Good dog, bad dog
Fresno Bee 1/21/07
The distinctive canine symbolizes the university's 16 intercollegiate teams and more than 500 young men and women who compete on them.
But the logo also has been hijacked by Fresno's most dangerous street gang — the Bulldogs.
Which raises a scary question for university officials: What image pops into the minds of central San Joaquin Valley consumers when they hear "Bulldogs" — dedicated student-athletes, or sinister thugs roaming the streets?
Publicly, university officials deny that the gang tie compromises the logo's value.
"We're always going to be Bulldogs," Fresno State associate athletic director Paul Ladwig said. "We're bigger than they [the gang] are."
But Fresno State officials met last year with the county's gang task force to see whether redesigning the Bulldog might solve their marketing dilemma. They left disappointed.
The conflict between brand identities is particularly apparent in public schools, where both the university and the gang seek followers.
Fresno Unified students can't wear clothes with the Fresno State Bulldog to school for fear it will spark gang violence, even though the students may be only fans.
Fresno High has even banned students from wearing solid red and royal-blue clothing on campus because of the colors' association with gangs. Red is one of Fresno State's team colors.
Clovis Unified permits students to wear clothing with the words "Fresno State" or the letters "CSUF" — for California State University, Fresno — to school. But they can't wear clothing to school with the Bulldog logo.
Both districts allow students to wear clothing with mascots of other collegiate athletic programs.
Yet many consumers view the Fresno State Bulldog with pride.
At a home football game last fall, Brian Steele, a fourth-grade teacher from Visalia and a Fresno State graduate, and his 2-year-old son, Aidan, were preparing to enter Bulldog Stadium shortly before kickoff.
First, though, Steele took considerable care to position Aidan standing next to a Bulldog logo on a fence so he could snap a photograph for the family album.
Said Steele: "Hopefully, he'll grow up to be a Bulldog, too."
The proud father felt no need to explain which one.
Brands pivotal to success
The Bulldogs gang's name and favorite color date back to 1986. Last year, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer announced the creation of a task force to dismantle the gang with its approximately 4,000 members.
"There will be a day when our kids can wear Bulldog attire to our schools," he promised in a later interview.
Meanwhile, at the university in north Fresno, officials want to make sure "Bulldogs" sparks only warm thoughts in consumers. A marketing team is trying to build Bulldog athletics into a consumer brand worthy of regional, perhaps even national, enthusiasm.
The athletes' names vary with the years, Fresno State officials say. But what remains unchanged for fans is the unique Bulldogs experience, that sense of belonging to something special and the boost to self-esteem that goes with it.
If consumers buy into this brand, ticket sales and contributions will continue to grow.
Fresno State and the other eight universities in the Western Athletic Conference also are encouraged by the conference's new strategic plan to build their respective brands. The purpose: raise the WAC's national image.
"The success of marketing and branding, and all the things that go with them, is terribly important," Fresno State athletic director Thomas Boeh said.
Indeed, brands are pivotal to success in modern economies.
The problem for consumers in developed countries isn't scarcity — it's an overabundance of choice. Daniel Kamas, director of brand strategy in the San Francisco office of Interbrand, a global brand-consulting company, said brands give consumers confidence that their purchase is a wise one.
A brand's value is more than identifying who made that "widget." An effective brand also has a compelling idea behind it, which grabs the consumers' attention and loyalty, Kamas said.
"Brands are an ongoing dialogue that companies have with their consumers," Kamas said. "That's why branding is wildly important. It's the beginning and end of the loop of communication" between the company and the customer.
That's where brand-building comes in. It's the transformation — partly through advertising and word-of-mouth buzz — of something common into a product with uncommon qualities that sets it apart in a crowded marketplace.
Think Starbucks, Apple and Harley-Davidson. These companies sell more than coffee, personal computers and motorcycles.
They also sell a unique emotional experience that helps generate intense consumer loyalty.
Even cities are getting into the act. The Fresno City Council has hired a local marketing company to improve the city's image.
In a world flooded with sports entertainment, Fresno State wants to inspire consumer love for the Bulldogs brand.
A strong foundation already is in place.
For instance, the Bulldog Foundation Scholarship Fund Drive is expected to raise more than $8 million through donations and ticket purchases this school year.
And, Ladwig said, The Bulldog Shop at Cedar and Barstow avenues set merchandise sales records last year. He said shop and Internet sales were $354,532 last September, shattering the previous record for the month by more than $100,000.
But the Bulldogs brand also symbolizes trouble and tragedy.
The NCAA rules infractions committed under the reigns of men's basketball coaches Jerry Tarkanian and Ray Lopes are examples of the former. The murder of Rene Shannon Abbott in 2004 by former Bulldogs basketball player Terry Pettis is an example of the latter.
Fresno State has installed new leadership in the athletic department in the past 18 months to fix the problem.
"We were well aware when we came in that there was a national image problem," said Boeh, who became Fresno State athletic director in 2005.
Much of the responsibility for restoring shine to this image has fallen on Ladwig, a former Ohio University administrator who joined the Bulldogs staff in November 2005 and oversees broadcasting/external relations.
He points to the the athletic program's marketing motto this year — "Join the State — Fresno State!" — as a powerful tool in building the Bulldogs image.
"We want the fans to make a statement, to show up for the games, become a part of who we are and celebrate our student-athlete experience," Ladwig said.
Gang uses brand similarly
To build the Bulldogs brand, university officials are doing surveys to determine, among other things, their main competitors for the local consumer's entertainment dollar. This will determine where and how they pitch their more detailed message.
Greg Walaitis, associate athletic director for development, said a strategic plan also is being completed that will chart the program's future.
The university also needs to define the essence of the Bulldog image.
"We haven't gotten to the stage where everybody knows what the brand is," Ladwig said. "We're still in that discovery stage."
But Fresno State officials know key pieces to any branding strategy.
The Bulldogs must "win honorably," Boeh said.
Translation: no more program run-ins with the NCAA, no more player run-ins with the law.
The young men and women who compete for the university are a marketing gold mine, Ladwig said. The vast majority hit the books, compete hard and stay out of trouble, he says.
And the university is focusing on customer service, such as clean venues, friendly ushers and efficient ticket-sellers. "We want to create the best game-day fan experience possible," Ladwig said.
Yet, the bitter irony is that the gang is motivated by the same logic that inspires Ladwig and his colleagues. The gang views the Bulldog logo on its clothing — not to mention Bulldog tattoos on arms, chests and backs — as a branding strategy, a way to identify its "product" as something special.
"It's used to promote the gang," said Fresno police Lt. Greg Coleman, who is in charge of the task force trying to dismantle the Bulldogs gang. "It's to let people know who they are and attract new members."
Robert Walker, a South Carolina consultant and gang expert, said Fresno State is not alone. Gangs throughout the nation adopt athletic logos or colors of various universities.
For example, Walker on his Web site identifies University of Nevada at Las Vegas clothing as popular with the Vice Lords, a gang in many Midwestern, Eastern and Southern states. To these gangs, Walker said, UNLV backward stands for "Vice Lords Nation United."
Mark Wallington, a spokesman for the UNLV athletic department, said university officials noticed in the early 1980s and early 1990s that the university's licensed clothing was increasingly popular with an unsavory consumer niche.
"It wasn't so much gangs as you'd turn on 'Cops' on TV and there would be some guy running who was wearing something with UNLV on it," Wallington said.
He said this was a period when the UNLV men's basketball team coached by Tarkanian (who would later coach at Fresno State) was a national powerhouse and the university's licensed clothing was popular throughout the country.
UNLV took no legal or marketing steps to protect its brand from being worn by gangs or hoodlums, Wallington said. However, he added that in the early 1990s the university did remove the musket from the Rebel mascot: "It was a symbol of violence, and we wanted to get it out of there."
Wallington said he knows of no gangs currently using UNLV's brand as their own.
Fresno State's options may be as limited as UNLV's.
Ladwig tells of a meeting between university officials and officers from MAGEC, the county's multiagency gang task force, last year that sums up the challenge.
Fresno State was considering a few design tweaks to the Bulldog logo, and wanted to know whether the new version would differentiate the university from the gang.
MAGEC members told the university that gang members had "always been Bulldogs and they'd always be Bulldogs," Ladwig said. "They said anything we modified, they'd change with us."
Fresno police may be Fresno State's best hope. Since the crackdown, department spokesman Jeff Cardinale said, officers on patrol have noticed more gang members wearing white T-shirts over their Bulldogs clothing.
But gang expert Walker said Fresno State most likely is stuck. After all, it can't stop a suspected gang member from buying a Bulldogs sweat shirt.
Said Walker: "It's a dilemma the university is going to have to live with."