Theme Week - Rebranding

[tcookie 715]

It's theme week in the VHL, and this season's theme is "rebrand". In recent years, rebranding has been rare for VHL teams, but rebranding can be an exciting time for a team, especially if they really nail the new look. There seems to be a lot of picking on the low-hanging fruit in the London United and to a lesser extent, the New York Americans, so I decided to look at some other teams.

 

Overall, I think the VHL branding as a whole is actually quite strong, so don't take this too seriously!

 

Seattle Bears
I don't have anything in particular against the branding of the Bears, I don't think they are in dire need of a rebrand or anything like that. There's nothing I find inherently bad about the Bears' branding, rather, I just find it a little bit plain. Varying shades of red/blue, like their primary colour maroon, are way overdone in professional sports as a whole and the name "Bears" is pretty generic.

 

Seattle is sometimes known as the "Emerald City" for its year-round greenery, and I love seeing a pop of green in a teams' colours. Calling the team the Seattle Emeralds and featuring a prominent green/white colour scheme, maybe with black, silver, or teal as an accent colour as well, would provide a unique, sharp colour scheme and also give the team a name with strong ties to the area. However, there is a lot of history associated with the Seattle Bears name in the VHL. They are a team that as been around since S1 and have won more Continental Cups than any other franchise in VHL history. Although none of that is erased with a name change, it still creates a situation where rebranding is unlikely.

 

 

 

Los Angeles Stars
This is another team where the branding just feels a little bit generic, probably because of the name "Stars", which admittedly is a little unfair because the connection with the name "stars" and LA actually makes a lot of sense. The colour scheme lacks any real, well, colour. There's a big city a little further south in California that recently lost its football team and is pretty empty in the way of major professional sports right now, so they could be very open to supporting a VHL team in the area...

 

I'm talking about San Diego, of course. I think we can move the Stars to San Diego and call them the San Diego Pandas! After all, (almost) everyone loves pandas. Think of all the merchandising opportunities! The San Diego zoo was one of the more famous places to see pandas in North America until they returned them to China in 2019, but recent developments indicate that San Diego is likely on the way to getting their pandas back. Of course, we can't do much about the "boring" black/white colour scheme with this team name, but a little pop of colour - replacing the silver accent colour with a bamboo-green accent - could go a long way in making the uniforms a little more interesting.