Rebranded

Well, the Washington Football Team (formerly known as the Washington Redskins) have chosen a new name for themselves. They're now the Washington Commanders. They didn't rebrand without a fight. The pressure's been on the team for years to replace the odious name "Redskins" with something that wasn't perceived as a slur against Native Americans.

As replacement names go, they could have done worse. Commanders has something of a DC connection: Commander in Chief and all that. 

But they've left themselves open to being called the W.C., and dubbed the Commies.

Me? When I first heard the name, I thought of The Commodores. The muscial group I tend to confuse with The Spinners, not the Vanderbilt Commodores, who took their name from the nickname for their founder, Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

Would that the Commodores, errrrr, I mean Commanders, had taken the rebranding opportunity to pick a new color scheme.

I suppose that would have sent their fans into a spin, but if there's a worse color combo than maroon and gold, I don't know what it is. And I'm not just saying that just because I don't like Boston College, which also sports those colors. (Oh, no. Just checked. Washington's colors are burgundy and gold; BC's are maroon and gold. Burgundy, which combines red and purple, is marginally better than maroon, which combines red and brown. But just marginally. In either case, burgundy/maroon and gold is not my favorite color combo.)

Washington is not the only team with a recent rebrand.

The Cleveland Indians are now the Guardians. 

It certainly made sense for them to dump their mascot, Chief Wahoo, with his big toothy grim and crazy eyes, an image as offensive to Native Americans as the name Redskins. 

Anyway, while they were retiring Chief Wahoo, they jettisoned the name Indians.

Maybe I'd feel all boo-hooey if I'd grown up a fan of the Cleveland Indians - baseball is such a game of nostalgia - but I rather like the new designation, named for some statuary on a bridge near their field. The statues are officially called the Guardians of Traffic, which "symbolize progress in transportation. Each Guardian holds a different vehicle in its hands: a hay wagon, covered wagon, stagecoach, a 1930s-era automobile, as well as four types of motorized trucks used for construction." (Thanks, Wikipedia.) And these art nouveau buds are just fabulous. Wish we had them around here. I might just have to go to Cleveland to see them. And, of course, to watch the Guardians play the Olde Towne Team.

Rebranding is nothing new for the Cleveland baseballers. They started out as the Bluebirds, and spent some time as the Naps (after star Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie), before settling on the Indians, which may or may not have been a shout-out to a Native-American baseball star Louis "Chief" Sockalexis, who played for an earlier, National League incarnation of Cleveland baseball called the Spiders. (Great name, that, but it would probably ick too many fans out. Arachnophobia - fear of spiders - is a big one.)

Over the years, many college and high school teams have also moved away from Indian-related names, including a local high school that just dumped the name Sachems in favor of the Red & Black. Personally, I don't see anything pejorative about the name Sachem, which is another word for Chief, but I think it was a matter of getting rid of any iconography that uses Native American images. 

Another sports rebranding, which took place 25 years ago, changed the name of the NBA team Washington Bullets to the Wizards. This was to get away from reflecting the gun violence in DC, and supposedly because the team's owner was a friend of Israeli PM Itzak Rabin, who was gunned down by an assassin in 1995. Reason enough. And, while the name the Wizards isn't particularly intimidating to the opposition, it sure is fun.

Companies and products also rebrand. 

Facebook is now Meta. (Good luck with that one. You can run, but you can't hide.) And Aunt Jemima pancake syrup and mix are now Pearl Milling Company, which speaks to the brand's origins. I can understand the company wanted to get rid of Aunt Jemima, an image that relied on the racist trope of the smiling Black servant. But I think they should have looked a little further for a replacement. I just don't see Pearl Milling catching on or ever becoming iconic or beloved.

I worked for a company that had as its flagship (and sometimes only) product something called ATF, which stood for Automated Test Facility. This was during the time of Waco, when the ATF was prominently in the news. To make matters worse, a component of our product was the ATF Agent. I can assure you that our product's name brought out the crazy conspiracy theorists all over the place. I remember one trade show kook ranting to me about the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I can't remember the connection he was making to Waco and our product, but it sure was clear in his fevered little mind.

Despite encounters like this, we never bothered to change the brand. 

Just as well.

The company was acquired and the product (and most of the company) was put out of our misery.

Rebranding occurs in the non-sports entertainment world, too. As in the Dixie Chicks, who no longer wished they were in the land o'cotton and became the just plain Chicks.

And as in Lady Antebellum, the Grammy-winning country group that decided that the word antebellum had way too many uncomfortably racist connotations and turned themselves into Lady A, which had been their nickname all along, and which they'd trademarked back in 2010.

Turns out there was an African American blue singer, based in Seattle, who was also using the name Lady A - and had been since the 1980's.

Anyway, Lady A(ntebellum) decided to take on Lady A(nita White).

First, they tried to work things out amicably, but it seems that Lady A(nita White) was looking for $10M for her good name ($5M for herself, $5M to charity). This doesn't seem like all that much, given what the members of Lady A(ntebellum) are all worth individually. (Lots.) And given that Lady A(netbellum) made their name change in the name of Black Lives Mattering.

Looks like Black Lives Matter more at the aggregate level than at the individual level when it comes to an individual Black life mattering.

Anyway, Lady A(ntebellum) ended up suing Lady A(nita White). And Lady A(nita White) countersued.

They've just settled, but the details of the agreement haven't as yet come to light. 

Guess we'll find out when we see whether Lady A(ntebellum) and/or Lady A(nita White) are still using Lady A. 

Rebranding. Sometimes it's just not all that easy.

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This post was prompted by an brief story that appeared in the Washington Post.