When branding goes wrong
A funny (or not so funny, depending on how you look at it) story in the NYT today about my hometown's new soccer team, its name and the harsh lesson in branding its organizers have had to stomach. At a time when cities are forming soccer leagues solely to satisfy a Latino market need, it's pretty amusing when the name of the team itself isolates -- even infuriates -- the very market it's meant to woo:
HOUSTON, Jan. 26 — What better way to honor the brash origins of this
city, the owners of Houston's new professional soccer franchise
reasoned, than to name their team "Houston 1836," a nod to the year
when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a
city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.
Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team's
name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be
the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of
secession that resulted in Mexico's loss of Texas, ushering in more
than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the
state.
Read the whole NYT article here. Highly recommended.
Happy Friday!
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