Mixed Reaction to Impact Re-branding

I’m probably the last person to ask when it comes to sports-marketing in North America. I’ve always deplored the mind-game marketing strategies on this continent, designed mainly in the past to attract the uninitiated to the beautiful game.

But that’s probably due to my European background. Growing up over on the old continent, fluffy marketing strategies were never required. Football was a way of life. It grew organically and remained engrained in the national psyche of any range of countries you care to mention. Similar story in South America and Africa.

Of course the culture is very different in North America where marketing has always played a more prominent role.

And also to be fair, these days marketing done too well threatens to derail the European game and it’s competitive balance, but that’s a different story.

The pleasing thing about the re-branding initiative underway at Club de Foot Montreal is that influential people remain committed with a desire to continue to grow the club. Their belief in how to move the organization forward is admirable, to some perhaps even reassuring. They are experts in the field of sports-marketing and in them, Montreal fans have little option but to place their trust.

Of course changing a logo, club colours or even a name isn’t a guarantee of success, but if re-branding can complement some other key factors in bringing success to CFMTL, momentum can be self-perpetuating.

However what we heard yesterday from Place des Arts was frilly, unconvincing and at times cringeworthy, but if allied to positive tangible developments, of which Thierry Henry and Olivier Renard are already two, then perhaps there’s something in this.

I was much less impressed with Justin Kingsley, than I was with Kevin Gilmore.

What was that about the invitation to underestimate our team and coach, and coming together to form that impenetrable wall? Wishing the opposition good luck in defeating our storm, our blizzard?

I know it was Justin’s ‘Impact/CFMTL debut’, but please, give me a break!

He went on, “I hope they do underestimate us... it’ll motivate us.”

Come on, do fans really buy into this?

Justin must know the playing squad pretty damn well already if he knows opponents’ indifference will motivate the CFMTL players.

And while on the subject of the new logo... Really? Did they have to?

Apart from it being pathetically inappropriate for a football club, or even a soccer club, it’s a snowflake. A SNOWFLAKE! I actually saw it on a forum last week and thought someone had produced it for a cheap laugh using basic computer graphics.

You have a snowflake for a logo, you better be absolutely ace on the pitch. Or suffer the consequences... I can see TFC fans priming themselves already for their first opportunity to exploit this one!

Other parts of the flimsy narrative do not inspire either. The colour silver representing ‘the ice in our veins’ (Kingsley again). Does he know how often IMFC bottled games in the past?

I wonder about the choice of the word ‘Foot’, but acknowledge it may be ok if it sounds better in French than Gilmore’s rather lame reference to an anglophone equivalent in ‘Footy’. No self-respecting anglophone would ever want his football team referred to as a ‘footy club’.

They talked about the club being recognized on a global level. Great, but while re-branding probably helps regionally, it won’t improve the footprint on a worldwide scale. Having Thierry Henry as manager certainly does this, infinitely times more than re-branding, as would the effect of a high-performing team.

Whether re-branding and name-change proves the catalyst for propelling Montreal’s football club onto the next level, only time will tell. No-one will be more delighted than I if it does, but for someone entirely neutral on, and pretty bored with, the discussion, there really wasn’t anything in today’s presentation remotely inspiring.

It was fluffy and in the main inoffensive, new logo apart, but I suppose if it attracts enough bums on seats to consistently sell-out Stade Saputo next season, it’s mission accomplished.