Marketing Week - Their Opinion

Branding goes to Hull in a handcart
Wed, 11 Dec 2013 | By Mark Ritson

You might imagine that the supporters of Hull City football club are enjoying this season.

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Their team has returned to the English Premier League for only the second time in their 109-year history and now sits very comfortably mid-table. Recent results, including a superb 3-1 victory over Liverpool – the first in the club’s history – suggest that Hull are well-placed not only to survive but to prosper in the upper echelons of English football.

When local businessman Assem Allam took over in 2010 things were very different. Hull were edging dangerously toward administration, having been relegated from the Premier League. There was a genuine concern around East Yorkshire that, like other formerly great clubs before them, Hull would struggle in the seasons to come. Thanks to Allam’s injection of £75m, however, and the subsequent recruitment of managerial veteran Steve Bruce, the club’s prospects have never looked brighter.

But all is not well at the KC Stadium. There was a peculiar atmosphere among the Hull fans at last Monday’s 1-1 draw at Swansea and the past few weeks have been among the most turbulent in living memory of the club.

The reason for the tension? For once it’s not results or the manager that is enraging the fans. It’s brand management – or the lack thereof. Along with his on-field success Allam has a clear vision for the club’s long-term commercial strategy.

“To make a global impact,” he recently told the Hull Daily Mail, “you need a brand. Look at Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea – they are worldwide brands.”

Allam has recently decided to rebrand the club. Out goes the name Hull City AFC, to be replaced with the more internationally appealing Hull Tigers. According to the owner it’s a classic marketing ploy.

“The shorter the name, the more powerful the impact,” he explains. “That’s not an opinion, it’s textbook marketing. Twitter, Google, Apple, Fiat. Fiat means Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino, but they choose to keep the name short”.

Despite the club being known as Hull City for more than a century, the owner is clear that supporters must now embrace a more differentiated name.

“My dislike for the word ‘City’ is that it is common,” he says. “The word is also associated with Leicester, Bristol, Manchester and many other clubs. I don’t like being like everyone else. I want the club to be special. It’s about identity. City is a lousy identity and Hull City Association Football Club is so long. In Tigers, we have a really strong brand.”

The response from Hull’s supporter base has been, perhaps not surprisingly, furious. Rick Skelton, well known among supporters for his Hull City Live Twitter feed, said the decision “would go down as one of the saddest days” in the club’s history.

“It may be just a name to Mr Allam, but to us it’s the name of something we love, we’ve cherished and will be cherished long after the current owners,” he wrote. “The saddest part is that this has come at a time when fans should be excited for top-flight football, not angry at a ridiculous rebrand. And the feeling towards the Allam family – who have done wonderful things for our Club and our City – should be one of fondness, not fury.”

The club’s supporters have set up a campaign group called City Till We Die. Allam’s recent retort that “they can die as soon as they want, as long as they leave the club for the majority who just want to watch good football” has merely fanned the flames of disgust around the KC.

“We’re Hull City and we’ll die when we want,” has become the most popular anthem on the terraces.

All this illustrates one of the most important points about brand management – how you enact a strategy is often just as important as the strategy itself. Much of the “marketing theory” being quoted by Mr Allam is, quite frankly, nonsense, but the one area he has completely failed to grasp is brand engagement.

The lesson for other marketers intent on radical changes like rebranding or repositioning is that the more ambitious and dramatic the proposed strategy, the more gentle and engaged a marketer must be to ensure the strategy is first accepted and then executed correctly.


http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/4008852.article?

 

From the No To Hull Tigers Facebook page:

 

You could merge this and my thread, PLT?

 

I agree with that. It seems strange that Mr. Allam chose to antagonise people when he probably could have been a lot more subtle.

 

And the fact that the author regards AA's 'theory' as bollocks?

 

Bit of a disappointing read - I'd have hoped he'd have given more of his professional insight into why this might be a good or bad idea rather than just summarising the situation

 

QPR used to be known as Queen's Park Rangers. Anybody know how their fortunes changed when they dropped the apostrophe to give a shorter name?

 

Quite possible. I don't think anyone apart from Mr Allam believes the name change could have any relevance to a far East marketing strategy.
I think as a businessman he just instinctively prefers more punchy names.

 

I told you it was all bollocks ages ago. My 2.1 in Marketing came to the fore. Allam gets his Marketing principles from the Dandy or the Beano.

 

On a serious note, if Allam has so much confidence in his marketing team and ideas he should be asking himself why they're currently being outdone by a bunch of amateurs when it comes to making public the case for the change.

 

This is ****ing ******ed and hypocritical.

I've said it already but this is not about marketing. I thought everyone knew this already. You can't use the marketing argument against AND the emotional argument of keeping history intact. It's one or the other.

EVEN if AA had all sorts of evidence backing his plan CTWD would still have been formed on the basis of "history more important than money" and people would still doubt his plan and people would still be against it. So it is completely irrelevant.

I'm glad you CTWD studs feel flattered to be backed by a prize winning columnist but this is old news not sure what it adds to the debate. I thought we were all aware that this wasn't about trying to get money from our fellow and gullible Asians, that it was a petty decision and that AA never had a plan.

Did anyone actually still believe he had a marketing plan?

 

You argued against it for weeks!

 

Actually I haven't. I saw his interview about 3/4 weeks ago and as soon as I had finished viewing it I knew AA didn't have a real marketing plan and it was all petty **** with HCC.

Not sure why you're making this up.

The only argument I've been going over for weeks is the fact that if I owned a business and I wanted to change the name (FOR WHATEVER REASON AS PETTY AS IT MAY BE), I wouldn't back down because a few customers don't like my change. I would only back down if I saw a decrease in income (which hasn't happened because everyone still wants the cake and eat it by attending PL games)

 

I think the evidence is there for all to see. He doesn't have a Marketing team, he seems to work off a whim. If he had a team, I'm sure they would be advising him that to build support in new markets, it is hugely important to maintain support in existing markets. They would also advise him against do any media interviews, I can't remember one interview he has done since 'Namechangegate' that he has come out of looking in a positive light.

 

How is it hypocritical to debunk the argument in favour of the name change?

The owners want to change the name and are trying to gain support by saying it will increase revenue. If that goes unchallenged then it is a debate about whether history is more important or not. If that idea is dismissed then it becomes an argument about whether the name should be changed just because someone fancies changing it.

Anybody who is unsure about whether they support the change or not is likely to be unsure because they think the benefits might outweigh the sacrifice. Being able to accurately dismiss the theoretical benefits as being completely fictitious allows those people to make a more informed decision rather than just guessing.

 

Are you only realising this now??? Jesus.

 

You've consistently said he has a right to do what he wants, but you've done it in the context of criticising those of us who want to do something about it. You can't deny that.

 

It's hardly a few though, it's a majority - I don't think the total membership of CTWD is a fair representation of all those opposing the name change. There is only a few noisy pro name changers on here.

 

I'd be interested to know if this expert marketer thinks the name change would decrease revenue. As far as I can tell the only way it would is with a decrease in attendance and expenditure in club merchandise. However, I don't see that happening as long as we're in the PL.

So my point remains. This was NEVER a marketing argument. It was only one because of AA lie. So you've debunked a lie. A lie that I thought everyone already knew about, didn't realise you needed some expert to tell you. It doesn't change anything sadly. Unless the F.A need marketing evidence to approve it.

On top of it, you can have a 100 of these "experts" tell you one thing and I'm sure AA could find a few to back his point.