This is the story of how Brandiose helped to turn a 100-year-old team into one of the most innovative franchises in Minor League Baseball. All while paying homage to their history and respecting their namesake, the Spokane Indian Tribe.
Like every new identity, it all starts with research and a trip to the franchise’s hometown.
The Brandiose creative process starts with a “shotgun” approach, a giant stack of sketches that kickstart the collaboration process with our teams to begin bringing shape to the brand.
Illustrations by local artist George Flett, member of the Spokane Indians Tribe, served as inspiration for the first round of concept sketches for the brand.
In 2017, the National Baseball Hall of Fame added the Salish Spokane Indians jersey to their collection. Salish is the language of the Spokane Indian Tribe and the Salish jersey is the only baseball jersey with non-english lettering. Historically, if your team name was deemed insensitive or offensive, the franchise either ignored the issue or changed the team name. In collaboration with the Spokane Indian Tribe and the Spokane Indians, Brandiose was proud to help usher in a historic moment for relations between indigenous peoples and professional sports.
“Spokane Indians Baseball Club” written in Salish, the official language of the Spokane Tribe.
Designing a brand doesn’t stop when we send the final jersey designs off to the manufacturers. Your team’s brand is an accumulation of every touchpoint that a fan comes into contact with. Over the last 10 years, the Indians have entrusted us to continue to develop memorable touchpoints for their brand in every corner of their ballpark.
If Disneyland has multiple costumed characters running around their park, then you should too. Brandiose has worked with the Indians to develop multiple characters; Each with their own logos, roles that they play in park, merchandise, and even signatures.
We encourage our partners to think about adding to their brand experience, not as an expense, but as an opportunity to create new inventory.
Minor League Baseball is all about making memories. One of our favorite ideas that will help make your fan’s experience special is buttons. Simple, analog, and effective, buttons are a great way to help your staff know if a fan is attending their first game or celebrating a birthday. Every time an usher wishes that fan a “Happy Birthday”, you’ve created a positive association between you and your fan. And on top of that warm and fuzziness, it’s creating new sponsorship inventory for your team to sell.
Using a concept that was originally pioneered by the Great Lakes Loons, the Indians extend their mascot’s brand by creating a Spokane Indians Fitness Trail around their ballpark. Signs sprinkled around the park show illustrations of their mascots exercising, encourage kids to get movin’ and explore the ballpark.
The Redband Headband is one of our favorite projects that we’ve done with the Indians. It all started when they came to us with the idea of creating a program that would help the endangered Redband Trout found in the Spokane River. They knew we could do merchandise, but they wanted to do more. They wanted to do something that could be integrated into the fan experience, something like a rally mascot. Like the Terrible Towel in Pittsburgh, we’ve found that when creating a rally mascot, it’s important to give the fans a role to play in the rally action. So now, when Indians fans find themselves in a situation befitting a rally, everyone takes out their “Redband Headband”, the Rally Trout makes his good luck presence known, and it’s all for a great cause.
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