I've sent the following email to Nick Thompson: "Nick I have been told that the club IS planning to rebrand despite what you stated in the recent radio interview. Many fans just do not believe you are telling them the truth. No amount of indignation will convince fans it is not happening. We can see it with our own eyes â starting with the recent change of company name. It would help if the club issued a statement that for the next five years they will be called Hull City AFC and the company name would be changed back to what it was previously. The fans would then feel a lot more confident about not being deceived â at least in the medium term. Many fans think that splitting the names between âfootballâ activities and âbusinessâ activities has no logic. Many activities are a combination. The latest example of âbranding by stealthâ is the photo of Yannick Sagbo standing next to the âHull City Tigersâ badge. There are many other examples of the club not appearing to know what they are doing and constantly trying to fob off the fans with pathetic excuses like not knowing what names were used in the body of emails sent out and not know what sponsors were going to say when making announcements regarding the club. I would suggest that these announcements should (and would) be agreed between the club and sponsor before being released. We just do not accept that the examples are pure incompetence which is the club line when they are found out. You seem to be going down a path of knowingly trying to alienate the fans with ideas that go against any known marketing and branding theory as well as disregarding any sense of tradition and history. It makes more sense to have a consistent brand and that would be to use âHull City AFCâ which can be shortened to âHull Cityâ even though we know that a lot of national media will even shorten that to âHullâ. Changing âHull City AFCâ to âHull City Tigersâ will simply cause confusion because anybody without close connections to Hull or Hull City will not be sure whether or not itâs the Premier League football club from Hull. It could be one of any other sporting clubs in Hull. Why are you trying to change a well known brand that could be strengthened during the best opportunity in the clubâs history and instead going all out to weaken it in some misguided venture? If you are still unsure of how ridiculous the clubs attitude is please read the following links. http://twohundredpercent.net/?p=23752 http://sackedinthemorning.com/extreme-makeover-club-rebranding-in-english-football/ You now have an opportunity to show you understand football and football fans - please take it. If you feel that you âare only following ordersâ then you should consider how discredited that excuse is and remember what you said very recently and do the honourable thing and resign. Peter Peter Saxton" The links are a good read. If you have any comments I would be very interested as I may be able to use them if I get a reply. I accept some people don't care what we are called or what we wear.
What a load of rubbish. What 'confusion'? That was the same argument that was used prior to decimalization. 'People would be confused and wouldn't understand'. It was patronizing then as it is now.
Good on you, Peter - I'm with you but, as Patty says, it may have no effect. But at least Nick T. should reply to you.
Fair play, at least you're doing something about it. If it goes anyway to stopping the rebranding, I'm right behind you.
With decimalisation there was confusion but there were great advantages in the change. What's the advantage of the change now? What's the disadvantages of the change? Why have different names for "football activities" and "business activities"? Is buying Yannick Sagbo a football or business activity? Is selling tickets to football matches a football or business activity?
An excellent email. I hope this lands on 'the right desk' and notice is duly taken. There are two aspects to this whole unsavoury mess. 1) The stupid ill-conceived name change and 2) The devious and faux ingenu attitude of the club over this. If they wanted to nip it in the bud, they would have done so months ago. Both very worrying- for different reasons.
I thought it was disgusting when we were told that they didn't know what an email looked like when it was sent out. It's standard practice to send a test email to check there isn't any problems before sending an email to thousands of subscribers. Even if people don't understand that I would have thought they would include themselves on the list of subscribers to see what their subscribers receive. I suppose they will say that the Yannick Sagbo photo was an error and he should have stood in front of a Hull City AFC badge. They certainly make a lot of errors!
This thread made my day. I've given my two cents on this so won't again but just like to comment on one of the last points you made. Are you serious when you say that "Hull City Tigers" could somehow be confused by anyone outside of the city as being Hull's new Table tennis or Lacrosse team, rather than its football team, which the majority of people know to be nicknamed the Tigers. Never heard such tripe before. If that's the kind of argument you're fighting with I honestly don't expect much of a result.
So, if people know that Hull City's nickname is "the Tigers" what is the point of changing the club's business activities to "Hull City Tigers" and leaving the football activities as "Hull City AFC"?
Meet me at a home game and I'll be happy to give you a copy. That's obviously not a serious comment, I haven't written a letter and you haven't been to a home game.
Hey cmon Circ, if they didn't fire off these whiney emails, these things that aren't happening, wouldn't happen anyhow, so we have them to thank for stuff not happening than wasn't going to.
You do realise that that's just a way to make the transition... eventually they'll want everything to be under one name, a name that the Allams obviously feel rings better and will appeal more to the masses.
