‘You don’t have to listen to all of the feedback’: Gold Coast Suns head of brand shares lessons from club’s first ever rebrand
For the first time in its 14-year history, the AFL’s Gold Coast Suns has undergone a major rebrand and we sat down with the club’s head of brand to talk all about it.
On Friday, the Suns’ unveiled its first ever rebranding since entering the AFL competition in 2009, complete with a new logo and new-look guernsey.
Appearing on a new episode of Mumbrella’s one-on-one podcast series, the club’s head of brand, Dominique Burgess, walked through the entire process which started early last year and the many challenges that came along the way.
Burgess said it was crucial to listen to the fans throughout the rebrand, who she believes had grown tired of the ‘Challenge Accepted’ theme introduced in 2019, as it “no longer represented where we were as a club”.
Mac Andrews
However, the feedback – particularly from a passionate fan base – might not always be constructive, which Burgess said was a major lesson for the marketing team.
“It’s all subjective – the scale of liking and hating a color or a logo. For me, I have quite a scientific data background, so I really leant into the quantitative research we did around the focus groups and the consulting,” Burgess told host Neil Griffiths.
“So whenever we got straight into murky territory, I could always refer back to that. [The feedback] showed us that most people liked this or didn’t like this. And then Bob East, our chairman, he quite often used to say, ‘You can’t make decision by committee.’ So, there’s no point in canvassing everybody for an opinion. You just need to consult the key stakeholders and then once you’ve made that decision, you back yourself.”
Touk Miller
Burgess continued: “If you hear that same feedback often enough, I think you take the key learning out of it and then you filter the rest out and you move forward with that key learning. You don’t have to listen to all of the feedback, but it’s filtering it down to the essence of what that piece of feedback might be and then what can we do with that.”
The club’s new theme – Fearless – and new kit will debut in the 2025 season, while merch can be bought from Friday.
Listen to the full podcast with Burgess here.
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Neil Griffiths is the Managing Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the company in October 2023.
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You don’t have to listen to feedback but sometimes you should.
How anyone thought a guernsey where you can hardly see the central design element was a good idea I will never understand.
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My issue with so many of the new jumper designs is that they look like they’ve been designed by graphic designers with little knowledge of what makes a great footy jumper. To me, the new Suns an example of that.
Other examples were the original Port Power, Fremantle Docker, Brisbane Bears, Greater Western Stdney, West Coast Eagles jumpers. It only took a young female Port supporter to suggest Port change dump the graphic designers jumpers in favour of her classic footy jumper design for remind people what a real footy jumper looks like. Same with Fremantle. Same with Brisbane. The Eagles went more traditional. Even the Western Bulldogs, having flirted with some giant bulldog plastered all over the front of the jumper soon reverted back to their classic tri-coloured jumper. And just to further highlight the idiocy of the Suns new design – they are called the Gokd Coast Suns – so you’d think gold/yellow would play some role in its design. At least the Adelaide Crows were smart enough to stick to the classic footy jumper hoops design
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I don’t want to say I told you so
“so I really leant into the quantitative research we did around the focus groups and the consulting,”
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Tone deaf. You may get away with this in an FMCG or broader marketing context but when your fans and members are literally the embodiment of the club and the brand you simply cannot ignore them. If I was a Suns supporter I would be absolutely devastated reading this excuse. Something rotten at the core of the club if that’s the case.
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This puts a bad name to marketers and just goes to show how tone deaf and righteous some marketers believe they are. You may be able to escape this in an FMCG context but when your fans, members and club are literally the embodiment of the brand you simply cannot ignore them. Be better than your own ego please.
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Listen to the fans . Logo is ok but red on red is ridiculous! How could you have got it so wrong?
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The brand refresh either went through too many committees or not enough!
Pro tip, stay off Reddit for the next few weeks. Oof
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I listened to the podcast I must say this is one of the worst rebrands I’ve ever seen – if not the worst. I imagine within 3 months the old identity will be back and they’ll try again.
The process, as the guest spoke to it, sounded completely absurd
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You’ve got an iconic world famous location for your identity and you scrap that to focus on the bland, corporatised element of “The Suns,” making this even worse than North Melbourne’s failed attempt to focus merely on The Kangaroos aspect of their identity, which at least has a long history and organic origins
Contrast that Sydney’s recent rebrand that focuses on the long history of the club, it’s beginnings in South Melbourne, it’s organic identity as The Swans, given by the community due to an influx of WA players and it’s move to Sydney
This move is like the Yankees removing the NY from their logo
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