Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians, and the Religious Nature of Brands

The Cleveland Indians announced that they were retiring their mascot, Chief Wahoo, after the 2018 season. The mascot had come under increasing criticism for being a racist depiction of native Americans and the club decided that it was time for him to go. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a furor erupted from loyal fans who were angry at the move. To those, Chief Wahoo isn’t racist, but an icon of their culture, part of their core identity.

At a time when our society has largely replaced religion with political affiliation and culture with brand, sports teams often occupy a special hallowed place in the hearts and minds of fans. If athletes are deities, stadiums are churches, and teams are our new religions, is it any wonder that fans say prayers at the bottom of the 9th hoping for a home run? The fervent nature of our attachments to these brands, though, means we can often be blinded to their cultural insensitivity. To admit that a beloved icon is racially charged is to admit our own racism and, so, many will simply deny such racism exists, defending what they find familiar.

But defending racism is never appropriate. Cleveland Indian fans deserve, and should demand, better. Chief Wahoo should be laid to rest along with other racially-charged symbols like the Confederate Flag, blackface, and others. Instead of trying to defend Chief Wahoo, fans should demand the club develop a brand that portrays Cleveland in a positive light, as a forward-thinking, culturally aware and dynamic city. Maybe in his departure, that’s one lesson we can all learn from the Chief.

Full disclosure—I grew up rooting for the Cleveland Indians and have fond memories being taken to games at Cleveland Stadium with my father. As an eight-year-old baseball fan, I never saw Chief Wahoo as a racist symbol, only as a symbol of my favorite team. But I’m not eight anymore. He’s a racist depiction of a native American and needs to go. Well done Cleveland Indians for understanding this.

Designing for Other People’s Customers

Most companies create their website with user experience in mind—they make it easy for visitors to do what they want—but they miss the opportunity to create a site to guide the visitor into doing what the company wants. The goals of the visitor to a website are not necessarily the same for the visitor and the company. The visitor may be looking for information, doing research for a future possible purchase. The company, on the other hand, wants to make a sale, collect data, or provide a service. How can you turn a website visitor into a customer? Through good design.

Let’s take a look at four main criteria we can use to judge whether a design will aid in turning a prospect into a customer.

Content

  • Is your message clear? Interesting? Does it speak to the visitor?
  • Do you offer clear pathways for the visitor to follow?
  • Do you offer clear calls-to-action to take additional steps? Do you give the visitor multiple options (such as “Learn more” and “Sign up today?”)
  • Is the language appropriate? Is it gender biased? Could it offend?

Experience

  • Is the site easy to navigate? Are terms understandable and unique?
  • Are calls-to-action similar throughout the site? Is like content grouped by function?
  • Is the site responsive? Can it be navigated on phone, tablet desktop?
  • Is the site free of visual clutter? Is content organized in digestible “screens?”
  • Is the site navigable in adverse conditions? The visually impaired? Screen reading?
  • Is the content searchable? Is it well-organized? Tagged? Categorized?
  • Can the visitor make a direct connection to your company?

Technology

  • Is the technology you’re using appropriate for the visitor?
  • Does the site require technology that is not universal?
  • Is the site manageable by your staff in a timely manner?
  • Is it secure?
  • If you’re collecting visitor’s data, do you have a privacy policy that outlines the scope of what you do with the information?

Aesthetics

  • Does the site appeal to your prospect?
  • Are the images appropriate? Unique? Identifiable as your brand?
  • Are the colors and fonts used identifiable as your brand?
  • Do the colors and fonts aid the visitor in doing what you want?
  • Can the visitor scale the fonts (in case of the visually impaired)? Do the colors work for someone who is colorblind? Is it ADA compliant?
  • Do you prioritize information content and flow on smaller devices?

How does your online communication stack up? There are always trade-offs to be made in creating a website. A page that is aesthetically appealing might sacrifice legibility of the content to a certain degree, but in the end the site may be more effective. We call this disfluency.

Disfluency is the act of making something less clear, of slowing down the process of interacting with a page, in order to attain longer interaction and greater retention. Disfluency is just one of the tools we can use to help turn prospects into customers. To find out more, contact Studio 23. We’re ready when you are.

 

More Thoughts on Education

How do you promote a school? How do you attract prospects? And how do you turn prospects into applicants?

Since many educational institutions are tuition-driven, attracting prospects is typically the goal of most communication strategies. But how? And what should your message be? There are a few key attributes that every school has in varying degrees that prospects use to decide where they’d like to apply. To find out what these are, often a simple, informal focus group of incoming students can help the institution understand what attracted them, and help focus future messaging. Brand attributes that a school should review are:

  • Campus
    Is your school a sprawling parkland or part of the urban jungle? Do you have acres of open space or are you a cluster of buildings in an urban setting? Are there natural or historical features that distinguish your campus from others?
  • Alumni
    Who are your alumni? Are some well-known? Successful? Have they gone on to do interesting things? What do they earn on graduation? What rate do they graduate? And how strong and wide of a network do they form?
  • Faculty
    Who are your faculty today? In the past? Are any well-known? Are they mostly seasoned professionals that teach part-time, a course a week? Are they mostly full-time faculty committed to teaching and research?
  • Resources
    What special resources do you offer students? Are you a tech center endowed with the latest technology? Do you have athletic facilities that can train Olympic athletes? Do you have a world-class museum down the street? Do you have industry professionals working cooperatively with your programs?
  • Location
    What is unique about your location? Do you have snow-covered mountains? A sunny climate? A sandy beach? Access to cultural institutions? Are you able to attract prospects internationally or are you a regional draw because of convenience?
  • Academics
    What programs do you offer? Do you have a broad scope or an educational speciality? Is your strength in academic rigor? Vocational training? Are there programs you want to fill or grow?
  • Social
    What do you offer students socially? Do you have a well-respected football team with games every weekend? Is your school’s sports programs important to attracting students? Is the Greek system a large part of campus life? Is your campus in a rural setting where students make their own fun? Are you in an urban center where there’s a party every night? Are there special events that your school is known for?
  • Reputation/Mission
    Are you Ivy League? A local choice? Big Ten school with strong athletic programs? A party school with a laid-back attitude? A liberal arts powerhouse full of free-thinkers? A college that was historically a choice for minorities or women? Are you religiously affiliated?
  • Cost
    Are you a top-tier college worth every penny? Are you a good value for local students? Are you the best mix of tuition and income—the best value for your prospects?

Every school is evaluated by prospects based on these criteria and the criteria vary in importance by student. For some, a park-like campus of a liberal arts school in Southern California that offers a variety of interesting courses is the way to go. For others, the big city excitement of a New York school with its access to professionals in a creative field is a better choice. Or for some, a grassy campus outside of an urban center at a school that’s less expensive but well-respected fills the need. No school can be everything to every student and knowing your strengths is crucial to establishing your message. Understanding how to adapt your promotional materials for the greatest impact is what Studio 23 does best.

We create communication strategies and implement designs that attract prospects but we don’t stop there. We create designs—whether online or off—that make it easy for prospects to connect to clients. Our single-minded goal is always to focus the prospects on becoming applicants, and applicants becoming students.

A Lifetime of Education

It’s no surprise that many of our clients are schools, colleges, and educational institutions. As a former director of publications and teacher at two different schools, I’ve seen first-hand the special needs that schools have and know the challenges involved.

Schools and colleges have to address the needs of very different audiences, for example. They need to appeal to 16-year-old high school students applying to colleges, to alumni that may not have stepped foot on campus in 50 years, to professionals and businesses that may hire graduates, to potential educators and staff, and to funding sources for projects, research grants, and scholarships. Then there are the internal brand conflicts that can arise between different divisions with wildly different needs—athletics, academics, financial, to name a few. How can you address the needs of these different audiences while maintaining a consistent brand? How can you speak with a consistent voice while maintaining uniqueness within subdivisions?

Too much variation from a core brand and an institution appears disconnected, losing brand identity. Too little variation compromises the messaging for target groups. An email targeting high school students should share the core DNA with a planned giving brochure for alumni, but the two have very different parameters. Promotional material for the athletics department should share the same DNA as a brochure attracting potential graduate students, but, again, the two target very different audiences.

One of the first goals in designing for education is understanding what the core brand is and what core elements form the identity with the goal of understanding how these elements can be used, manipulated, flexed, so that the resulting designs can be instantly recognizable as connected to the school, but remain fresh and appropriate for the target audience.

Design is a Melody, The Brand is the Symphony

An analogy to this approach can be found is music. Listen to the score of a symphony or even a movie soundtrack. Within this, you’ll often hear a core melody which changes, becomes clearer, more obscured, which is passed between instruments, changed again, returning to its original form over and over. This playfulness is key to keeping the listener entertained and engaged. Periodically, the composer will introduce unexpected elements, quiet passages, loud crashes, syncopated rhythms, minor keys, while keeping within an overall melodic structure. In the end, the work tells a story, completes a picture. In much the same way, designing for an educational institution is like writing that symphony. Individual elements are created that address specific communication needs within an overall structure that is the brand.

Knowing how flexible or how inflexible to be is our expertise. The look and language of a Shapchat filter that targets high school students is different than a dinner invitation that targets your board of trustees. But whether that’s a 1080-by-1920 pixel .PNG file uploaded to a remote server or a 130# uncoated vellum, ivory white, 100% cotton sheet that’s been letterpressed using soy inks, we’ve done it all. We look forward to working with our education clients in the future. As they grow, so will we.