Xavier says we’re in a Rebuild already. A ‘Brand Rebuild’.
Xavier Campbell: “We believe he’s the right person to take us forward as a football program and also as a club in the next phase of our brand rebuild, which is really important,”
https://thewest.com.au/sport/essendon-bombers/john-worsfold-signs-new-two-year-deal-will-remain-essendon-coach-until-2020-ng-b88788478z
John Worsfold: “We’ve worked all summer on playing a brand of footy we want to play and we’ve seen bits of it.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/teams/essendon/john-worsfold-calls-for-patience-after-essendons-lacklustre-start-has-no-sympathy-for-zach-merrett/news-story/ccc4ec34080d34715e50c43f05d8aa35
Branding isn’t like bankruptcy, you don’t get to declare it.
(It’s also not your logo.)
Unless it’s me that’s got it wrong, our coach and CEO fundamentally misunderstand the concept of ‘branding’.
One of the few arguments I’ve ever had with a client was that they were upset I couldn’t “just make us look like a slick, professional company”. I explained to them that they were perhaps the most disorganised company I’d ever dealt with. No amount of sugar coating their messaging was about to change the fundamental problems they had as a business.
In my experience branding is best described by statements like “how someone at the front office answers the phone” and “how someone talks about you when you’re not in the room”.
Essendon’s brand is not high quality, competitive, fast, non compromising football. That’s their stated aspirational goals. That’s different.
Essendon’s brand is inconsistent, indecisive, disingenuous, fractured, weak and unprofessional.
Inconsistent because of the ability to beat good teams and lose to bad teams. While themselves being a bad team.
Indecisive because they keep coaches and players long past due, making simple decisions look hard. Jackson Merrett was fit for delisting 18 months ago. Where else but Essendon could Hayden Skipworth hope to have such a long football industry career?
Disingenuous because they consider themselves as a ‘big successful club’ because of distant former glories and huge membership numbers despite not having won a final in 15 years.
Fractured because the list management team recruit players from certain position who are then playing in the VFL in another position only then to be brought to the senior team to play another position.
Fractured also because somehow the entire “Sorry Saga” can happen. Like, at all.
Weak because Essendon seeks to shortcut their way to success. See again the Sorry Saga. See the recruitment of Brendon Goddard the second we no longer had to draft or develop star players.
And yeah I’ll throw in my favourite bug-bear here. Essendon is straight-up unprofessional. Show me an AFL captain that presents himself as the face of the club the way Dyson Heppell does his. That his presentation (yeah, the hobo beard) and demeanour (can play garbage football, openly disagree with the CEO and coach without consequence) and acceptable to Essendon tells you everything about the measure of success. It’s low, if it exists at all.
That’s Essendon’s brand. It’s only ‘rebuilt’ by on-field performance.
Not slide decks. Not buzzword-heavy statements.
Bring in a board and CEO that want a Premiership first. Commercial opportunities and e-Sports second. Then the re-build begins.
Stupid football cub making me write preachy lunch-time essays.
