The unofficial online home for fans of the Western Michigan University Broncos. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

(01-30-2023 03:35 PM)Brownandgoldlaker Wrote:  

(01-30-2023 01:40 AM)BroncoMinor Wrote:  

(01-29-2023 11:00 PM)BroncoMD Wrote:  There seems to be ongoing dispute between campus (Proudfoot) and athletics. The bookstore (Proudfoot) is driving home the circle W with brown and yellow whereas athletics is pushing the spirit mark and brown and white. So, at the end of the day nobody is happy and our brand is even more complex.

On a side note, I noticed today that the Philadelphia Eagles logo is facing left or west. I'm sure their brand is failing because they're not following protocol.

Someone believing a logo can't face left is just as irrational as someone boycotting a a logo because it faces right.

A big part of establishing recognizable brand is familiarity. A excellent observation of this was in this article:

Western Michigan is renovating its logo and color scheme, The strongest brand in the MAC https://www.hustlebelt.com/2021/6/7/2251...mi-maction

Now the article focuses on sports, but the same can be said about the academic side. Institutions/organizations/company's spend years developing a brand. Once established, unless there is something super negative about a brand, the successful do not make a lot of changes, if any at all.

Proudfoot and company never established any sound marketing rational or reasoning for making any changes to our brand. Specifically, what was wrong with our brand and how WMU was perceived? There was no proper research done to tell us this.

It's never been about whether or not the Bronco spirit mark should be running East or West, rather, it was about the logic as to why they changed the direction, "to be in the same direction as other schools spirit marks?", which is what we are told, along with the fact the Bronco is now running "forward", which is suppose to tell everyone WMU is heading in a new direction (as is your subconscious actually recognizes this?). Find me any qualified marketing or graphic design specialist that will tell you this, you wont.

From a marketing and a graphic design stand point, you strive to create unique images in which your brand imagery is set apart from competitors. Since most schools spirit mark runs East, having ours going West helped differentiate our brand from our competitors. Make sense, right?

Same with logic of changing the color of the gold from a Vegas/Nugget Gold to a Yellow/Athletic "gold because of a song and flower"? And the logic/reasoning to reduce the number of colors from 7 to 3 and now 2?

None of these changes should have been made, because they do nothing to enhance or improved how our brand is viewed. And from an executional standpoint, it's a big step backwards.

Yep, all true.

Proudfoot enacted change for the sake of change (and to bolster his resume). It has backfired spectacularly, and exposed his fragile ego. Nobody likes working with that guy - they tolerate him. He was hoping to use WMU as a stepping stone. Now we are stuck with him because of the terrible job he's done with the rebrand.

What he DID do successfully was bring the Marketing and Communication Department into the 21st century. Prior to his arrival we were stuck in a 1980's-style "University Relations" model. He forced necessary changes to that structure.

As far as I'm concerned, that's enough. He can go away now.