The Washington Commanders unveiled their new name, logo, team crest, and uniforms this week, 579 days after a July 3, 2020 announcement that the franchise would be taking a “thorough review” of the organization's original name.
And given the organization had all that time to dot all the i’s and cross all their t’s, Frances Reimers, founder of brand consulting firm Firestarter, expected more from such a momentous occasion for the team and the fans. She expected a lot more.
“I give the rollout an F. A big, fat, big effin F!” Reimers told The Team 980’s Travis Thomas Friday.
“They dropped the ball in every way shape or form. Top to bottom,” she said. “This is not a Pop Warner team that’s managed by volunteer mom and dads. This is a professional sports team in, undoubtedly, the most powerful city in the world. Their access to resources in marketing, PR, strategy is unlimited.
“So, to roll things out the way they have over the past two years and all of the blunders along the way, you get an F. I’m sorry, there’s no room for error. F, ya failed, go back, all of your degrees declined. No, it was painful every step of the way to watch.”
One aspect Reimers pointed to was Commanders team president Jason Wright’s apparent willingness to admit the team crest could be "easily fixed" so soon after releasing it when Wright was pressed about the incorrect formatting of the team’s Super Bowl wins by The Team 980’s Kevin Sheehan.
“Even in a re-brand,” Thomas said, “saying the words, you know, we can re-do it, that’s a problem isn’t it?”
“That’s a huge problem. That’s a huge problem,” Reimers said. “Everything from dates to how things go out to the media to even how the interviews were handled across the board on [Feb. 2] the stuff on the Today Show, all of this stuff, y’all have had two years to think this through, y’all have had two years to do practice runs to do public testing, private testing, testing your messaging. No, I’m sorry, that’s why you get an F.”
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Another aspect many found anti-climatic was the way the name Commanders was announced on the Today Show. In a matter-of-fact manner, Wright pointed his thumb at Doug Williams telling him to announce it, Williams said the name Commanders while leaning over to put his arm around Jon Allen, and the moment was capped with a pronounced and excited guffaw from NBC’s Craig Melvin.
“You’re on live, national television and you didn’t think this through, what you would say, how it would go?” Reimers told The Team 980.
To Reimers, announcing on the Today Show was “just a vacuum with the fans left in the lurch. This was a media push to try to look good, to try to control the message, and I think, once again, the ball was dropped [including] by the Today Show. The Today Show should’ve stepped up and been like, ‘we want a spectacular, we want the cheerleaders, we want a show,’ and it was just a pared-down conversation that was very awkward and contrived and it just didn’t flow well. But it was just void of the fan experience and, honestly, I don’t really think it did much.”
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“All of the pieces weren’t there that should have been there for an actual launch,” she added. “The mascot, the fight song, and for Jason Wright to get on TV and be like, ‘well, we’re gonna crowdsource that, we’re gonna get everybody involved in that,’ what have you been doing for the past two years?
“A fight song, a mascot should have been part of your focus grouping for the past two years. So what have they been doing? I don’t like this. To me, it just [adds] to my feeling that is half-baked and it has been half-baked all along and they’re just trying to push things to get out in front of the public relations issues that they’re facing on the other side of the ball.”
Reimers capped her criticism by telling Thomas: “This is not a proper launch. And if I was teaching a class on sports marketing and we get to the brand section, this is a case study of what not to do.”
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