Tag: branding

Looks cool, but will they perform?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I really wrote anything about anything other than me being depressed, fatherhood, jobs, sports or wrestling, and if there’s ever a topic that gets me all amped up to write, MARTA would definitely be up there.

When I saw this article about how MARTA unveiled new trains, my knee-jerk reaction was to get my clowning shoes on, because just from the text description alone, I figured that there had to be ample opportunities to get back up on the horse and do some clowning.

Honestly though?  After actually taking the time to read the article and see the proposed designs and functionality of the new trains, I don’t really have that much room for clowning.  Although the face of the trains look like a cross between Daft Punk and like a Cerberus shock trooper from Mass Effect, they still look pretty cool, and I think the dynamic light function to indicate the route they’re on is a cool idea.

The interior of the trains have finally come into the modern era, with their being truly connected trains, and no longer there being physical doors leading to exterior access as beggars traversed from car to car.  There is still a lot of room for error when it comes to if people have specific needs for which car they need to get into because of strollers, bikes, or wheelchairs that will have to have some training applied, but at least it’s a start that the cars are actually going to have some variety and not feel like they’re the leftover train cars from the 1980’s DC Metro.

So as ready as I was to get ready to rip this concept apart, I actually don’t have much fuel to burn.  MARTA’s trains have desperately needed updating for nearly two decades, and it appears that it’s finally happening.  Sure, their stations need a lot of attention too, and the general perception of the service and brand seem irreparable, but finally upgrading the trains is a step in the right direction.

However in spite of the upgrades to the hardware, the real question is going to be if MARTA’s actual performance improves, with new trains?  The trains might be shiny and new, but the people running them, and the people riding them, and the stations they’re stopping in and out of aren’t going to be changing that much, and those are the variables that are going to come into play as far as trains remaining on time, hopefully dependable, and not too much the breeding ground for World Star videos.

If so, great.  If not, then still great for the brog, because it’ll be good fodder seeing photos and videos of these brand new fancy trains in the news, where petty crimes, stupidity and some very Atlanta-centric behavior gets the spotlight all the same.

R.I.P. Braves Minor Leagues

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Endeavor Group Holdings purchases nine minor league baseball teams, among them the Atlanta Braves’ AAA, AA and High-A minor league affiliates in Georgia and Mississippi

Since few people other than me really gives two shits about Minor League Baseball, how it works is that scattered all across the country are minor league baseball teams, with wacky names, goofy promotions, and smaller ballparks, who affiliate themselves with the 30 Major League Baseball organizations, where the baseball players of tomorrow work on their game and hopefully grow into useful players for the parent Major League club.

However, in a number of exceptions, there are occasionally some minor league teams, that are outright owned by their parent clubs.  The Yankees, Cubs, Cardinals, Giants are examples of teams that one one or more of their affiliates.  The Braves, own four of their affiliates: Danville (rookie), Rome (High-A), Mississippi (AA) and Gwinnett (AAA).  Presumably, ownership of affiliates grants higher control and micromanagement of these clubs, and probably among the highest of priority is geographical lockdown of clubs, so that they never have to play musical chairs with their minor league clubs for when affiliation contracts expire.

But over the last two years, and most definitely not at all helped by the pandemic, minor league baseball has been in somewhat trouble, as far as its future is concerned.  Even before the pandemic, there was lots of discussion of cutting large swaths of teams from MLB affiliation, and even rejiggering the whole holistic organization of minor league systems.  If I had to guess, money is at the root of all this, considering the mass whistleblowing that had been occurring about how minor league players and personnel make less money than your average McDonald’s worker, and how cogs in a machine that earns billions annually, can allow this to happen. 

All the same though, it appears that the Braves and several other franchises have decided to cut their obligations, even at the potential expense of control, and sell off their minor league affiliates.  Make no mistake, these are entirely financial moves, and if I had to guess, the teams who have sold franchises probably all feel that the future of minor league baseball is too murky and uncertain for them to want to risk carrying the financial obligations of having their own minor league organizations.  By selling them off now, they are basically betting that these teams will more likely suffer mediocre earnings if not outright fail in business, than becoming the next Dayton Dragons and sell out every game for 18 straight years.

The perception is definitely cold and callous, and to a degree sad for baseball fans and purists alike.  No matter what, money controls everything in baseball as it unfortunately influences most everything else in everyday ordinary life.

However, there is very bright and silver lining to this.  I don’t know who Endeavor Group or their slave companies who will ultimately operate these teams are, but now that these minor league franchises are all cut free from their parent organizations, the world is now their oyster when it comes to promoting these squads.

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A fate worse than death

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few months, among the few things that I still do pay attention to outside of my own little world, professional wrestling is still there.  Normally, I’d cite sources or link to the things that inspire my writing, but frankly the brog’s sense of time is pretty warped as it is, and my zero readers will have to take my word on the things that I’m talking or referring to.

But long story short, over the last few months the WWE has been firing an alarming amount of talent and personnel, AEW has been more than happy to pick up the crème of the crop, and there’s all sorts of panic and wild rumors flying around scuttlebutt and I’m taken back to 1999 when I wish wrestling chatter on the internet could all collectively stfu because it’s kind of ruining everything when everyone’s so astute to backstage happening.

Among the fallout, Triple H, whom most are aware is the head cheese when it comes to anything NXT-related, has been given the lion’s share of the blame when it comes to the fate of the short-lived Wednesday Night War, when an arriving AEW was met by a nationally-televised NXT.  After about a year and amidst a pandemic, NXT decided to move to Tuesdays, in a move widely seen as hoisting a white flag and surrendering.

And supposedly, Triple H is the fall guy in this scenario, and as a result of it, regardless of the corporat-ese used to describe it, has been basically demoted and alleviated of the reigns of NXT.  Vince McMahon and one of his lifer-stooges, Bruce Pritchard will take over the production of the show, which basically means that NXT is going to be run a lot like RAW and Smackdown, which for the better part of the last 2-3 years has been the very definition of mediocre and hardly watchable.

Needless to say, this is basically a fate worse than death for NXT, which is restructuring under new management, naturally accompanied by, a rebranding, complete with new and questionably horrid logo.

A long time ago, I read some adage about how fewer things attempt to smokescreen mediocrity more than a rebranding, and from the looks of things, this is going to be a textbook instance of something once good, headed down a very slippery slope, with the rebranding and restructuring of NXT.

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Let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally written for July 23, 2021

In one hand, there’s often times resistance to change, even when the change is surrounding perceived offensive sports team names like the Redskins, the Braves and the Indians.  But at the same time, there’s this unwinnable outcome where no matter what the name is changed to, won’t be met with the unforgiving, relentless wrath of internet comedians.

And as much as I too am ready to clown on the Cleveland Indians for being among the first of red-flagged sportsball team names, there’s something to be said about the fact that they stopped dragging their feet, and made official an actual change to the team’s name and identity, because sure, they’re going to and already getting all the ridicule and jokes of the internet, but they’ll also be the first to be forgotten, moved on from, and it will really suck for the Redcorn team that changes their name last, because they’ll inevitably be the one most remembered, and hardest to move forward since they’ll have nobody after them to help take the shrapnel next.

Anyway, so let’s talk about the Cleveland Guardians, formerly the racist-ass Cleveland Indians.  Now I’ve said my peace several times about how I couldn’t really care any less about team names, but I’m neither a triggered descendent of Native Americans nor am I an evil whitey who is exploiting them.

No matter what they team name was going to be changed to, it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be good enough, logical enough, or provide nearly enough room for clowning on, to possibly make it ironically good.  And make no mistake, “the Guardians” most certainly fulfills that failed destiny of a mediocre name change, but surprising nobody at all, it’s a bland, vanilla, generic name type that of course, has no potential to offend anyone, and in the corporate, soulless world of professional sports, it’s basically perfect.

As far as their general branding goes, it’s perfectly safe, sterile, and basically feels like a little league team’s identity has been promoted to the big leagues.  The wordmark is sterile, boring and I don’t even want to know what fake-ass creative agency’s rhetoric is behind it’s boring-ass display.  And it should be of no surprise at all that the boring-ass capital C that has been the interim icon of the franchise, appears to have stayed.

But let’s talk about the, what I’m guessing is some sort of alternate logo, featuring the G of Guardians.  It’s basically a straight rip of a Korean professional gaming club, SK Telecom’s T1 logo.  Why the letter G needs to have wings is one question, but it just so happens that said wings are literally a direct rip off of SKT’s wings used in their T1 logo.  Seriously, the style of them is literally the same as T1’s, except they angle it differently as if logo savants on the internet wouldn’t notice.  It’s literally the same 4+3 feather pattern that merges into a G instead of a T1.

Either way, as a whole package, the Cleveland Guardians is about as exciting as a local home and garden expo.  But it still succeeds in moving the franchise past their supposed racist predecessors, and for corporate investor stooges, this is of the utmost importance to get back onto the MLB money train that will make money regardless of if the team was named the Indians, the Guardians, the LeBrons or the Zukes.

One funny side effect of more or less, retroactively posting something about this topic is this little nugget that showed up not long after the initial press release introducing the Cleveland Guardians: apparently a corporation as buttoned up and polished like MLB didn’t have the wherewithal to double check that “Cleveland Guardians” was entirely available, because not only was the URL, the Facebook and Instagram accounts for “Cleveland Guardians” already taken, they’re owned by a roller derby team and have been for the better part of the last decade.  Not just any roller derby team, but a male roller derby team, and this is the first time that I’ve ever heard of such a thing actually existing.

By now, all the jokes in the world have already been made that I’m not even going to bother to try and pile on top of.  All I know is that eventually, the MLB Cleveland Guardians will get what they want, but I can definitely hope that the men’s roller derby Cleveland Guardians will put up just enough of a fight to embarrass their baseball bitches, and ultimately get a nice big fat settlement out of it, because it’s basically the golden ticket that no other men’s roller derby team will ever be lucky enough to stumble on again in the future.

I don’t want this, I need this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to think about what I would’ve done if I had never known about this until it was too late.  Despite my general ambivalence towards MLB these days, my general love for minor league baseball has never waned, and I feel fairly confident I could go to the grave thinking minor league baseball is vastly superior to their stuffy, corporate, money-grubbing major league big brothers.

But the Montgomery Biscuits, the Double-A affiliates of the Tampa Bay Rays, as in Montgomery, Alabama, one of the largest redneck populations in the country, for whatever reason, is doing a Korean heritage night, where they are going 200% balls to the wall all in on it, to where they’re even changing their name to Montgomery Kimchi for the night.

More importantly, they are releasing a variety of branded gear for the occasion, and even more than the NXT UK Tag Team championship belt replica that I covet that seems like it will never be released, I realize that don’t just want a Montgomery Kimchi cap, I absolutely 17,000% NEED a Montgomery Kimchi cap.

Like, I wanted a Florida Marlins cap before their identity transformed.  I kind of wanted a Chief Nokahoma cap or a fucked up Cleveland Indians cap for their ironic notoriety.  I wanted a large variety of minor league caps from my travels, like the Modesto Nuts, and I actually went to some pretty great lengths to get the sliced bacon cap for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs because I wanted that too.  And I actually have a Montgomery Biscuits cap, and despite being one of the prime centers of the Confederacy, I actually liked the city of Montgomery and their ballpark, and the brand and colors were so gaudy and cheesy that I wanted that too.

But when the Montgomery Biscuits transform into Montgomery Kimchi, I won’t just want a cap, I WILL NEED A CAP.  Full stop, period.

I haven’t been this excited about something to throw money at in ages.  I’ve already got the Montgomery Biscuits’ shop site perma-opened in a tab, I’ve got their Twitter account open and ready to refresh daily to see when they’ll drop.  I will be ready to go to war for a Montgomery Kimchi hat, and make it look like Dragon*Con Marriott room day seem like the demand for a Stryper cover band.

I already had a soft spot for the Montgomery Biscuits, because I liked their park and I liked their identity.  This kind of outreach and promotion not only makes me love them forever, but more apt to become a supporter of the Rays, since the Braves are shit and I’ll need someone to root for that I can give a shit about and not just the pursuit of being right and riding on the hopes that the Padres go all the way just to make me look smart.

Either way, I’m going to be lowkey anxious about my need to get Montgomery Kimchi merch, and probably a little bit crazy until I can secure some.  And I’ll go even more ballistic if I manage to get a Kimchi cap and it turns out to be one of those shitty Elmer Fudd quality caps and my life will be over.  But all the same, I will need a Montgomery Kimchi cap.  And probably a shirt, but the kimchi mascot in a men’s large is already fucking sold out, and I can only hope they’ll replenish and realize that there are hundreds to thousands of Koreans out there that will want them and be willing to throw down cash to get them.

Seriously though, fuckin’ Alabama of all places in United States to throw Korea a little bit of love.  Montgomery, no less, where the actual fucking White House of the Confederacy still stands to this very day, is the city that realizes that Koreans are a massive untapped well of cash willing to go gonzo over a little bit of love being shown.  But it’s working all the same, and I’m ready to go to war to get my kimchi cap.

Oh, Atlanta #376

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I last did one of these, yeah?  Mostly on account of the fact that in all the time between the last one and this one, the chance were pretty high that I simply just wasn’t checking any news, local or national, because I simply did not have the time and/or capacity to do so, and potentially run into something that makes words roll off the tongue (or fingertips) to brog about in the first place.  But sure as the rain falls in Georgia summers, I check the local news, the chances are high that I’m going to see something stupid that warrants some word barf.

Like these billboards that have been hung up in a few places in Greenville, South Carolina and now making their way into Atlanta, that supposedly are trying to send a message to the youths of these areas, to put guns down and presumably stop shooting other people.

At the core of these, the message is noble, and something that I do support; reducing gun violence.  But when it comes down to branding, awareness, the execution of a billboard, there’s just so much more wrong that I just can’t help but clown on it.

Like, I don’t know where to even start.  Do I go on about how the focal point of the message is all jacked up and could lead to misinformation, because GUNS NOW is all huge, that someone zipping by I-85 in Greenville or Atlanta, where the posted speed limits are anywhere from 55-70 mph with actual motorists usually going 80+, might not see the smaller text and just see GUNS NOW and become motivated to arm themselves?

Or that maybe in Atlanta where the gun violence is high but the education is low in the areas in which these billboards are up, the order of the messaging isn’t comprehended appropriately, and the wrong people read it as “put down the young people, GUNS NOW” and then they start breaking into other peoples’ cars to find guns, succeed, and then start shooting, young people.

Perhaps it’s the fact that “like” is in quotation marks, as if to encourage people to tongue-in-cheek, air quotes like them on, presumably, Facebook, because there’s a tiny-ass logo, but really don’t.  The use of quotation marks creates more confusing to their message than clarity, and confusion usually leads to harm.

The best part about it is that there’s no actual call to action on the billboard itself; I guess the closest thing is the fact that there is a Facebook logo, but really it’s up to Google to find this organization for you.  To its credit, it wasn’t that difficult to find a Facebook page of the same name which appears to be one and the same, but then there are all these visuals of inconsistent naming; the billboard says “Put Down the Guns Now Young People” but then there’s a bigass banner where the gun is no longer plural, and as someone in marketing, all I can do is shake my head and wince at the inconsistent use of messaging, which is among the top three faux pas when it comes to any sort of establishing brand voice.

Either way, although the message is noble and one that I could get behind, the execution is just far too shoddy and ineffective at getting its point across that I’m afraid I might be more encouraged to get a GUN NOW, because seeing those words in a giant splatter of blood makes me feel like I might need to arm myself to protect myself from those vile young people.

lol AEW but also QQ for Miro

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, my post about how I was finally happy with something AEW did didn’t even get to be pushed off of the front page before AEW had to go do something that basically devalues it pretty much entirely.  Barely a week later, Turner Broadcasting announces that AEW’s flagship show, Dynamite, is going to be moved from TNT to TBS.

Something or other about how Turner secured the television rights to broadcast the NHL, and that they wanted to use TNT to broadcast their games, which would have to force a live program with a static timeslot onto another network as not to force it to have to flex on a whim in accordance to the hockey schedules.  And of course AEW has other “shows” like the internet-only Dark and Elevation programs that I’ve never watched a single episode of, and supposedly another program coming in the near future, but make no mistake, Dynamite is the flagship, and when the flagship is moved, we are saying that AEW is being moved outright.

Initially, I laughed heartily at this news, because it kind of validates all of the passive swiping and criticism of the promotion as a whole, since they don’t have the clout or justification to be cemented on TNT and force other programs to flex around them, validating them as the network sidepiece or flavor of the month that I pegged them as, and that for all the big talk and paper accolades they tout, they’re still getting bullied around like a minor league racket.

But then my next train of thought was obviously the TNT Championship, which was recently won by Miro whom I’ve been high on for years, and how suddenly sad I am for him that after finally beginning to rise back up to the success I always knew he could be, he’s immediately now the sucker holding the belt that has a literal clock above its own relevance, seeing as how the tentative plan is to move AEW off of TNT in 2022.

It doesn’t even matter how much prestige Miro can bring to the belt with a lengthy reign, multiple defenses and quality work, because it has that stupid TNT logo on it, representing a network that doesn’t even want them on it.  Frankly, it doesn’t matter if they redesign the blet (again, which would be #4) to not have a company logo on it, or rename it outright in preparation for the network switch, it’s still going to have the stink of the silliness brought onto it because AEW can’t seem to get their shit together to make some appropriate decisions for their promotion that don’t have time-sensitive repercussions.

Naturally the big question is what’s going to happen next to the TNT Championship: will it just be updated to not have the TNT network logo on it?  Does it become the TBS Championship?  Does AEW unveil a TBS Championship and crown a champion, to then have a unification match with the TNT champion?  Or does AEW grow a fucking brain and turn it into a Television or United States championship and not associate it to a fucking television network before AEW gets moved onto TruTV or Turner Classic Movies?

Hopefully, Miro can come out of these three football fields of shit not too worse for wear, because I’m sad for him that he has to be the unfortunate soul to have to carry the Popeye’s title across the bridge of uncertainty.  I’d rather have seen Darby Allin be the guy to have to do it, but writing it out, maybe it was a plan all along, considering AEW’s puzzling protection over Allin’s character, so may as well have one of those former WWE guys do the heavy lifting instead?

Regardless, this is all just one big amalgamation of failure, and no matter how much spin Tony Khan, the Elite circle jerk, TNT, TBS or Turner executives can apply to this whole situation, it will always conclude with AEW looking dumb and weak, and tied down to that secondary tier that doesn’t put it anywhere in the stratosphere with competing with the WWE, no matter how much they pretend like they’re not trying to compete with them.

Not to further toot my own horn, I did write about the perils of naming a belt after the network it was on, in the event of this exact scenario, but here we are: AEW is being forced off of TNT, and now the TNT Championship is basically meaningless.