Tag: branding

Wrestlemania XL brought to you by, MAGAlcohol

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Originally I had intended on this post being a part of the post I had made about how Wrestlemania basically sold out as hard as a NASCAR event with how many sponsorships they’ve piled into the production of their grandest event of the year™, but I felt that it had some legs of its own and I had lots of jokes and puns that I thought were the best things ever, cementing my obvious status as the dad who makes dad jokes that are only hilarious to myself.

Among the numerous sponsors that the WWE allowed to dump money into ‘Mania this year, this particular one stood out leaps and bounds above the others for me, one because of just how uncomfortably white-wing it comes off, but also finding out that they’ve basically bought Cody Rhodes and plastered their branding all over his American Nightmare™ bus, but we’ll circle back to that part later in the post.

On purpose, I’m not going to use mention their name because fuck them for being some creepy dog whistle white-wing racist undertone company, but as if that doesn’t set the stage enough, that’s basically the gist of what their commercial and branding seems to exude.

It starts with a catch-phrase that does rhyme but doesn’t necessarily roll off the tongue so easily, and I want to play the Stewie Griffin game with their name, because of the “wh” in it, and that serves to ramp up the difficulty in saying their name or mocking their jingle.

But as the commercial continues to unfold, it’s as if they’re continuously doubling and tripling down on their pride of being whiter than, well, a right-wing gathering, because as the scenes change to larger and larger groups of what appears to be solely white people, it’s apparent that this is a company that really gives no flying fucks about DEI and they want viewers to know that.

They even have a ridiculous line where they ponder why Moscow gets the mule, and while looking up the YouTube video to take a screen grab from, they’ve already posted a recipe for “American Mule” which is basically the exact same thing as a Moscow Mule except not Russian; which in itself is laughable considering so many orange guy disciples love Russia as much as he does.

As the commercial ends, only one word or phrase popped into my head: MAGAlcohol, because that’s precisely what the fuck this shit actually is. 

I’m not much of a vodka drinker, other than the sparse times where I like a cranberry vodka, but I kind of feel bad for the spirit itself.  MAGAlcohol makes me not want to have any vodka in general, because it’s murdering the entire category for me as if it were a white cop pressing his knee on a defenseless black man’s neck on asphalt.

Getting back to Cody Rhodes, I was abhorred when footage of him arriving to the Linc was shown, and Corey Graves was being a good soldier, by not failing to mention that his entire bus was also co-sponsored by MAGAlcohol, and I could feel my eyes widen at the disgusting sight of it.  Just when I was beginning to soften my stance on Cody Rhodes, and beginning to turn face on my opinion of him, he has to go and associate with MAGAlcohol, and I’m pumping the brakes at how much I want to support him. 

In some regards, I get it, he’s the American Nightmare, his ring attire is basically a Homelander from The Boys skin, and he’s a white guy from Georgia.  There’s few guys at his stature in the business that would be as worth co-sponsoring as Cody Rhodes.

But he’s also a pretty sensible, intelligent human being, from what I can surmise from interviews and the way he conducts himself in and out of the business.  I would’ve assumed that he would’ve been a little more cerebral than to associate himself with a company that clearly has no hidden agenda on whom they want their demographic to be.

Oh and his wife is also black.  I know that Brandi Runnels seems to be as white-washed as perhaps I am, but when push comes to shove, white folks wouldn’t hesitate to throw her under the bus if there was an incident that needed a minority scapegoat and she was within eyesight.

Perhaps it was out of his control, and it was the bigwigs at the E that forced it onto him.  But I would’ve also figured Cody, by now, and at his position within the company, would have the ability to veto this if he really wanted to.  But as so many legends in the business have so often said, the business is all about as making as much money as you can, because there will come a day when you can do it anymore.

Not that I think Cody was starving before his associate with MAGAlcohol, but accepting more money when you’re already rich is among the whitest things a white guy can do, so unfortunately, as much as The Story has been compelling, there is a little turd in the celebratory punch bowl, that most definitely does not make it go down so sweetly.

Finally, a sponsor patch I can get behind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

See ya next time: Kansas City Royals announce a partnership with QT gas stations, including a sponsorship patch on all team jerseys

Sponsorship patches seemed inevitable in MLB, seeing as how sponsorships on jerseys have been pretty commonplace pretty much in every sport in every other country across the globe.  But America being ‘Murica, it was unsurprising that once they started coming to fruition, all the sponsors were all of these boring, homogenized, multi-million dollar entities that nobody has ever heard of, cared for or generated any sort of emotion other than ambivalence, indifference, or the need to make fun of them.

The New York Mets, of course, were one of the first ones to really mess things up by introducing a hilariously oversized patch that nobody is going to convince me probably didn’t mess up the performance of players, since they had this giant square of weighty fabric hanging off of their left sleeves, that they had to finally swallow their pride, admit my bad, and fix it.

Of course, the Atlanta Braves got into the action as well, seeing as how Braves Corporate™ loves money and will do absolutely literally anything if it meant pleasing shareholders or improving their portfolio.  And despite how amazing it would’ve been if it were something truly iconic to Atlanta like Coca-Cola, Delta, The Home Depot, or my personal favorite thing I would’ve marked out for, Waffle House, nope, had to be a boring-as-fuck bag of concrete Kwikrete instead.

But today, we have news of a partnership that truly makes me smile, from the satisfaction of it being a team I don’t dislike, a company I don’t dislike, and all of the positive associations I get from said company, and knowing two parties that I don’t dislike coming together to make business.  It’s like when you have two friends from separate circles meet, and they gel together well.

But the Kansas City Royals partnering up with QuikTrip is something that does bring me joy.  The Royals are one of those teams I can’t ever bring myself to dislike, and who could forget the 2014 and 2015 seasons when the Royals came close, and then succeeded on their redo.  They’ve always had players that I’ve generally liked* and they so rarely ever cross paths with the Braves, so there’s almost never any chance that I’d ever feel the need to root against them.

*except Melky Cabrera, that fat worthless fuck who went to the Royals after his putrid stint with the Braves, where he played the season at like 304 lbs. before losing a hundo when he joined the Royals and put up an MVP-type season

And then there’s QuikTrip, which actually has a lot of Georgia ties, with their food distribution centers, I have a lot of positive connotation when I think about them.  Often times with the cheap fuel, always open, decent food as far as gas station grub is concerned, and always with expedient and mostly friendly staff.  I often tend to favor a QT when given choices, and when I think of QT, I hold them in a positive regard.

So the Royals joining forces with QT, makes me pleased.  Especially, with them hilariously slapping a giant red and black QT logo onto the Royals jerseys which are a hard blue and white identity, which really begs the question on the importance of branding.   Like, if the name of the game is for the sponsor to really stand out, they couldn’t have picked a better team to partner up with than the Royals.  If they partnered with the Cardinals, Braves, or even the Diamondbacks, which are all markets that have QTs, their logo would blend in with all the other reds that those teams employ.

I don’t travel much anymore these days, and my baseball journeys are long past complete.  But I’d totally be down to go to Kansas City if they ever did a free Royals jersey giveaway night sponsored by QT, where they were giving away jerseys with the QT logo on them, because to my knowledge replica jerseys made by Nike/Fanatics don’t include sponsorships on them, and I sure as fuck wouldn’t want to buy any of the shitty replicas made by them these days anyway.

Either way, Royals + QT, and a bigass sponsorship patch on their blue-ass jerseys definitely piqued my interest, and I look forward to seeing Royals highlights throughout the upcoming season.  This is definitely my favorite sponsorship partnering there is in baseball, without any question.

Not my MiLB logo

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently I missed this way back from September: but Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball have agreed to change the official logo of Minor League Baseball

And of course this wouldn’t be a post if I didn’t, but I absolutely hate it, thanks.

Fewer things are a sign of mediocrity and spinning wheels like a logo rebranding.  This was not a case like the Cleveland Indians really needing to get rid of a horrifically racist mascot, this was the case of some bored corporate stooges looking for things that weren’t broken and decided to fix them anyway, to justify their existences.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the previous MiLB logo.  It was subtle, it was understandable, and most importantly, it was just different enough to where the shape and brand positioning of it was always consistent to MLB standards, but the visual identity of the icon itself was different enough for those looking to understand that this was Minor League and not the MLB icon that any sports fan or casual could understand.

In one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken with my mom, I’m wearing the old MiLB logo generic shirt.

Now this new crappy logo is basically identical to the MLB logo, except the batter is aligned to the left, and instead of a baseball coming towards the batter, it now looks like the batter has sat looking at four pitches that are now past him, and considering the escalating rate of strikeouts throughout the last half-century, the guy in the logo has probably struck-out, as much as the logo itself does in my opinion.

I hate to say it, but there are a lot of baseball fans that aren’t particularly intelligent.  The Gwinnett Braves used the excuse that there were people that actually managed to confuse tickets for G-Braves tickets for tickets for the Atlanta Braves, which I didn’t think was really a believable excuse, but I’m also not going to pretend like baseball fans are always the smartest people in the world either.  This new logo is going to 100% confuse people into thinking they’re going to Major League games and buying Major League apparel, but perhaps that really is the end game, and I’m just being hyper critical of a tactic that I think is petty, but is really some corporate shills really living in 2050 and playing chess.

And I don’t understand why they’ve put a color palette behind it, especially of two shades of blue.  MLB logos, especially on apparel, namely baseball caps, often times already ditch their own color palette and adopt the primary and secondary colors of the team, or they just go reverse white, as not to compete with the colors of the teams, especially ones that don’t utilize the navy and red palette of the MLB logo.  This Carolina/Dook blue combo logo just seems odd and uncharacteristic to professional baseball in general, where it seems like the vast majority of teams utilize shades of red, at all levels of the game.  For all the teams like the Blue Rocks or the Stone Crabs or the Pelicans that utilize shades of blue, there are teams like the Redbirds, Nuts, Crawdads and much more where adding a logo of blues into their branding is more like shoehorning a horse’s hoof into a toddler’s shoe.

Either way, I am very much not a fan of the new MiLB logo.  It is uncreative, homogenized, convoluted, and was something that never needed to be updated in the first place.  Not that I’m going to many baseball games at all these days, but a team’s branding is going to have to work just a little bit harder to make me decide to impulsively drop some cash on any team merch if it’s going to have this little blue turd of a brand slapped onto it.

There may be four stars on the logo, but if it were up to me, it would have none.

The manufacturing rights to the Batmobile go to Nissan??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Apparently, it happened nearly a month ago, but because I live under a rock, I obviously missed out on it until it was spoon-fed to me from a targeted ad; but there was some car show out in Japan where all the manufacturers unveil new shit, and among all the general noise, emerged the fact that Nissan is basically making, the Batmobile.

They’re calling it the Nissan Hyper Force, which sounds more like it should be a Power Rangers Zord, but from the looks of the concept, come on, it’s the goddamn Batmobile.  The sharp lines, the design meant for optimal aerodynamics, that every flare and angle, basically looks like Lucius Fox himself designed it.

I don’t care enough to deep dive into reading everything about it, but this snippet I saw basically encapsulates the vehicle as a whole:

The Nissan Hyper Force is designed for racing enthusiasts and gamers who crave the adrenaline rush of the racetrack but are also eco-concious.

There are a lot of assumptions being made here, like assuming mutual exclusivity between being gamers and those who have the balls and means to get out onto the racetrack and I feel like such couldn’t be any more incorrect, but in the land of marketing, people will say whatever the fuck sounds like it can capture the imagination of some gullible saps into thinking that they can not only tackle Akina, but also do it green.

But not likely to be in the brochure are that drivers will feel compelled to tap into their inner vigilante and go out and fight crime.  Also, hack their car and find out ways to install sophisticated self-drive mechanisms to drive to you on command, as well as have hidden compartments for smoke bombs, gatling guns, and my favorite Batmobile gizmo, the grappling hook to make the smoothest 90 degree turn without having to slow down in history.

Either way, kudos to Nissan for being the car maker who decided to have the stones to take on the Batmobile, and all the tryhards in the future who will get one for absolutely no other reason than that it’s unofficially, the Batmobile.  I think if I don’t get another Tesla outright, I’m leaning towards something a little more conservative and subtle, like the re-release of the Honda Prelude, the updated Fairlady Z, and much to my own surprise, even the new Prius is looking pretty alright these days.

Introducing the Rome Emperors

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t hate it: the Rome Professional Baseball Club formerly known as the Rome Braves, unveils new team name and branding identity, the Rome Emperors

Sure, it’s not the snarky low-hanging fruit like the Rome Rednecks, or the outside-the-box idea I had of calling them the Floyd County Archers, but it’s not like we didn’t know that it was going to be something safe, kid-friendly, and homogenized, because at the end of the day, the Rome Professional Baseball Club is still a business and going safe, kid-friendly and homogenized is still the modus operandi of trying to squeeze money out of as many demographics and parties as possible.

So yeah, the Rome Emperors – as stated above, I don’t hate it.  Smart to have unveiled everything at once, or at least that’s how I found out because I live under a rock and this was fed to me by friends before I could even find out about something this baseball minutiae on my own like I used to, but whatever, because I saw everything all at once, I didn’t have time to speculate, dissect and eventually hate it, because everything was done upon delivery.

There’s one aspect that likes that they’re calling themselves Emperors, which sends a message that they intend to rule the Sally League or the Carolina League, or whatever level of A-ball they’re in these days, I’ve lost track, but at the end of the day, Minor League baseball is still a feeder league to higher leagues, and so often times is the case, especially with Braves affiliates, is that their records aren’t ever really that great.  I don’t remember the last time, or ever, when a Braves affiliate won a league championship, so it’s kind of funny that they have the name of Emperors, but will more often than not, be doing anything but ruling the league.

It’s kind of like Team Emperor in Initial D, because they were introduced to be this badass guerilla team of Evos that dominated lower-tier street racing clubs, but then eventually became another fodder squad to the Hachi-roku, the Redsuns, Kogashiwa’s MR2 and even Mako and Sayuki’s Sil-Eighty.  In spite of the menacing sounding name, they ultimately were just mid, at best.

Regardless, in spite of the snarky analysis, good on the organization for picking a name that remotely goes tangibly with the name Rome, and I like the explanation of their direction to go with a penguin, instead of the Little Caesar’s mascot, because when the day is over, everyone loves animals and frankly I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like penguins. 

Sure, it’s ironic that an animal most known for living in arctic conditions will be the mascot for a team that plays in a state that has nuclear summers, but when kids and grown-ups like me that like chintzy, novelty crap like penguins with baseball bats see a penguin, there’s money to be made in moving merch.

Not lost in the rebrand is the fact that they actually got away with using the overkill’d Trajan font with the Rome wordmark on their away jerseys, because if there was ever something that could get a pass on using the most basic and Rome-ey fonts there ever was, it was a brand that was actually called Rome.  I still think they’re lazy for not sharpening off the tips of the serifs, but at the same time, I can understand why.

Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the rebrand altogether.  Kudos to the organization for pulling it off, even if I wish they didn’t try to sparsely try to satisfy the Braves by keeping so much red in their branding, but baby steps, I suppose.  They’ve already taken great strides stepping away from their overlords, and hopefully things can only get better from here.

I look forward to (not) hearing about the promotions, shenanigans and general business that the team will be able to do in the coming season and in the future, when they’re not quite so held down by the shackles of the Atlanta Braves stuffy corporate branding.

Toyota is determined to call everything a Corolla, it seems

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Supposedly in 2027, Toyota will be making an attempt to enter what is new to me, a mini-truck market.  I guess it’s something that’s not even a Tacoma which is already their mid-size truck, and definitely not the full-size Tundra which is their answer to compete with the Ford F-series and Dodge’s lineup of Insurrection-mobiles.  Like I said, I didn’t even know such a market was even in need or demand, but then again the automotive industry is just one giant game of keeping up with the Joneses, so if one maker does it, others will feel the need to get in the game.

Regardless, it appears that Toyota might be calling this to-be-determined mini-truck, a Corolla; the same name as the entry-level econobox that has existed for centuries at this point, as well as the crossover vehicle they just launched a few years ago that they slapped the Corolla name onto as well.  So regardless of the constant name regurgitation, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to stop Toyota from making a Corolla Mini-truck or whatever these, basically El Caminos of the future will be classified as.

All shade aside, I understand Toyota’s rationale for wanting to swindle customers by calling everything they have under the sun a Corolla; historically the Corolla is a solid, safe, reliable and reputable car that there’s a reason has lasted since the dawn of time.  The Hachi-Rokus popularized by Initial D, were basically Corollas, most every kid in my generation and the generation after mine’s first cars were usually Corollas because they were safe, fuel-economical and didn’t quite yet look like the car you get when you’re ready to give up on the rest of your life.

There’s a reason why Lotus borrowed the Corolla engine for their North American Elise models, and there’s a reason why when Toyota got into the crossover game, they immediately slapped the Corolla name tag onto it.

But at the same time, it’s gotten redundant, convoluting, and it’s frankly watering down the Corolla name to basically call everything in the lineup a variant of a Corolla.  Eventually, the name Corolla will be made into a level of trim, or a spin-off brand, like their attempt with Scion, and if Toyota ever gets any bad PR, they’ll probably just rename the whole fuckin company Corolla, since it’s such a name associated with vanilla safety.

Either way, it’ll be interesting to see what shakes out of the trees as far as Toyota’s foray into mini-truck production and marketing.  Frankly, if I had the means, I’d rather get a Japanese kei-car, if I wanted the compact utility of what the Corolla Truck looks like it’ll provide.  It would probably be cheaper even with VAT and import fees, come with less of the fluff and bullshit, and actually serve a purpose, but most importantly, because it wouldn’t be called a Corolla, it would imply that I have yet to give up on my life just yet.

Car Week: Why do all EVs have to have stupid looking wheels?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I switched cars not that long ago, mythical wife getting her Tesla and driving around in that from time to time has kind of made me ponder the possibility of switching cars yet again, and potentially getting myself a Tesla as well, seeing as how the brand as a whole underwent some large price slashes earlier in the year.  With gas prices constantly fluctuating, mostly for the detriment, and seeing the sheer convenience and liberation of not having to pay for gas anymore, gradually chips away at my resolve at considering a switch.

At one point, I walked past a Model 3 in a parking lot, and I noticed that they had two car seats in the back of their car, looking comfortably enough, and I was like hmm. 

I still have a positive equity with my current car, according to my latest Kelley Blue Book estimate, which was a pretty good barometer to what my car could be worth, based on my previous car swap, which even further feeds the itch that perhaps I should swap yet again.

But the reality of my current situation doesn’t seem like it will be likely, considering I barely drive my own car as it is, since it’s the big safe dad car with the kids’ seats already in place, and switching to something like a Model 3 makes no sense at all, especially since I’d be the one driving it the least, which, sorry to sound selfish, but I wouldn’t really want to share that car if I had it.

All the same, the idea of going EV myself isn’t the least appealing idea in the world as it once was, and mythical wife and I talked about how it’s probably best if we still had at least one gas-powered car until the EV market really stabilizes and shows its lasting power.  That being said, I’ve always kind of got my eyes out for other EVs and not just Teslas, in case a viable option that doesn’t cost as much as a Tesla comes into play.

Which (finally) brings us to the topic of this entire post, why do all EVs have to have such stupid looking wheels?  It’s almost as if car designers all got a memo from the god of cars who declared that all EVs need to have these stupid looking futuristic looking wheels to really let consumers know that yes we are electric vehicles, if you couldn’t tell from our spaceship aerodynamics, three badges that announce we are electric and just general knowledge of the market, but we also want to have some wacky looking wheels to drive home the awareness that we are in fact, electric vehicles.

I googled my query, and there’s lots of mumbo jumbo about aerodynamics and weight and friction resistance and all that canned corn bullshit, but at the very root of it, nothing is different than the needs of any regular combustion engine.  Furthermore, there’s nothing that stopping the designers of EV wheels and looking at the OEM wheels for a Supra, Integra or Audi TT and making something that doesn’t have to look like a deformed D-pad on a N64 controller.

What really set me off was that I saw an ad for the Mini Cooper EV, and what I really appreciated about it was the fact that it looked just like every other Mini on the road, but then I saw the car come to a stop, and it too, had some goofy looking wheels on it that stood out like a sore thumb in contrast to the rest of the generally traditional Mini aesthetics.

And then I see shit like Polestar and their racist-looking iron cross looking rims, and the Nissan Ariya which I once wished came out when I was originally in the car market, because I really liked the way it looked, but the actual release model now has some doofy-looking Saarlac teeth looking rims on them.  Ironically, the one EV who’s wheels don’t look as stupid as all others, is the one car that seems so characteristically out of place as an EV, which is the Mustang Mach-E.

When mythical wife was shopping for her Tesla, I actually helped steer her away from the standard wheels of her car, because they too looked all goofy and stupid, in comparison to the rest of the car’s aesthetics.  I’m typically of the mindset that the bones matter more than the skin when it comes to certain things like cars, but when you have to look at it everyday, may as well spring extra for the option that won’t make you think “but if I spent a few extra dollars..”

The bottom line is, I don’t understand why all car manufacturers feel the requirement to make EVs with the goofiest, doofiest looking wheels there are.  We all get that they’re EVs and they are different and most likely are the future to become the present, but we don’t need bullshit clown aesthetics to drive home the fact.  Especially if we’re going to be locked into 72+ month agreements to own them when we all inevitably start switching en masse.