Branding For Branding's Sake

If there's one thing that I can fully admit to being, it's that I'm a traditionalist when it comes to how teams look. We often hear about a logo and jersey being timeless because they've stood the test of time and are still popular today. Names like the Yankees, the Canadiens, the Packers, and the Celtics don't need a lot of description for sports fans because they've worn the same logos and colours for decades. Yes, there have been minor tweaks here and there, but they've remained largely the same for most of their history and that makes them easily identifiable for fans across the globe. For Canadian univeristy sports fans, we don't see a lot of changes there as these redesigns are expensive, but the Manitoba Bisons have gone through a handful of logo changes. And we'll add another one today.

The Manitoba Bisons have used the logo to the right for around two decades. The brown-and-gold charging bison head was the only logo known by most Manitobans when it came to any Bisons team, and it's under that logo where the school found tremendous success on the ice, on the court, on the field, and on the track. National championships were won under that logo, CFL and NFL draft picks were trained while wearing that logo, and thousands of student-athletes gave everything they had on the field of play and in the classroom while wearing that logo. As you can see by the years, though, that logo apparently ended in 2024 to everyone's surprise outside of a handful of people who work for the Bisons Athletics Department. The brown-and-gold bison has, figuratively, been put out to pasture by the university, ushering in a new era.

It's clear that I'm no graphic designer, but this new logo looks like something that could be generated via AI in about 30 seconds like my generic Phoenix Scorpions logo. In looking at the Bisons logos, I fail to see how this is even remotely close to being an improvement or upgrade on the most recent logo, and the verbal marketing diarrhea spewed in the University of Manitoba's release about the rebrand only furthers the realization that this rebranding was unneccesary.

"The refreshed brand includes a forward-facing bison that celebrates the tradition while infusing fresh energy into the next era of Bison Sports excellence. It maintains the iconic brown and gold deeply rooted in Bison Sports history while incorporating blue elements that align with UM's primary colour palette to ensure visual cohesion with the university's broader brand."

"Infusing fresh energy" is nothing more than marketing speak for "the old logo just felt old", and the introduction of a new, unrelated colour to the Bisons' colour scheme is insanity. I get that the UofM has a new logo for the university, but its athletics programs already had an already-known brand. Brown-and-gold was the Bisons just as bleu-blanc-et-rouge is the Canadiens. Adding blue to the scheme was totally unnecessary outside of "the university paid someone a lot of money to put blue in the school's identity, so we need to use it".

The line used at the top of the release - "Bisons do not run from the storm; collectively, they turn to face it as one" - is only partly true as well, and anyone who has studied these majestic creatures would know that. Scientifically, there is zero evidence that bisons turn and head into a storm regardless of the season. While the myth is one to inspire others to face challenges head on and to persevere in the face of any challenge, the truth is that bisons are like any other animal - they seek shelter when storms arrive on the prairies. While this may occasionally have them travelling in the path of an oncoming storm, they certainly are not trying to actively get caught in any storm.

You may have noticed that the release said that "[t]he refresh process began in 2024 with consultations across a wide range of stakeholders", and I even made mention of it here on HBIC on November 27, 2024. At that time, Dr. Douglas Brown, dean of the faculty of kinesiology and recreation management, had spoken to The Manitoban's Taycie Adeoti about a rebranding. He said,

"We are not changing the brand," Dr. Brown told Adeoti. "You can't simply change a brand, overnight, so we're really viewing this as a sort of an exploration of how impactful our current branding is. I don't want people to be confused that the Bison logo is the brand — the brand is about the people, the values and about what we do."

Ten months later, and it seems that vow wasn't entirely true. While the brand hasn't changed in the grand scheme, the Bisons logo today is certainly not the logo that was being worn in 2024. Before we go any further, Brown also addressed that, stating,

"[I]f there are adaptations or changes to the current logo or other symbols associated with it — I'd like it to make sense within the context of what the university is doing as a whole."

I noted at the time that the Bisons logo wasn't the problem whatsoever with the branding, but the school's complete lack of effort in being part of the Manitoba community and its entire failure to honour alumni for their achievements during and after their commitments to the school were the largest part of why no one seemed to care about the Bisons or the university in general. You know how many local news outlets I saw talking about this rebrand today? Hint: it's a very round number. Outside of a 3 Down Nation article, no one is talking about this rebrand in any meaningful way.

Dr. Brown was also quoted in The Manitoban article about how he would measure the brand re-evaluation as being successful, and the only sure thing that he gave to Adeoti was him saying, "I think the worst thing would be ambivalence, that people [have] no reaction."

Reality: if no one knows you changed the logo and no one is talking about it, expect the ambivalence to continue. That's a sure fact.

If you read this far, you're likely looking for my grade for this new Bisons logo. I have no issue with the "return to true brown and gold" for the colour scheme, but everything else in that release is bull feces. The blue colour does not fit the colour scheme, all the lip service paid to the choice of colours and the rendering of the logo is meaningless, and the new logo is a complete downgrade from the charging bison logo. Having no one talking about the new branding is a total marketing failure on the university's part, but perhaps that's for the best since I can't see this logo being well-received by alumni.

The Manitoba Bisons are entering a new era today, and there will undoubtedly be people who want the new, shiny toy. That happens with every rebranding, but, as I wrote in November, the problems they have were never about the Bisons logo. Instead, it was always about that ambivalence of which Dr. Brown spoke, and it seems that the Bisons still haven't figured out the most important question to ask when it comes to this largely unnecessary rebranding so I'll ask again: people know the Bisons, but do they care about the Bisons?

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!