At last, Washington Redskins owner, Dan Snyder, agrees to retire the “Redskin” name. Though I am forced to admit it’s better late than ever, this change should have come long before now. If only the owner, sponsors and other stakeholders of the team were brave and empathetic enough to see and admit the negative effect the brand assets were having on people early on but that doesn’t matter anymore. On a personal level, I still believe Dan Snyder is unapologetic and still thinks the brand assets have done no harm but it’s just my opinion.
The Washington Redskins American football team has said it will be retiring its name and logo after years of increasing pressure to change its name and logo for their racist’s undertones.
It is easy to bury your feet deep in the sand because you are scared of change. Just so you know, change is the only inevitable constant thing of permanence in this fickle world. If someone had told Dan Snyder, Owner of Washington Redskins American football team, what had happened on Monday 13th of July 2020 in 2013 when he made the capital NEVER statement, he’d not have buried his feet so deeply into the mucky waters.
“We will never change the name of the team. As a lifelong Redskins fan, I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.
“We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER—you can use caps.” – Dan Snyder, 2013
Then-owner George Preston Marshall in 1933 changed the team’s name from Braves to Redskins in order to avoid confusion with a Boston baseball team. Although study polls have indicated that some Native Americans were unbothered by the name, the term “redskin”, as defined by the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “offensive”, is a slur — a term that gained prominence among white people in the 19th century.
The outcries to change the brands’ name started circa 1972, fell on deaf ears till July 3, 2020 when the company announced they were undergoing a thorough review that’d lead to the decision to retire the beleaguered brand assets.
In 1972, 11 individuals representing several Native American organisations met Edward Bennett, a former president of the company, at his law office to request he change the team name which they described as a “derogatory racial epithet.” Talking to the press Edward described the meeting as a “listening session.” Further stating he only listened and that’s all.
“I listened, and that’s all. It was a listening session for me.”
– Edward Bennett, 1972
In a bold twist of events in the same 1972, the company opted to drop the “R” logo and replace it with the controversial effigy profile of a Native American warrior designed by Walter Wetzel, a former chairman of the Blackfeet Nation. Looking at it today, it was a wrong move.
A basic code of humanity, business ethics and morality admonish us to respect the feelings of others and take cognisance of how our actions and inactions can affect others which is being empathetic. As a business in this millennium, being empathetic can give you an advantage over your competition.
The fact that your actions don’t directly affect or threaten your revenue doesn’t mean you are in the right as regard how your business affects others.
“All these mascots and team names are related to Native Americans; Native Americans feel pretty strongly about it. And I don’t know whether our attachment to a particular name should override the real, legitimate concerns that people have about these things.”
– Barack Obama, 2013
Taking steps to rectify issues arising from how your brand culture or business process affects others before they threaten your company’s revenue shows that you are a proactive brand. Unlike the Redskins whose decision is a reaction to threats from its major sponsors FedEx, Nike, Pepsi and Bank of America to pull funding from the NFL team unless it considered renaming itself.
The pressure wasn’t only from their major sponsors, court cases, civil protests and the decision of Amazon, Walmart, Target, Nike and other retail stores to remove the team merchandise from their websites contributed. Also, ESPN reported that it would stop using the team logo in their broadcast. Without these pressures the brand wouldn’t have admitted the wrong its name and logo has wrecked on the native American society.
The inability of the Washington Redskins team to listen or act morally on its own has led it to where it is today. They were just able to delay the inevitable because after all – court battles and grandstanding – they still arrived at admitting their wrongdoing and accepting to work towards rectifying it. Just as Thanos, the charismatic villain in The Avengers movie, said, “where did that bring you? Back to me.”
You might want to believe that the company’s decision to hold on to the brand assets this long was just based on business. Yes, of course and a hint of disregard for humanness. I have heard people say the company couldn’t have changed the assets because of the implication of such a move for a brand worth billions of dollars. Implications in the sense of considering the costs, which might not be a problem for the team and the hit and miss odds of the process of rebranding. However, there are arguments against this notion.
“Whether it’s personal foibles or a bureaucrat’s ego, the stubborn defence of stupidity is unforgivable.”
– Stewart Stafford
Admitting a mistake is not a weakness; on the contrary, it shows that at the heart of your business processes and culture is openness, transparency and accountability. It takes a strong and well-cultured institution or business with a clear vision to have the guts to admit faults in any given circumstance. Taking responsibility for your actions early, grants you the opportunity to learn and grow from them with ample time.
Sometime in 2019, I boarded a public transport to the office. The driver of the bus I boarded made an illegal turn on the expressway into the lane of another driver – a pseudo-normal occurrence on Nigerian roads – which almost led to a collision. The situation knocked the passengers in the bus I boarded into a frenzy and they began raining curses on the other bus driver in support of our driver. In a twist of happenstance, our bus driver who was quiet in the face of staunch support from his passengers proceeded to admit his wrongdoing and apologised. Dissipating the tension in the air.
The braveness of the driver to admit his wrongdoing in the face of strong fanaticism is something to admire and a value for business owners to possess.
The 20th century business environment that let brands, brand cultures and narratives like that of the Washington Redskins, Aunt Jemima, Lady Antebellum, Uncle Ben etc. to thrive on dangerous racial stereotypes have come under close scrutiny since the turn of the current millennium and brought about the ‘cancel culture’.
As a business, not admitting your mistake early and taking steps to rectify it will result in a transference of your capacity for self-determination to others. That’s because your actions and inactions will empower more people to rise up against you. At the end, a change that would have been done with little or no bitter pills to swallow will have you struggling to swallow a factory of bitter pills with the proverbial pie in a short time. Even the opportunity to learn, adapt and grow with ample time might not be available to you. And there lies the power of not admitting your mistakes.
As the Washington Redskins take steps to rectify their wrongs by undertaking a rebranding process, I can’t but wish them all the best when they launch the new brand. I hope they come out of this a bigger, stronger and better brand. And also hope other brands learn from this.