Why the Anaheim Ducks were rebranded — and, yes, the duck-bill mask is back

Anaheim, California – In the late 1800s, Orange County, California, was created from the origins of a cattle farm that was known for a few decades as Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana. Farming took root over vast areas, producing a wide variety of crops. The proliferation of orange groves helped color the rural land and inspired its name, which served to evoke a semi-tropical paradise in Southern California.

In 2005, Henry and Susan Samueli purchased the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim from The Walt Disney Company. Their second year of ownership began with a major rebranding that included a name change – Anaheim Ducks – as well as new colors, new sets of home and away jerseys, and a different logo. This was a dramatic departure from their origins.

Especially the logo. The franchise, which was named after the film “The Mighty Ducks” and debuted in 1993, was identified by a duck-bill-shaped hockey mask sitting atop two crossed hockey sticks and an inverted triangle peak . And the main home and road jerseys were at the center of a hugely successful merchandise set that outsold all other NHL teams combined. They defined the Ducks until 2006, when black and metallic gold became the primary colors along with orange – and a new logo.

In 2015, the Ducks introduced an alternate third sweater, predominantly orange and – notably – with the old “Mighty Ducks” logo. This reflects Samuelis’ affinity for the Orange County connection and his realization of how much fans still yearn for the original look.

A tribute to our heritage, with an eye to the future.

You are entering Orange County. pic.twitter.com/oXF8lTV7Os

– Anaheim Ducks (@AnahemDucks) 26 June 2024

With the unveiling of their jerseys for the 2024-25 season on Monday, the Ducks are putting the color orange at the center of this latest rebrand and marketing campaign. And the duck-billed mask is back, seemingly for good.

Merritt Tully said, “I think as we progressed over the last few years and we started to really think about going back full-time, it took a little bit of testing and seeing how popular and old the desire for this icon was. Is.” , Dux’s vice president of marketing. “And so, we very quietly polled people to understand it a little more deeply, but then also talked to our fans a little bit, saw what people said online and, from there, the conversation really got a lot easier. “Align one direction.”

It’s not exactly nirvana for those who cherished the threads that Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne wore during their prime, but it’s a reminder of an era that a large portion of their fan base holds dear. And – perhaps more impressively – even further.

The original logo had a crossover appeal that extended beyond their hardcore base. And the new jersey is already becoming a fashion statement, at least on social media. Baseball star Mike Trout of the neighboring Angels was ready to duke it out on Wednesday, as was Orange County native and Pittsburgh Pirates standout rookie Paul Skenes. Comedian Gabriel Iglesias and “Saturday Night Live’s” Kenan Thompson, who was in “D2: The Mighty Ducks,” did the same. Super Bowl-winning quarterback Drew Brees, volleyball legend Misty May-Trainor and MMA icons Chuck Liddell and Quinton “Rampage” Jackson can be counted as fans of the new look.

“I think a franchise is like people in some ways,” Tully said. “There comes a time when you get into your early teens and your fans and you want to step up and be a little different and prove who you are as a person. And when you turn 30, there are times when you can look back at your history and see things that you really like about yourself and that you’re proud of and move forward with them. . And help them be a little more like you moving forward in the future. Bringing back this mark and these jerseys is a part of that.

“We are ready to look forward. You look at where our team is from a timeline perspective, the rebuild we’re going through, it’s an amazing time for us as we look to move toward the future with not only the players in the locker room. The fans who have been with us. Not only for the years where we’ve been a really great hockey team – and we were for a really long time – but also for those who have been watching us and have been with us for the last five, six years where we didn’t win. Is regularly.”

It’s all part of a marketing strategy the Ducks are introducing — “Orange Country” — to announce itself to Orange County’s more than 3 million residents and a population that reaches into nearby Riverside, San Diego and the eastern edge of Los Angeles. For, that they are his NHL team. Tully said he has been a fan of how the Tampa Bay Lightning have effectively wrapped their logo and colors around their arena and their city as a whole. There is momentum to do the same with orange for the Ducks, he said.

The Angels have been promotional partners, but it’s clear the Ducks are not following their lead by identifying themselves with Los Angeles.

“If you took Orange and Riverside counties out of (Southern California) they would be top 10 markets in their own right,” Tully said. So, there are top 10 US markets that again feel like they’re disadvantaged in terms of finding somebody that will really plant their flag for them.”

The shift toward orange isn’t a shocking change considering the 2015 option was a marriage of fan demand and ownership signing. But there are obvious differences.

The home jersey makes the Ducks, along with the Philadelphia Flyers, the only teams that use orange as their primary color. (The Edmonton Oilers last had orange jerseys as their main uniform in 2017–22). And the Ducks’ new orange is a slightly darker version than previous iterations. The white road jersey has been completely redesigned. An orange shoulder yoke replaces the black that had been in place for a decade. The striping on both sweaters has been cleaned up, with the black, white and gold color scheme remaining prominent, but running horizontally down the side – and no longer in a vertical slant down the sides. The orange color complements the white top and sleeves, while the black complements the home sweater.

Pants are another dramatic change. Orange is, indeed, the new black at home and on the road, and it’s reminiscent of what the Ducks used for the NHL’s reverse retro alternate series for the 2022-23 season. And they will debut orange helmets to wear at home, becoming the only team in the league to use that color. (The Flyers wear black eyelashes at home.)

And then there are the logo details. An orange eye within the duck’s mask replaces the black version in the logo, and the brow is altered to give a more angry appearance. The sticks are now orange, with a different tape job on each in a “W” shape for the team’s longtime mascot Wild Wing. The Art Deco inspired numbers are now white for the home jersey and orange for the road, both in block form, accented with gold and black.

The D-shaped, webbed-foot logo that was initially part of the Ducks’ mark in their Stanley Cup season and became their focal point in 2014 will remain after being given a refreshed and secondary location on each shoulder of the jerseys. A big role in this effort was played by Samuelis’ daughter, Jillian Redin, who is the director of hockey operations for his AHL club in San Diego. Radin ran the project with Aaron Teets, president of Tully and Dux.

Tully said of their owners, “It’s not like, ‘Hey, when we came in, it was the Disney days and the ‘D’ represents us.” “They recognize the whole nature of the work that this franchise represents, and they also recognize that if you’re going to make it a community asset, and they’re fans too — if you look at the jersey that Henry wears most In sports wear, it was orange third – there’s no ego of any kind around. ‘No, it was ours.’

“This is a piece of our successful history. This will definitely never go away. We were the first (California) team to win the Stanley Cup and we won it with that logo as part of it. And so that’s something that we’re obviously very proud of. We hope that many more cups will come in this new kit. But you can’t take that away and we love to look back on those things.

With all the rebranding the question arises why the Ducks didn’t go full retro and go back to the original colors. Tully said the team went with plum jerseys for the 30th anniversary season to honor their history and the color that helped symbolize their widespread popularity after landing in Anaheim. This was always intended to reflect this, but it was also a one-off, not intended to last long. “Orange Country” had been in the works for a long time, and the thought of making a 180-degree change was never thought of.

“We’re not running away from the fact that they’re popular colors,” Tully said. “We recognize this. And that doesn’t mean we’ll never return to something with that color palette. We just know that for this franchise right now, and here for the long haul, we want to recognize and recognize that we’re from Orange County and we’re proud of it. This is one way to do it.”

With change comes reaction, and Tully is preparing for just that. He has already seen it through a few leaks, some of which the Ducks have participated in via teasers on their social-media accounts. (The club also covered a rocket in orange with the logo’s eye looking over Interstate 5 outside the Discovery Cube Science Center in nearby Santa Ana.) Reaction will be good and bad. The references would certainly be that they would be similar to traffic cones on snow.

But that’s okay with him. The kaleidoscope of his jersey has been a topic of discussion for decades, and now the discussion will add another shot of sentimental thought. The shape of the ducks is better than being dull and nondescript.

“We know that whenever you’re courageous, there are people who embrace that courage and there are people who see it differently,” Tully said. “We love the fact that there is conversation and so much passion about our logo scheme and what our colors are. It means people care. And I would argue that we have a group of people organizationally that care just as much as we do about our fans, and we want to be good stewards of what this organization represents.

“When you brace (for the reaction), I would say it more like, we’re excited to have the conversation and people are excited to talk about it. Because this is something that we’ve planned for many years, and it’s something that we know not everyone will feel exactly the same way about sitting around the table. And this is the beauty of the game. That’s the beauty of a community that is excited about who we are and excited about where we are going in the future.

“We welcome the conversation around this. Because, honestly, that’s what we do too.”

(Top photo courtesy of the Anaheim Ducks)