History is Complex and Marketers Should Do Their Homework

History has always fascinated me. In one of my first lectures as an undergrad history major, a professor said to the class that "History is an argument based on fact." When you study history, many times you find that the stories you know, or the historical figures you know about, are usually much more complex.

For example, I recently finished "The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin," a Pulitzer Prize winner by Gordon Wood. I found out a great deal more about Franklin and his politics before, during, and after the Revolution. The insights about Franklin were new to me. But, I also know that there are other works out there, including Franklin's own autobiography, that paint a different picture.

The New York Times has an article that offers a great history lesson that marketers should pay attention to:

New York Times
January 27, 2006
What's in a Brand Name? Houston Just Found Out
By SIMON ROMERO

HOUSTON, Jan. 26 — What better way to honor the brash origins of this city, the owners of Houston's new professional soccer franchise reasoned, than to name their team "Houston 1836," a nod to the year when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.

Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team's name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of secession that resulted in Mexico's loss of Texas, ushering in more than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the state.

In fact, the team's owner, the Anschutz Entertainment Group of Los Angeles, appears to have upset some of the very soccer-crazy fans they were hoping to lure, after basing its venture in part on the crowds of Spanish-speaking fútbol aficionados who regularly fill stadiums here to attend the matches of visiting clubs from Mexico. Marisabel Muñoz, a spokeswoman for Major League Soccer in New York, which is controlled in part by Anschutz, declined to comment.

"Clearly, not enough homework was put into this," said Paco Bendaña, a prominent Houston-based authority on marketing to Latinos. "Historically speaking, 1836 is not something we celebrate."

Oliver Luck, the president of Houston 1836, said the name was chosen over 15 other choices, including Americans, Apollos, Buffaloes, Bulls, Eagles, Generals, Lonestars, Mustangs, Stallions and two names in Spanish, Gatos (Cats) and Toros (Bulls.) Eighteen thirty-six, Mr. Luck said, was partly inspired by a European tradition of naming soccer clubs after the year of their creation, like Hannover 96, organized in Germany in 1896.

"We were aware of the possibility of the double entendre, but at the end of the day we believe 1836 is significant because it was the year of Houston's founding," Mr. Luck, a former chief executive of N.F.L. Europe and a former quarterback for the Houston Oilers football team, said in an interview. "We spent a lot of time on this internally. By no means was it intended as a slight."

Of course, no one in Houston disputes that a lot happened in Texas in 1836, including the settling of this city, the siege of the Alamo and the battle of San Jacinto, in which troops led by Sam Houston defeated Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna's army, the concluding military event in Texas's attempt to secede from Mexico.

(The San Jacinto Memorial Monument on the outskirts of Houston stands 570 feet tall, 15 feet higher than the Washington Monument; a frieze at the base of the monument's shaft describes events in the Anglo-American colonization of Texas.)

The announcement of the name on Wednesday quickly elicited strong reactions among Latino soccer followers. Carlos Puig, the editor of Rumbo de Houston, one of the city's Spanish-language daily newspapers, said his e-mail inbox filled with messages from readers "going crazy with the name."

Rumbo lambasted the name on its front page on Thursday, describing the choice as an "own goal," a soccer term for the occasion when a player inadvertently kicks the ball into his own goal, scoring a point for the opposing team. Rumbo also questioned whether the name would attract fans among Latinos, who account for more than 40 percent of Houston's population.

One of the reasons Houston landed a Major League Soccer franchise, with Anschutz relocating the Earthquakes from San Jose, Calif., and renaming them Houston 1836, was the impressive crowds at soccer matches here in recent months. A match between Mexico and Bulgaria drew more than 35,000 fans last November, and games in Houston featuring Mexican clubs in 2004 and 2005 drew some of the largest crowds in the InterLiga tournament's history.

Some in Houston were quick to defend the team's name, including one participant in a soccer blog carried on the Web site of The Houston Chronicle who identified himself as Mexican-American and told critics of the name to "give me a break and stop being so politically correct."

Mr. Luck, the president of Houston 1836, said the name was the top choice among respondents in an online questionnaire about potential names, and that the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which is controlled by the billionaire financier Philip Anschutz, had conducted its own polling and development of the brand. He said he hoped to win over skeptics with explanations of the origins of Houston and the state of Texas.

"We had Mexican heroes on our side, something not a lot of people are aware of," said Mr. Luck, who added that the first book he read upon moving to Houston in the 1980's was T. R. Fehrenbach's "Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans." "The truth in history is often complex."

Complexity might be a fair description of the emotional associations some have with the name 1836. Tatcho Mindiola, director of the Center for Mexican-American Studies at the University of Houston, said he saw irony in the choice of a name that could be gung-ho for Anglos while insulting to Latinos.

"It's unfortunate because sport is an integrating mechanism in society, and unintentionally or not this is a blunder," Mr. Mindiola said. "Do they think we're going to wear a T-shirt with the year 1836 on it?"

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In addition to the Wood book on Franklin, I highly recommend "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown.