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A beautiful game tarnished by a toxic brand.
Rebranding is always a mistake – right? Marketing wisdom suggests that it’s akin to committing hari-kari because you instantly lose all awareness, salience and familiarity. All things that can’t be bought in the short-term but have to be forged over an extended period of time and at a considerable, hard and soft, cost to an organization. So, facing the harsh realities of a rebuild from scratch you begin to glimpse the enormous fallacy of rebranding.
But, when your precious brand and business has been built on the fallacious foundations of an organization with warped ethics it’s never too soon to step away. After years of investigations and indictments, in 2020 the United States Department of Justice said that representatives working for Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights for the football – or, as they say on this side of the pond – soccer World Cup. And this, after years of widespread accusations where FIFA essentially operated with impunity, was just the tip of a pernicious iceberg.
So yes, under normal circumstances rebrand at your – and your customers and shareholders – peril. But when your brand and product share a name with an entity marred by years of systemic scandal, it’s like carrying an anchor in the stormy seas of public perception.
As “HMS EA SPORTS FC 24″ finally takes sail I wish her well on her perpetual global voyage. I only wish this newly branded ship had launched when I was on deck.
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