FanPost

Know Your Brand: Gold or Yellow

I'm a web designer and developer by trade - I publish websites from start to finish. Need someone to float a div? Develop a brand? Rock out with your SEO out? I'm your man. Bench press? How about WORDPRESS? Clients walk in our door, hand us an idea of what they want, and we run with it. A big part of this (almost centric to it) is the brand of the organization we're designing for.

Your brand is your identity; the NFL understands this. I've seen teams attempt to develop their brands in very different ways; it behooves certain franchises to continually update their look in order to remain current, while other franchises adhere to a throwback model that brings on an air of history and "the glory days." Our beloved Steelers are of the latter category, of which I am appreciative. If we want to draw a comparison, the Steelers are Coca-Cola and the Jaguars/Buccaneers/Bengals/OtherCrappyFranchise are Pepsi. Coca-Cola is CONSISTENTLY noted as being a much better brand, and is probably by and large the reason it constantly outsells Pepsi (though Pepsi wins taste-tests all the time).

If you think about it, the Steelers logo isn't "good." Not really. It is GREAT, however, because of what we associate with it: 75+ years of glorious, glorious football. Teams with similar swag are the Packers, Raiders (who are sporting a very vintage looking pirate fellow), 49ers, Redskins, Cowboys, etc. You can probably think of a few more - most other teams have kept the general 'look' going but have changed the details; Seattle, for instance, has de-emphasized their lime green in favor of a darker blue over the years.

I went on a tangent there, but you get the idea: Brand is IMPORTANT to the NFL, and developing your brand well can make for a great profit margin if you do it correctly. With all of this in mind, I want to make a very serious point about the branding of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Our colors are BLACK & GOLD, do you get me? #000000 and #FDB813 (with a few acceptable minor variants to the latter)! A correct web-safe 'gold' color is #FFD700. While I appreciate Wiz Khalifa's dedication of his song to the Pittsburgh Steelers (and his interesting Pepsi partnership with Lamarr Woodley ... wait, Pepsi? Ironic!) calling the Steelers Black and Yellow is simply incorrect.

When a new NFL team is introduced, they undergo a branding process like any other organization in the world would (read: shoud), though with a caveat; it can't fall too closely to the branding of another team. A team that toed the line with this back in the 60's? The New Orleans Saints - but because their 'gold' is technically called 'old gold' (or in Chuck-speak, 'muddy tan-yellow'), it was accepted by the league. A pet peeve of mine nowadays is when I hear Saints fans say they bleed "black and gold" - inadvertently stomping in on the glory and pride of a franchise 35 years older than theirs. Saints fans, hear me: You do not bleed black and gold. You bleed "black and you only have one super bowl so shut the hell up."

Our logo (since 1962) & subsequent colors uniquely hearken to the history of Pittsburgh and the steel industry there. Many of you know this, but our logo is a direct mimic of the old U.S. Steel logo. You can read more about it here. What's interesting is that 1962, as the linked page states, was one of the earliest 'winning' seasons in franchise history, finishing at 9-5 (historical best to that point). The new logo, combined with the new success of the team, convinced them to keep it - permanently. Ten years after the change, a legend was born.

I say all of this to make a point: When you disrespect a team's brand, you disrespect the team. A team's branding, particularly in the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers, carries a lot of weight. Ours is a reference to the Steel industry, hard-working Pennsylvanians, the beginning of our winning habit, and a consistency in responsible ownership under the Rooneys. "Black & Yellow" may seem like a minor offense, but by avoiding these, it allows us to pay respect to those who developed our franchise into what it is today.

The opinions shared here are not those of the editorial staff of Behind the Steel Curtain or SB Nation. These posts are not approved in any way by the editorial staff of this web site.