FanPost

The Brand Identity Crisis Continues

Logo Madness

Even the other MLB teams can't get a handle on our identity

Check out the Padres logo on the scoreboard at Busch Stadium Sunday night. Yep, that's a white/yellow interlock SD. (Sorry for the grainy image.) I've been to several games around the country this year and I can tell you that the rest of the league has no clue what our identity is either. SD Hat guy covered the fans' confusion pretty well a few weeks back and I highly recommend that column.

Even the MLB-licensed vendors aren't sure what the Padres brand is. Sure, we were told that yellow/gold was out for 2017. Then why does a new item appear in those colors every week in the MLB shop? Out of curiosity, I clicked on t-shirts and pulled up 17 results in navy/yellow on the first page of at least 8 pages of results (I didn't have the patience to go through them all). And I'm not talking the clearance section either. This is all new product since the season started.

The vendors don't know the Padres' identity. The other teams in the league don't. The fans don't. The ownership clearly doesn't. The fact is, the last 24 months have been a schizophrenic branding fail. With the opportunity to host the All-Star game last year, like it or not, the Padres introduced the navy/yellow color scheme. Then at the last minute, they decided to do the retro brown/yellow/orange merchandise. No team that has hosted the All-Star game has done throwback colors/fonts for All-Star Merchandise.

I know the look was popular. I know the jerseys sold well. That's not the point. They branded the team and the event navy/yellow throughout the lead-up and then at the last minute went a completely different direction. It goes against nearly every marketing/branding principle you can think of. Oh, wait. Now that I think about it, that's a very Padres thing to do.

I don't see this getting better anytime soon. When you throw in all the special jerseys (camo, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Memorial Day, etc.) it's a confusing mess. And maybe that's the point because it truly reflects the product on the field. Years and years of hard to look at baseball, punctuated by a few years of brilliance. Maybe someday, we will get a great team with great uniforms to match.

This FanPost was written by a member of the Gaslamp Ball community and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Gaslamp Ball staff or SB Nation.