Houston's Teams Know Building a Brand Is a Vital Part of the Game

Houston Business Journal
August 9, 2002

by Christine Hall

Houston Business Journal
The Houston Rockets have a strong brand, boosted by periods when they've had strong athletic personalities. The Astros have also fared well in Houston, but don't have a large fan base outside the city.

These are among the findings of a study on the branding of 80 U.S. professional sports teams by New York-based brand consulting firm FutureBrand. The Rockets' branding success earned them the rank of No. 38, and the Astros ranked No. 49.

"Both teams are in a good media market with fans who tend to be really into their sports teams, but the Dallas Cowboys, which is No. 2 on the list and has the largest fan base outside its city of any team, dominates the market," says Sebastian Shapiro, engagement director at FutureBrand and coordinator of the study.

FutureBrand determined the value of the teams by calculating revenue and profit stream, team's popularity and fan base, fan interest across the different sports and the strength or degree of risk of the brand in its market in relation to competitors.

"This is not a study we did to raise awareness of the topic, but more relating to sport's strength and level of sports following," Shapiro says.

New beginnings
The study compares the branding of teams in different sports — the basketball-playing Rockets, Aeros ice hockey team and football-playing Cowboys. It will be interesting, Shapiro says, to see how the new Houston-based Texans football team stacks up against the Dallas football team in its branding efforts.

The Texans are generating the elements that make a strong brand, says Jamey Rootes, senior vice president/ chief sales and marketing officer for the team.

"We are taking all these ideas and gravitating them to create an identity," Rootes says. "In sports you don't really have a product to work with, so you have to look to the key leadership of the organization to find the objectives."

Rootes lists six words members of the Texans organization use and want to essentially "drill" into the minds of the teams and the fan: "pride," "leadership," "innovativeness," "accessibility," "authenticity" and "spirit."

But it's not enough for a team to have an internal identity; there also has to be an external image to associate with the team. That is where Adam Nisenson and his team at Houston-based Active Imagination come in.

Designing all of the Texans' gear from tickets to envelopes and posters, the branding team has come up with a distinctive image to relay the look and feel the Texans want to convey to fans.

"The main objective, since the team is in its first year, was to come up with the logo itself," says Nisenson, co-owner.

The Texas flag-motif logo is in the shape of a stylized bull, which has a Texas flavor but isn't "old West," like the Longhorn.

"After creating the look for the season tickets, everything else just follows, so when you look at a collection of Texans items they all have the same sets of images."

All Texans items will include a watermark of the logo on a blue background.

Traditional approach
Taking a more traditional approach in marketing, the Houston Aeros are looking at partnerships to help establish its brand.

By creating relationships with organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Girls Scouts to have special nights, the Aeros are able to attract fans to the games, says Karlyn Keuter, vice president of sales and communications.

"It's a win-win situation for both of us because we can have the fan base while they are able to come out for a fun event," she says. "The main thing in sports we have to realize is you have to have spectators in the building to have a successful team."

School spirit
It's not only professional teams that are willing to make an investment in branding. Colleges and universities generate advertising and marketing dollars, too.

For example, to build on the already growing number of Texas A&M University fans, the 12th Man Foundation with the help of Bates Southwest-Houston, has created a preview advertisement playing at AMC theaters in Houston.

"The long-term goal is to make A&M the No. 1 school with which Texans identify," says Mike Albrecht, senior vice president of Bates Southwest. "We wanted to reach families who already are going out of the house for entertainment to get them to come up to the campus for a weekend to catch a game."