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Kraken Has Been Released: Going Inside Seattle NHL's Naming Process

The Kraken, the name announced on Thursday for Seattle’s NHL expansion team set to begin play in ’21, survived a lengthy process to be picked as the club’s identity. Team execs initially looking at 1,200 suggested names, explored 100 and whittled those down to five before choosing the popular choice of Kraken. Andy Jassy, Amazon Web Services CEO and Kraken minority Owner, told THE DAILY following the announcement that Kraken had a number of connections to the city, including a tie-in to Seattle’s maritime history and, naturally, the water. “There is this folklore in the Pacific Northwest and in Seattle, this mystical kraken creature that lives just beneath the surface of the sea, and it’s really resonated over the years in Seattle,” he added. Jassy said that the team and its ownership settled on Kraken at the end of ‘19 before embarking on creating a logo and color scheme. That took another “four or five months,” he said, in addition to “tying up loose ends when it came to trademark protection” and finding the right time to share the news amid the coronavirus pandemic.

KEEPING THINGS QUIET: Prior to Thursday’s announcement, there was not a definitive report saying Kraken would be the club’s name. Jassy said that there were eight people -- between Kraken team staff and some ownership -- who were involved in the name selection and the design of logo and colors. Members of Adidas were also involved along with Seattle-based Perch Partners, a strategic brand advisory and management company. “When you’re trying to release something, and you want it to be a surprise,” Jassy said, “it’s always a balance between how do you keep the number of people that know about it very narrow without being so paranoid that you can’t get your work done or you alienate people unnecessarily? We tried to ride that balance. We all thought that there was a reasonable chance, no matter what we did, that it might leak. If you look at the history of sports information, new names and logos, they almost always leak. We weren’t sure that we were going to be able to keep it a secret.”

NOT TAKING ANY CHANCES: To prevent leaks and information being more widely shared, Jassy said that information surrounding the team’s identity was confided in a select amount of staff and the core ownership. Staffers were careful not to leave a paper trail wherever they went, they meticulously wiped white boards before leaving conference rooms and when creative was displayed on a screen, the group would draw the shades wherever they were located. “We were careful about not giving the team name too early to some of the manufacturers,” he said. “That’s where it might leak as well.”

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