Seattle didn't choose a traditional name in the "Kraken," but their brand launch was a smashing success. Here's what the PWHL could learn from Seattle when they take a second attempt at team names and logos.
Seattle didn't choose a traditional name in the "Kraken," but their brand launch was a smashing success. Here's what the PWHL could learn from Seattle when they take a second attempt at team names and logos.
In 2018, Sports Illustrated didn't hold back on their thoughts about the potential name "Seattle Kraken."
Seattle's new NHL franchise had registered 13 potential names for trademark, and Sports Illustrated ranked "Kraken" as the worst among them.
"Naming your team after a mythical creature is an extremely minor-league move," wrote Sports Illustrated's Dan Gartland. "It’s an especially bad idea when that creature has no real tie to the region. The Kraken is a monster with origins in the north Atlantic, not the Pacific Northwest."
It's not a conventional name, and had the organization misstepped, the response could have been similar to naming a team...Echo, Wicked, or Sound...for example.
Yet when the Kraken name was released, it was not met with the sweeping negativity the PWHL's six trademarked names earned. Instead, the franchise set a tone of positivity, and directed their own narrative.
Perhaps the main difference was time. Seattle had 19 months to come up with their non-traditional name and prepare for how they would unveil every aspect of their brand. They were also secretive about the name selection, logo, website, and more. Seattle used a firm from Hawaii to secretly register domains, and when they met on the topic, it was done not only behind closed doors, but closed curtains as well.
"We were careful with where we met. We were careful with what material we printed. And when we had these meetings, we drew the shades with paranoia," Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy, a part-owner of the team told ESPN's Emily Kaplan in 2020.
Even after they selected the name, Seattle kept meticulous spreadsheets outlining who knew what, who had signed NDAs, and where a leak could occur if one did. Employees never stated the name "Kraken" in emails. They used pseudonyms and initials in place of the name. Prior to the announcement, merchandise was not available so that no one in a printing shop or warehouse could possibly see the name or logo. When they officially trademarked the name, they also trademarked others as decoys.
When the potential PWHL names came out, the league had already lost control of the narrative.
Another asset Seattle utilized was fan involvement in the process. "The fans are going to be involved in every decision," president Ted Leiweke told ESPN in 2019. The team used an online portal for name suggestions, and later, followed a fan poll running in the Seattle Times. The team also followed social media, digging through Twitter posts mentioning Seattle and the NHL.
"We watched what was happening on social media -- how often potential names were mentioned, what was the sentiment, the reactions," said Heidi Dettmer, the team's vice president of marketing in Kaplan's 2020 article. "That was pretty regular. We would have updates on a weekly cadence on that."
Scholars also followed Seattle's launch closely, including why the overwhelming feedback and narrative remained positive despite detractors. They looked to examine how Seattle managed the response.
As Armstrong, Davies, Blaszka, and Pegoraro concluded, "The Kraken were able to encourage favorable conversation about the team by setting the agenda and encouraging consumers to engage with content at specific times during launch. In the first hour after brand launch, consumers focused conversation on the team, the logo and color scheme, and the effectiveness of the launch video. In the following 24 hr, the conversation remained positive and focused on how the brand positively represented the city and region. Through agenda setting, the Seattle Kraken were able to effectively launch their new brand while also setting the stage for positive brand-association development."
When they released the Kraken to the public, along with their team colors and stylized "S" logo, Seattle had each portion of their brand, reasoning, color choices, and other elements ready to be explained in a day of online posts, promo videos, graphics, and other materials to drive conversation in the direction the organization desired. Even following the official announcement, naysayers themselves spun positive messages into their discourse saying "They went big. They went bold."
As Seattle Times columnist Larry Stone wrote, "They knew a backlash of some sort was inevitable, and forged ahead anyway. Daring, fearlessness, the courage of one’s convictions — those are the sort of qualities that bode well for an expansion franchise that can’t afford to be risk averse as it tries to make its mark in the NHL."
The difference was, Seattle had all the pieces in place, and they were secretive. If a portion of their secret was going to be released, they padded it with alternatives and connected with media to engage fans in the process. It's known that the release of new names and logos, which has been studied in various sports, is not an easy process. It's a lesson the PWHL learned the hard way.
"New teams have the unique challenge of developing a brand that goes from an unknown quantity to something people care about within their community," Davies, Blaszka, and Armstrong wrote in another paper in 2023 titled "Exploring the managerial perspective on developing a new sport team brand."
The PWHL was facing a unique challenge. First, they didn't have the time Seattle's NHL group had as an official organization. The PWHL was hiring staff while Seattle was strategizing on every step of their brand. Next, they weren't starting from scratch. Rather, they were deleting five established brands, beloved by many, including the Minnesota Whitecaps, Metropolitan Riveters, Toronto Six, Montreal Force, and Boston Pride to replace them with unknowns. When the PWHL began by teasing color schemes, those colors had no connection to a logo or team name, and to date, still don't. When the names leaked, there were no alternatives unlike with Seattle's strategy. When the league unveiled jerseys, there were no names or logos, only generic jerseys with the market name diagonally, integrating the originally displayed colors. Later, the PWHL released merchandise that showed no connection to those colors, or in many cases the teams at all. At times the merchandise was duplicated identically across markets drawing criticism as the apparel did not represent the city or colors in any way. As researchers have found, inconsistency of this kind, without a clear and concise plan, can impact fan base development.
"When new sport organizations project inconsistent brand identities to the marketplace, the lack of clarity and vision can compound the difficulty in forming viable fan bases," researchers have stated.
Despite these misteps, the PWHL filled buildings, and built bridges in the opening week of play. Fans bought merchandise, and fandom grew online and in person. Soon however, the PWHL will be stepping back up to the plate to attempt a second swing at logos and names to further tie the brands they are building to the markets they're in. This time, the league can't afford to miss, and hopefully can learn from the process the Seattle Kraken undertook. A large chunk of this phase will now be overseen by Amy Scheer, the league's senior vice president of business operations, who was hired the day after the leaked names emerged.
Whether it's the Echo, Torch, Alert, Wicked, Superior, and Sound...or six other names, the PWHL needs to get their next attempt right.