Based on J Santos' post from the stadium thread, thought this deserved its own discussion. Everton recently sparked a fan revolt when they redesigned their crest for this season without consulting their fans. It was too late to change the jerseys for this year, but they did a fan vote to change the crest for next season to undo the damage they did. I think it's a process worth emulating by the Quakes if they are thinking about changing our crest and colors: http://www.evertonfc.com/news/yournextevertoncrest J Santos's original post: https://www.bigsoccer.com/community/...me-soon-enough.1977354/page-126#post-28695709
Polling the San Jose fans was one of the most brilliant things that then general manager, Lynne Meterparel did. That stroke of wisdom was what got us back to being the San Jose Earthquakes.
I have never understood why more teams do not poll their own fans before making a name/logo/uniform change. What business doesn't research its own customers' preferences before putting a product out on the market? It's not as if the fans, you know, buy all the merchandise that the team is selling. God forbid the team put out something that the majority of fans actually want to buy.
FWIW, I just heard that the world's top 3 brands are in order Apple Google Coca-cola None of these brands names would exist if the Market was polled.
Don't see how that is relevant at all. If anything, goes to show why a company shouldn't change their name/logo/branding at all once their established. See: Coca-Colas "Marketing Blunder of the Century" April 1985.
Doesn't matter what it will end up looking like, people don't change. However, in regards to Big Soccer, the lunatic fringe abhors change.
"Quakes" already exists on the '81 retro jersey and the new blue/white jackets. There is no point to an official rebrand, just keep using the moniker informally.
I definitely hope that we go with blue jerseys (hopefully paired with black shorts). But I don't want us to mess with the logo at all. Leave it alone! We need some tradition. We need a recognizable brand, and "re-branding" every few years is just stupid! Gah! Go Quakes!! - Mark
The "New Coke" debacle was not as one-sided as most people are led to believe. The company did do market research, conducting surveys and focus groups, and most people were ok with the proposed change and liked the new taste. However, there was a very vocal minority, 10-20% who were very against the change, and Coke underestimated the influence this minority could have. They also underestimated the reaction Southerners would have, (the birthplace of Coke) who considered Coke as part of their identity, and the change as another surrender to the "Yankees". There the backlash began, and spread to other parts of the country.
That was what they named the original recipe Coke after they came out with the New Coke. Eventually Classic Coke just became Coke again.
Bare in mind, though, that the full official team name throughout the NASL/WSA/WSL years had thankfully always been San Jose Earthquakes even when those particular "Quakes" jerseys were worn (except in 1983 and 1984 when the full official team name was temporarily changed to Golden Bay Earthquakes, though even then it was the location name rather than the moniker that had been changed). Also, the wordmark (if any) across the chest area of next season's jerseys will be of the jersey sponsor. GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
So there's the "“if I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses" theory (attributed to Henry Ford but he may not have said it) and then there's the customer research focused theory. I think you probably need some combination. http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast/ And for a "crest" I would say that you'd want to lean on the customer research side because you are not designing a wholly new product. You are designing within the context of a well understood "thing". That said, there may be designs that are innovative that no one thought of, that customers like, and maybe even they think that they don't like it at first. But I think it would be perilous to disregard customer input on it. That said, it doesn't necessarily have to an entire fan base as in "vote for your favorite crest!"; it could be a focus group kind of thing, but you have to be very careful about how you populate that focus group.
Yes, but it's not quite the same when talking about sports markets. People want to root for a team they identify with. I doubt the people of Kansas City were happy to have a team called the Wiz. KC WIZ When the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore in 1995, they took a poll to see what name the fans would prefer. The Ravens won out. Hell, I remember the 49ers trying to do something similar back in the 90's with their logo in which they gave it a newer font and all the fans were upset about it. That being said, I can see a change to the emblem being worth doing. To me, it's extremely generic. Something like the San Jose Giants logo perhaps with an "E" included would be nice or a reference to the San Jose City Emblem.
I think there are more Portuguese in San Jose than there are in KC that would support a franchise called Sporting......
What's with the bushel of wheat thing in the SJ city emblem? More confusion with Kansas City? Maybe we should trade them our wheat bushel for their "Sporting". This looks too much like an SF Giants logo wannabe for my taste.
For another example of a rebrand disaster, see Cardiff City. Their new owner changed their color from blue to red and nickname from Bluebirds to dragons. I watched them play last weekend... majority of crowd still wearing blue jerseys but some wore the new red ones... all looked very disjointed. And the supporters were still singing songs about the "bluebirds" the whole time. A big mess that has generated a lot of continuing negativity towards their ownership.
Not that I'm an expert on the field, but this re-cresting, I find it unnecessary and pointless , is not the crest that will bring butts to the stadium, I don't know why this kind of things keep happening around the MLS