Keep the red.Make the cat meaner.

Somewhere in Perth there’s a wardrobe with someone’s first Wildcats jersey in it. Tell its owner the club needs a new logo and you’ll get a look that ends the conversation.

That’s the right place to start any rebrand. Not with a mood board. With the person who has every reason to like the old one.

The Perth Wildcats had more than 40 years of history, ten championships and an identity more than 20 years old. New ownership and leadership arrived with a bigger ambition. The old identity hadn’t gone bad. It just no longer matched where the club wanted to go, or the way fans now watch and follow the game.

Here’s the argument. A rebrand is a decision about what to keep as much as what to change. Most rebrands that disappoint get the first half wrong.

Ask the people who own it

Before anyone drew a cat, the club asked its supporters. More than 900 answered an early fan survey. They wanted something new, modern and simpler, with a fiercer, more powerful Wildcat. Most of all, they wanted to keep the red.

That second answer mattered as much as the first. When your supporters call themselves the Red Army, the colour isn’t a design choice. It’s theirs.

A survey of fans who chose to reply isn’t a mandate to design by committee, and nobody treated it as one. What it gave the team was a map: where supporters were open to change, and what they felt they owned.

Every business has its version of the red. The stripe on the vans people recognise from the end of the street. The pack colour shoppers find on a crowded shelf. The jingle your customers can hum. Find it before you commission replacements. Nobody thanks you for painting over the one thing they could pick out.

Strategy first, cat second

Hum was brought in to help evolve the brand. It quickly became clear that changing the logo alone wouldn’t be enough. The club needed clarity on what it wanted to become, and what that meant for the people inside it and the community around it.

Inside, the direction became Bigger than Basketball. It wasn’t a campaign line. It was a lens for decisions about culture, community, commercial growth and the experience around the team. That gave leadership something to steer by. It didn’t give a fan anything to wear.

Outside, Welcome to Wildnation did. It drew on Western Australia’s wild landscapes, wild conditions and the people who live here, and gave the Red Army something bigger to belong to. The logo, typography, numbers, textures and apparel were then built as one system around that idea, designed to hold up on a player’s back, a phone screen and a very large billboard.

Inside first, then outside. The order is the point. Start with a drawing and you spend six months inventing a story to justify it. Start with what the organisation wants to become, and the creative team gets a far better problem to solve.

Then go loud, properly

The launch was built to be impossible to miss: outdoor, radio, digital, content, partnerships and fan communications. Hum stayed on through campaign and media planning and launch, so the thinking that made the brand was still in the room when it hit the market.

In the first quarter after launch, merchandise revenue was up 30% year on year. Ticketing revenue was up 19% year on year across the first three home games. Membership revenue was up 3%. Those numbers belong to the whole programme, the identity, the campaign, the media and the club’s own work, not to a badge. That’s exactly why they’re worth looking at. A new logo on its own rarely moves anything. A clear idea, a system built around it and the money to get it seen can.

Do you actually need one?

A rebrand earns its budget when the market’s picture of you is blocking the business you want. A firm that once fixed machines and now manages whole facilities, still called for breakdowns and left off maintenance shortlists, has a real case to examine its name, offer and proof.

If customers already understand you and the real issue is a tired website and a logo that won’t embroider, that’s a refresh. Spend less.

And if they know exactly what you do but won’t shortlist you because the last three jobs ran late, put the design brief down. A new promise over an old experience just gives people a fresh reason to distrust you.

What to do on Monday

Write a four-line brief before anyone opens a design file.

1. Change: “We need these buyers to consider us for ___. Today they think of us for ___.”

2. Keep: “People already recognise us by ___.” Check it with real customers, not the team.

3. Prove: “We can now deliver ___, and here’s where a customer can see it.”

4. Pay for: every place the change has to reach, split into what changes on day one and what gets replaced as it wears out.

Put one name against each line, and one person on the final call. Then measure the reason you changed, not launch-day applause.

Keep the red. Change what’s actually in the way.

Sources & notes

• Perth Wildcats, “Perth Wildcats Unveil New Identity” (900+ survey responses, fiercer Wildcat, keep the red, 40+ years, 10 championships, identity 20+ years old)

• Perth Wildcats case study, Hum (Bigger than Basketball, Welcome to Wildnation, launch channels, results). Results are year on year for the first quarter after launch, and ticketing covers the first three home games. They reflect the whole programme and can’t be put down to the new logo alone.

• The facilities business is illustrative.

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