Wherein I beat the crap out of an MLS side and the whole flim-flam concept of ‘re-branding’

If was five years ago last month that FC Dallas, the MLS team closest to my home and therefore the one with which I’m most familiar, foolishly did the rebranding thing. The whole nine yards, too. New name. New logo. Newfangled, fancy-pants marketing gambits.

Actually, it wasn’t the anniversary per se that I’m so upset about missing. More than that, it was about missing the perfect chance to say this: "Well, how's all that working out for you guys?"

Yep. Five years ago in August the Dallas Burn became FC Dallas. A year after that, they moved into a dandy little stadium, where tens of hundreds of people now show up 16-18 times a year to watch a poor product while frequently taking a beating in customer service and then putting the cherry on the bad experience sundae by getting stuck in traffic on the way home. (OK, the club has done something about the wacky traffic congestion. By stinkin’ up the joint pretty much everywhere else they have largely eliminated all traffic entanglements. Well done, kids.)

FC Dallas is dead last in league attendance, averaging 9,311 a game. Next week’s doubleheader at the Cotton Bowl with Mexico will (artificially) gin up the numbers, so they might be able to sneak ahead of Kansas City and its minor league baseball park band aide, but Dallas probably won’t catch third-from-the-bottom Red Bull. Two words: Pa. Thetic.

Here’s a memo for any club mulling over the re-branding thing: it doesn’t work! It’s a colossal waste of time and energy. You are what you are. (And I’m hearing through the league grapevine that at least one club out there is considering a spin on the re-branding wheel. Step away from the wheel!)

MLS teams that continue to struggle simply have to understand that there are no magic formulas. You just have to work at it, and you have to work smart at it. That’s it. There’s all kinds of virtue in hustle, humility and a dogged desire to be better at what you do. You can’t just say you’re a kick-ass club determined to out-hustle, out-perform and out-smart the competition – you actually have to be a kick-ass club that out-hustles, out-performs and out-smarts the competition.

This re-branding nonsense is all about spin. It’s all about telling people what you want to be and hoping they buy into it, instead of just shutting-the-heck-up and doing it already. (It’s also about ego, about certain people needing to feed the id by putting "their stamp" on the product. Whatever.)

I have lots of friends who hit the matches at Pizza Hut Park regularly – although less and less regularly as this side struggles to put one foot in front of the other in pretty much every area.

First, Pizza Hut Park is just too far. I have ultimate respect for the late Lamar Hunt – a truly wonderful human being -- for all his dogged and impassioned efforts at building this sport. But the fact is that there is a learning curve on this critical MLS stadium initiative. Somebody had the really push the limit and built one WAY out (23 miles from the city center in this case) to start locating the balance between "cheap land" and "too freakin’ far." Unfortunately, Hunt built a swell little stadium too far away, too far from the 20- and 30-something urbanites who are making such cool waves at Toronto, Seattle, etc.

But the stadium is built, it’s got a 30-year shelf life and there you are. So FC Dallas should have recognized quickly that it would have to be the consummate "try harder" property. That is, they could win loyalty and fans by being the team that tries harder. Better concessions. Better prices. Better customer service. A better product, not just a proxy product for making money off concerts.

They fell short, and how. They fell short the way Plaxico Burress fell short in gun safety, the way Marilyn Manson fell short on normalcy, the way Britney Spears fell short on general life train wreck avoidance.

Five years ago they re-branded – but they just don’t get it. At the top of it, management issues are endemic. (I’ll be shocked, by the way, if GM Michael Hitchcock gets his contract renewed.)

Hitchcock was a salesman. That was his background at his previous MLS stops. And he sold himself to ownership in Dallas primarily by promising sellouts aplenty. Remember the ol’ 5-10-15 plan? That was a lulu, eh? He would have five sellouts, then 10 the next year and then, by Year 3, the club would sell out every contest – and scalpers would presumably be layering themselves in fresh bling just off the profits from standing 15 times a year along

The problem is that you can’t just tell everybody that you’re "all that." Pretty soon, people figure it out. You actually have to be "all that." Just one "for instance:" One of Hitchcocks’ peeps was the genius behind the Hoops Nation campaign, one of the silliest ideas in the long, sad history of silly ideas.

Did anybody seriously believe there was a national groundswell to get on board with FC Dallas?

Now all of Hitchcock’s power has been stripped away and he’s just riding out his days. (People around the organization all say the same thing: "I never see the guy!") In his place John Wagner is running the show. Wagner is a good egg, and I like the guy personally. But he’s essentially an accountant. And while I’m sure he’s good at it, let me say this: show me a business with an accountant in charge and I’ll show you a business that may be fiscally sound, but one that’s going nowhere.

All the money matters will be spit-shined and polished, but the operation will be stuck in the mud otherwise.

Look, I could go on and on about bad print ads, nonsensical media buying strategies, ridiculously failed DP bids, money wasted on ballyhooed partnerships with foreign clubs, about running out of pizza countless times at Pizza Hut Park, about out-dated marketing strategies, about the long-term scourge of artificially inflated attendance numbers, about the mindless pursuit of the suburban family dollar, etc.

Bottom line, people figure it out. You are what you are, and you had better find a way to work with it.

As for the re-branding five years ago from Dallas Burn to FC Dallas, all they did back then was thoughtlessly erase history. Was the "Burn" name kinda goofy? You bet it was. But fans embraced it. They grew fond of it and felt protective of it, the way your little brother or sister bothers the crap out of you – but you’ll beat the holy hell out of someone who "effs" with them cause’ that’s just the way it is.

Final little story for today: When I was in newspapers, I used to have the this running joke about how the suits saw the slippage and got concerned about their bonuses and about how they attempted to remedy the situation.

The overall tenor was akin to getting all the writers in a room and having some goofball consultant or some management suit with $25 socks say something like: "We need to come up with some marketing and branding strategies that will increase readership! Come on, people, help us out. What are your ideas?"

And some poor writer would pipe up with, "Well, we could try to write stories that more people will read and provide content that people really and truly need. Ya know … really be an engaged part of the community!"

"No, no no! That’s not it! Get serious now! It’s about branding! It’s about marketing! Now, come on, people. We need ideas, damnit!"

If their pea-brained, self-protective, corporate groupthink efforts weren’t so pathetic, sad and fabulously flawed (you’ve seen what’s going on with newspaper, no?), I’d go back to some of those people now and ask, "Well, how’s all that working out for you?"

Read it slowly and commit to memory you MLS do-gooders: It’s. Not. About. Branding.