I love how the Crew actually being a successful soccer team on the field keeps ********ing up the owners plans. It's like the Bizarro-Galaxy.
Grabbed from Reddit, here's a link to the report prepared by two Nordecke leaders in January for the Columbus Crew Front Office, warning of the fallout of the rebrand in detail... https://drive.google.com/file/d/1URspP3nErFBIb0jimCTA4_Blj280DCYv/view
Oh, man, that thing is well worth reading--especially the section called "Mixed and Negatively-recieved Elements". This section lays out, ahead of the rollout of course, that the response would be exactly as it has been. So, they flippin' knew exactly what they were wading into and they still did it!
I have been a Crew fan since literally the beginning, I worked as a college student on the original plan to build the hockey arena and soccer stadium together on what was the old Ohio Penitentiary site where the Arena District is now. While the logo change is one thing, certainly not something I would buy new gear to support, the removal of The Crew from the official name hit me in the gut. More than half my life I have been a Columbus Crew fan, spent an untold amount of money on and have planned my life and the lives of my family members around their games. My daughter has been going to games with me for almost 20 years and kind of grew up in the Nordecke. I found myself somewhat disinterested in the loss to Toronto on Wednesday and have been talking with friends that I have attended games with since 96 about not renewing our season tickets. Not that we won’t go to games, just buying an occasional game ticket instead of committing to the whole season. This has just ripped the passion out of a lot of us, especially coming on the heels of the Fratboi fiasco. It just isn’t fun anymore.
For most people in business, an independent analysis of a proposed project that freely uses the term "catastrophic" really ought to get your attention. Interestingly, the odd statement issued by the owners made reference to this report, saying something to the effect that it didn't rise high enough in the hierarchy for the top people (ie. them, possibly Bez and the other C suite mavens) to have seen it. This strongly implies, to me anyway, that someone or some level of someones buried it so as not to derail their project. In any rational organization, that would be cause for immediate termination. Here's an empty copy paper box, you have ten minutes to clean out your desk after which security will throw you out. This does not seem to have happened.
Correct! Because in the off season at Crew HQ, nothing rhymes with defending champion quite like defending catastrophic decisions.
The oddest thing about this to me is the FO continuing to insist they are the Crew even though they dropped it from the name of the team. It's like King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail having an absurd argument with the Black Knight about whether he's injured or not as limbs keep getting lopped off. In this case the FO just keeps saying they honor the name and love the name and kept the name even though they did not. In the movie, Arthur eventually just walks away. Hopefully Haslam and Bez and company figure something out before that happens here.
#WeAreTheCrew and we will continue to work for a solution for the #Crew96 and #Nordecke Community. pic.twitter.com/CO2x065cXC— The Nordecke ⭐⭐⭐ (@Nordecke) May 15, 2021
We shall see. Is this mere posturing on the part of the team's investor/operators? Or, having witnessed the overwhelmingly negative reaction from Columbus Crew supporters (as well as other MLS enthusiasts, soccer aficionados in general, branding professionals, and media outlets at large), are the Haslams and their management team willing to walk back this egregiously tone-deaf rebrand? The more time I've spent considering this imbroglio over the past week, the more I've come to consider it a watershed event in MLS history. Why? The #SaveTheCrew effort stands as the moment in time when a group of American soccer supporters took their passion for the sport and leveraged it to achieve a truly significant end. And make no mistake, saving an original MLS team from being relocated to another market 1,200-plus miles away was a momentous accomplishment. After all, it was Crew supporters who organized and agitated to such an extent that Ohio's attorney general cited the state's "Modell Law" and brought suit against both MLS and Precourt Sports Ventures over the proposed franchise relocation. It was Crew supporters who lobbied political and business leaders in the City of Columbus to such an extent that the Columbus Partnership approached MLS HQ and began conversations that ultimately resulted in the Haslam and Edwards families being identified as potential new Crew investor/operators and led to a public-private partnership committing to build a new soccer-specific stadium. But to what end? Here we are, nearly 2-1/2 years on from the dismissal of the State of Ohio and City of Columbus lawsuit against MLS and Precourt Sports Ventures that effectively resulted in the transfer of the Columbus Crew SC investor/operator rights to the Haslam and Edwards families, and the die-hard supporters of the team are - for all intents and purposes - once again being told to know their place, pipe down, and be grateful that they even have a Major League Soccer team to root on. Surely the Haslams know better than the team's diehard supporters what's best for Columbus Crew - pardon, Columbus SC - soccer. After all, Jimmy and Dee have been on the scene for just over 2 of the team's 26 MLS seasons. And when it comes to sports branding, the Haslams' track-record speaks for itself: have the Cleveland Browns ever looked better than they did during their five seasons - 2015 through 2019 - sporting Arena Football League togs? Now, some folks will argue, "Hey, go easy on the Haslams! Things have been pretty damned good under their leadership. They've delivered an MLS Cup championship and a soccer-specific stadium to Crew supporters." True. Of course, it can be countered that Columbus soccer supporters had already known what it was like to see their club capture the MLS Cup championship - and a U.S. Open Cup title and three Supporters' Shields, to boot - before the Haslams arrived on the scene. As for a soccer-specific stadium, the Crew played in the first in MLS history. So, while the latest league title and the new stadium are appreciated, they're no reason to blindly swear fealty to the new investor/operators and simply accept every initiative they wish to undertake with a club that's in its 26th season of existence. We've been told that this rebrand was undertaken in order to make the club relevant on the global soccer scene. If anyone at MLS HQ or on the Columbus management team truly believes that this new Columbus SC brand package is going to achieve global relevance simply by being introduced and aping international soccer branding practices... well, frankly, they need their heads examined. The truth of the matter is that no MLS club was likely ever more relevant globally than Columbus Crew SC during the #SaveTheCrew campaign. If there's one thing that those who love soccer worldwide could identify with - and respect - it was the commitment, effort, and passion that Crew supporters poured into saving their club. That resonated on the global soccer stage more than any City, CF, FC, Inter, Real, SC, Sporting, or United that MLS will ever trot out. No, at some level this rebrand of MLS soccer in Columbus is all about marking territory and exerting control. It's all about sending the message that the power vested in the Haslams' money and the league's single entity structure are still calling the shots. It's meant to communicate that, despite the victory that the #SaveTheCrew campaign achieved, supporters aren't truly partners in building the MLS brand of soccer at the professional level in the United States and Canada. Rather, they're consumers of a product who will be tolerated so long as they remember their place. So, now the question becomes, will Crew supporters - and, by extension, their peers who live and die for and with Major League Soccer's other member-clubs - accept such a dynamic in the relationship with club investor/operators and league executives? The powers-that-be calling the shots for the teams and the league are hoping that the supporters "blink". They don't even want to think about what type of precedent it would set if they were forced to walk back - quite publicly I would add - a second effort to change the status quo of MLS soccer in the Columbus market. This could even have implications for Don Garber. While it's debatable just how much of a role - if any - that Major League Soccer's commissioner played in moving this rebrand forward, there can be little doubt that he's likely savoring the angst that die-hard supporters are experiencing in the midst of the Haslams so blithely tossing aside the beloved Crew identity. One can almost hear him malevolently hissing, "That will teach them to call into question my divine right to include secret relocation clauses in contracts granting Major League Soccer investor/operator rights." If the Haslams are forced to walk this rebrand back, it has to be considered a rebuke for Garber as well.
My speculation is that they will revert back to Columbus Crew SC name, but keep the new logo. Signage, branding already has been in the works for months apparently. Luckily, MLS still has trademarks to Columbus Crew SC so re-reinstating it wouldn't be a problem, just remove the Columbus SC from the new logo.
This is pretty damning. Not in what it says, but when it was made and how long the team has had it. Hindsight is 20/20 and all of that, but this is Nostradamus level analysis. And the team got it basically for free. Granted, the team's supporters group isn't exactly a neutral body in the process, which might lend whomever at the team read this report to dismiss it out of hand as not being terribly relevant to the larger picture - but damn that's hubris. And it really makes the new ownership look bad. It basically says the inclusion of two Nordecke members was meant for optics only, not for any serious engagement. As Bill points out, in a normal organization someone's desk would already be cleared out, and their email would have a nice auto-reply message directing people to who they should now be contacting. The fact that nobody has apparently fallen on their proverbial sword despite the owners throwing their underlings under the bus leads me to two scenarios: 1) this report did make it up to the chain and the owners were aware of it 2) organizational incompetence and arrogance Neither is a good look. #1 is a lot easier to fix - as long as ownership starts to be more proactive with their core constituency and less reactive. #2? Well most supporters groups hate their owners to some degree, so there's that. I can't predict the future. Modern brand rollouts and supply chain logistics make it really hard to pivot in the short term. It's like trying to do a 180 in a battleship at top speed on the high seas. And, frankly, what I know of the way adidas treats MLS, it's even harder. Most uniform and logo changes take 18 months from design to manufacture and roll-out. Behind the scenes all the new 2022 kits are already known and mostly locked down. There is so much inertia and momentum behind this logo and the lack of a yellow kit for 2021 that it just can't be changed in the short term. Now they could easily switch back to some variation of "Columbus Crew" IP on a dime (though the letterhead might take a few days), but we'll just have to see how this pans out. It's probably too late for Montreal fans to recover their Impact, but it should definitely give pause to other rebrands. To be honest, I was pretty much against the change from Wizards to Sporting. Wiz/Wizards was a terrible name. The rainbow jerseys (basically gone by the rebrand) were uhm unique. But after 15 years, they were "ours", but there were a lot fewer of us than there are currently "Crew" fans. And Ongoal owned the team 5 years before their stadium opening timed rebrand. And the 2010 Wizards didn't win MLS Cup. Ten years on, I'm all-in on the Sporting brand, but I'm really happy to see the team embrace its Wizards past - though I created a shitstorm around 2013 when I tried to get approval to make some scarves with the old logos. But Ongoal did take the time to work with the Cauldron and the Heart of America Soccer Foundation (the KC equivalent of #SaveTheCrew), it's a shame that the Haslams and Edwards were either just paying lip service, or they put the wrong people in charge.
Okay! Not to be all "Seattle invented it" but didn't the original proposal for Seattle not include the Sounders name and it was an outcry from the fans that caused the shift in branding back to the Sounders?
Didn't San Jose fans also play at least some part in getting the Earthquakes name back? Not quite an outcry, iirc, but I vaguely recall there being a some anti-Clash sentiment leading up to that rename. Gosh MLS 1.0 names were crud.
It wasn't really activism, but when the Krafts took over running the team in 1999, they figured out quickly that the brand wasn't working, and they did extensive fan surveys which overwhelmingly asked for the Earthquakes name to return, so the Krafts went ahead with the rebrand. When the revived franchise was getting ready for 2008, there was some quiet behind-the-scenes activism to make sure it didn't end up with a San Jose FC-type name.