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What Does the Portland Trail Blazers Brand Stand For?

Everybody wants to create and define a brand nowadays. How well have the Portland Trail Blazers succeeded? What do you associate with the Trail Blazer brand for good or ill?

By Dave Deckard
Portland Trail Blazers

A lovely picture of the Trail Blazers new practice facility came across my Twitter feed today, courtesy of the Blazers themselves:

The view is stunning, made more so by the fish-eye perspective. The Blazers logo is elongated. Retired numbers frame it. This is enough to stop the heart and open the tear ducts of a true-blue Blazers fan.

Looking at logo and banners bathed in hardwood-reflected light got me thinking. "Brand" is the big buzzword today. Everybody from multinational corporations to individual NBA players wants to establish theirs. Try to describe Damian Lillard in words that couldn't be reflected in an Adidas commercial. You'll be fishing for a while. Our entire public language has been branded, or at least the adjectival part of it.

What is the Trail Blazers brand? What does the logo stand for? I want to throw out that question today. The answer has to be crowdsourced to be meaningful.

Note that we're not just talking about your memories of the Blazers, nor of the attributes you wish the team and organization embodied. Those are fine, but distinct, topics. We want the 2-5 words or sentences that come to mind when you see that pinwheel, when you reflect on the franchise. We want to know what you associate with the red and black and what you think other people might associate with them.

Note also that brands can evoke positive or negative connotations. There's the Ford Mustang (which the Ford Motor Company would love to celebrate) then there's the Edsel and Pinto (which they'd love to forget). You could go either way with the Golden Arches, the Arby's hat, or that big "K" in K-Mart.

Be it super value and quality or blue light specials, what words, phrases, concepts, or ideals do you associate with the Trail Blazers brand? Let us know below.

--Dave blazersub@gmail.com / @DaveDeckard / @Blazersedge

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