent poll conducted by The Associated Press in which 79 percent of those surveyed said they favored the team’s keeping its name, with 11 percent opposed. Rebranding the franchise, Maroon said, would be “hugely unpopular” and wind up costing the team “tens of millions of dollars.”

At the same time, Maroon said, it would be difficult for fans to stay away, even if they were initially annoyed. Football, he said, has a strong emotional hold over fans. Are Redskins fans really so attached to a nickname that they would refuse to watch them play as the Congressionals or the Red Pandas?

Maroon said he rooted for the Jets.

“If they changed their name or banned Joe Namath from the stadium, I’d be upset,” he said. “But I’d still wind up wearing my Jets stuff, and then Sunday would come and I’d go to the game and watch them lose in another color.”