Do the Cleveland Guardians have buyer’s remorse on the name?

With the strange rollout of the team’s merchandise and the club constantly asking for fan feedback, one has to wonder if the Cleveland Guardians don’t have a bit of buyer’s remorse.

While the NBA All-Star weekend occupied the attention around town this past weekend, the team across the Gateway Plaza sent out an interesting survey. I’m not trying to start any conspiracy, but where there’s smoke, there is often fire.

Now, on the surface, the survey sent out by the Cleveland Guardians was a very basic and harmless fan survey. But the more I thought about it, the timing is quite interesting.

For those unfamiliar with what I’m talking about, last Friday, the team sent out a fan survey asking for input on a number of facets regarding marketing. They asked questions on how fans felt about the name, the team colors, and logos.

The Guardians then pivoted and asked about some marketing slogans, which included the following:

• “We are Cleveland Made”
• “We Stand for the Land”
• “Cleveland Built”
• “Stand Guard”

Never mind the fact that these all sound very generic and uninspiring – we’ll circle back to that in a bit. I want to spend a few minutes discussing the fact that the team is still reaching out to fans about how they feel about the name and logos.

If memory serves, they sent a similar survey out to fans following the release of the name change and unveiling of the new logos and wordmark. That was back in July of 2021, and here we are in February of 2022, and they are still asking essentially the same questions. Maybe they want to see if over the last six months fans have opened up to the name change some more, or maybe (and this is an admittedly cynical take) they have some buyer’s remorse on the Guardians name and branding.

Again, I want to stress that I’m trying to give the organization the benefit of the doubt; however, I can’t help but be a slight bit cynical and wonder. After all, the spring training hats were just released – no Flying G logo to be seen there. Script Guardians home jerseys? Can’t get those yet, either.

But the Diamond C logo is prominently displayed and available, as is some general Cleveland merch and marketing. This is probably done purposefully to ease fans into the new branding – right?!??

I digress – let’s circle back to those slogans. Whew, well… yeah, I guess they are slogans. I’ll cut to the chase – I don’t care for a single one. But if I was forced to pick one, I’d simplify the first to “Cleveland Made.” It’s to the point, it evokes a sense of community, and quite frankly sounds different enough than what other teams around town have used in the past.

Anyway, stay tuned because this will be something potentially interesting to watch from a marketing standpoint.