On a cold day in the beginning of 2024, Alastair Merry and Mary Lou Bunn had a few questions for a public librarian in Ottawa, Ontario.“If you could describe Ottawa and what it means to you in a couple words, how would you do it?” they asked.“What do you think of the spirit of the city?”Merry and Bunn, along with the design firm Flower Shop that they co-founded, were hired by the then newly minted Professional Women’s Hockey League to create the nicknames and logos for the league’s inaugural six teams.
They were traveling around North America to figure out what made those six cities tick.As the ever-growing crop of new women’s leagues — at least eight have launched in the past three years — all aim for longevity, one of the cornerstones of any sustainable foundation is team branding.It encompasses everything from the nicknames to the color schemes and logos, and the PWHL has set a high bar there that other up-and-comers would love to emulate.
“It’s not like branding a dishwasher or a tablet,” Merry said.“This is somebody’s community.
This is somebody’s life, going to watch these games.”Successful leagues need legions of fans who will buy the merchandise, learn the chants and pass along their fandom.Strong team branding is central to all of that.
The PWHL has only been around a few years, but its early success with fans has made it an interesting case study.The league’s first season, which opened Jan.
1, 2024, was played without nicknames or logos.The names and designs, created by Merry and Bunn's group, were released ahead of the second season.That release had an impact, according to Kanan Bhatt-Shah, vice president of brand and marketing for the PWHL.
When fans finally had their teams' identities at their fingertips, their involvement could grow deeper.“These identities really help create this world that allows fans to access it in all the different ways in which they want to fan,” Bhatt-Shah said.“The same level of pa...