Recent MLS rebrands in Houston and Montreal will aim to deepen community ties, and on the latest "SBJ Unpacks: The Road Ahead" podcast, our Andrew Levin spoke with two club leaders -- Dynamo FC President of Business Operations John Walker and CF Montreal President & CEO Kevin Gilmore -- about their new names and marks.
On the rebrand in Houston, which Walker called symbolic of a "complete transformation":
Walker: We did a lot of research, as you should do, and a lot of discussions with fans ahead of making any changes. The things that continue to resonate with the fans were the name, 'Dynamo,' as well as the colors orange and black. ... When the team first came from San Jose in 2006, they had immediate success, but it was just the team. Since then, we’ve built a stadium. We’ve added the NWSL Dash. We’ve grown our academy, just purchased our training facility out at Houston Sports Park. So, there’s so much more to the entity now, that the name 'club' really makes a lot more sense.
On departing from the "Impact" brand:
Gilmore: The brand needs to represent or stand for something, and when we tried to unwrap that, it came down to the message, at least the objective, that the owners gave themselves 28 years ago when they were launching a minor-league soccer team, and the goal then clearly was not to eventually be a club in the highest division for soccer in North America, but rather, a professional soccer team that would help promote the game in Montreal. So, that’s what the name (Impact) means. It was a goal that (the owners) gave for themselves and my point to them was, “That’s been done. ... Mission accomplished."
On establishing an emotional connection with francophones:
Gilmore: We’re a French-speaking city, a French-speaking province, so the team needs to have a French-speaking (name). If you look at Inter Miami, their club name is actually Spanish, so it’s not a first in Major League Soccer where a team takes a language that resonates in its marketplace and uses that for the name. ... Soccer is a very North American name for the sport, and football, as it’s called in Europe, or futbol in Spanish, speaks to the sport in Europe. Football here is American football. We’ve got a football team, a CFL team here in the city, so we’re not football, but are we purely North American? Oftentimes, Montreal is described as the bridge between Europe and North America.
