Two stories from the New York Yankees' past sum up the history of the franchise as a brand — arguably the top sports brand in the world for a century.
In 1974 general manager Gabe Paul got it in his head to outfit the Yankees in dark blue road uniforms with white pinstripes, reversing the pattern of the home togs and jettisoning the traditional road grays. Cooler heads prevailed, and to this day, the only significant changes to the Yankees' uniforms are the addition of numbers to the jerseys in 1929 and of the "NY" logo to the jerseys in 1936.
Part of the Yankee brand's power stems from its resistance to change.
Longtime Yankees public relations man Marty Appel tells that story in his autobiography, "Now Pitching For The Yankees," and he tells the following story, as well. In 1948, then general manager George Weiss was offered the opportunity for the team's first cap day. He pounded his fist on the desk and barked, "Do you think I want every kid in town walking around in a Yankee cap?"
To some, the Yankees are too resistant to change.
Critics today say the Yankees — and by extension Major League Baseball — don't do nearly enough to spread the Yankee brand throughout the world via licensed merchandise and brand extensions like restaurants. One even suggested a line of fashion merchandise, akin to what some athletic shoe brands have done.
It depends on whether you see the Yankees' current global power as a singular achievement or as unfinished business. Last summer, brand consulting firm FutureBrand valued the team's brand at more than $300 million, more than three times that of the Boston Red Sox and almost $200 million more than the crosstown Mets.
Forbes magazine recently valued the franchise at $850 million. If both FutureBrand and Forbes are right, more than a third of the franchise's value rests in the brand itself — in something abstract and intangible, in the way the world perceives the entity that is the Yankees.
"In a great part of the world, the Yankees represent baseball," said Russ Meyer, executive director of the branding company Landor. "It's a whole host of emotional communications. They mean America, they mean style to a certain extent, they mean New York to a certain community, and there's a wholesomeness to the Yankees that works in there as well, thanks to a kind of mythmaking that pits good guys vs. bad guys in sports."
But like many marketers and branders, Meyer thinks the Yankees could be doing more, particularly outside the United States. He wonders why the Yankees limit their merchandise stores to New York City and why they haven't leveraged the distinctive visual features of the brand for a clothing line, like Yohji Yamamoto's upscale Adidas line.
Yankees marketing executives did not return calls for comment on these ideas. Rick Cerrone, team director of media relations, said the team certainly could pursue such ventures — "and we'd split it 30 ways, with the rest of Major League Baseball," implying there are better ways for a franchise to spend its resources.
|
| "In a great part of the world, the Yankees represent baseball." |
| Russ Meyer, Landor |
|
The Yankees, like the NFL's brand powerhouse, the Dallas Cowboys, have the reputation for sitting on their heels where league-based marketing is concerned. Revenue sharing in licensed merchandise always raises this issue, as the teams with the most brand power have the least impetus to leverage it outside their region, since their cut of the profit is so small.
Of course, critics also take issue with the Yankees' local marketing efforts.
"The Yankees are a brilliantly valuable brand, and marketing has played a role in it," said Jeff Mordos, chief operating officer of BBDO New York, the team's ad agency of record from 2000 to 2001. "The marketing has come from PR, from merchandising, from the marquee value of the players, and from the personality of the owner and the historical success of the franchise. That's all legitimate marketing. But all the tools that most brands use in today's competitive environment — promotion, advertising, consumer relations marketing — are grossly underutilized by the team. They don't use them at all."
Mordos' criticisms could be seen as self-serving — BBDO was the team's last formal ad agency, and agencies line up to do high-concept work for high-profile sports teams. Mordos conveys frustration at not having been given the chance to make more of the Yankee brand. Apart from past campaigns by marketing partner Adidas, he said, the team's current efforts don't rise above "promotional mentions in broadcasts and print ads, saying, 'Come out Thursday for promotional night.' That's hardly high-ground messaging that fits the stature of the brand."
The team is averaging nearly 39,000 fans per game. But Mordos says, "Frankly, there's no reason why Yankee Stadium isn't sold out every single night." The ballpark holds slightly more than 57,000.
What the pundits are running up against is a team bias against turning its brand-building over to outside folks. Arguably, it's embodied in the owner himself, George Steinbrenner. He's a tyrant about on-field performance and is willing to pay for it. He squeezes all the marketing he can out of these realities, knowing that a feud with Joe Torre or Don Zimmer or Derek Jeter will generate millions of dollars in free publicity worldwide, without having to spend a dime. If it generates wins, too, the payback is multiplied.
As one observer put it, "The Visa television spot [currently running] with George and Derek — that's more about George than about Derek or the Yankees."
Cerrone explains the company philosophy: "We do take great pride in the product we put on the field, and we reinvest and reinvest and reinvest. Steinbrenner reinvests in the ballclub, and we're not taking the money out and putting it into other ventures."
The franchise's resistance to altering Steinbrenner's distinctive formula is understandable if you consider his success over the past 30 years, and the franchise's as a whole for the past century.
Tom Duane, chief creative officer of Woolf Associates and formerly a principal in SME Design, which remade more than 100 sports logos in the 1990s, thinks the team needs a third mark, to go with the classic "NY" overlapped letters and the "Yankees" script mark.
"They need a word mark for 'New York' that incorporates elements of New York City in some way that reinforces the deep connection," Duane said. But he said he'd never touch the two existing marks, and he added something that speaks volumes about the resistance to change an iconic brand: "Whoever did the redesign would be committing suicide."
