Phoenix Suns Basketball Team Needs an Emergency Brand Circle Exercise

From Mark McCoy, SVP, Brand Planning Director, Palio

The Brand Circle is a great tool that visually shows marketers the qualities and properties of their brand. It is very useful when developing, extending or periodically reviewing the performance of a brand. To briefly describe the Brand Circle:

• It has 4 regions. The core, outer core, extension area and the no-go area
• The core contains the elements that are essential to the brand. These elements can be benefits, attributes, personality traits or target customers for example
• The outer core contains elements that are consistent with, and complement, the core
• The extension area includes ideas about how the brand could be developed and broadened in the future

The no-go area is the off limits region. Things that would weaken the brand and confuse customers live in the no-go area. Which brings us back to the Phoenix Suns and why they need an emergency Brand Circle Exercise. The Suns management decided that the team would wear uniforms with the team name “Los Suns” in their Cinco de Mayo game against the San Antonio Spurs. No problem so far.

But then the Suns went off the rails like a crazy train, Ozzie Osborn-style, straight into the no-go area. They went political and started talking all kinds of smack about the newly enacted Arizona Immigration Law SB1070. Sun’s owner, Robert Sarver stated that Arizona’s immigration law was not “the right way to handle the immigration problem, Number 1. Number 2, as I read through the bill, it felt to me a little bit like it was mean-spirited, and I personally just don’t agree with it.”

Steve Kerr, the Sun’s GM added, “It’s hard to imagine in this country that we have to produce papers. It brings up images of Nazi Germany.” Steve Nash, a Suns player said, “I think the law is very misguided, I think it’s unfortunately to the detriment of our society and our civil liberties, and I think it’s really important for us to stand up for things we believe in.”

Politics is in the no-go area for all sports team brands, including the Phoenix Suns. The rationale for this is pretty simple. First, sports fans don’t want to be subjected to political messages while they are watching ball games. Watching a sporting event at the arena or on television is fun, entertaining and an escape from serious issues like politics. Second, sports bring people together and politics divides people. On any given political issue, roughly half of people are for it and half are against it. On the other hand, everyone in a given city can feel the love for their local sports team. If you doubt this fact, just watch “Major League.”

Suns General Manager Steve Kerr should know that it is bad form to insult your brand’s customers. When conducting brain storming meetings at Palio the issue of whether or not to compare a brand’s customer base to Nazis hasn’t really come up in any of our discussions. As a general rule, however, we would go on record as saying that likening your home market to Nazi Germany belongs in the no-go area for all brands except for Third Reich memorabilia brands.

Okay, so let’s review. In the sports team brand circle, “politics” and “calling your customers Nazis” belong in the no-go area.