Brand/Rebrand: UFC

Brand/Rebrand: UFC 07.20.2015 When Dana White and the Fertitta brothers bought UFC for $2 million nearly 15 years ago, they inherited little more than the three initials that bare the company's name. But they had a brand. One that, in the ensuing decade and a half, has grown from a ragged fringe sport to one of enormous popularity. Today with pay-per-view buys surpassing 1 million multiple times, a long-term TV deal with Fox, aggressive international plans and emerging stars with mainstream appeal, the UFC decided it was time to re-brand with the goal of unifying all of those estimable and growing properties.Â Working with creative agency Troika, the company developed an updated logo and completely revamped its graphics packages and ad elements to be used across many media platforms, including broadcast, Web and video games. It's the first wholesale redesign in the company's history. "More and more fans are coming to us for more and more reasons," says UFC VP of Global Brand Creative Heidi Noland. "We felt like we needed to take a step back [and] build more consistency with the growing suite of offerings that we have." Viewing the new and old logos together is like playing one of those what's-different-in-these-two-photos games. Initially, they look almost identical. But the graphic experts at Troika cleaned the old logo up, scraping away at the "C" for an almost subconsciously sleeker look.Â Noland says it wasn't a small detail to UFC executives. After seeing the change, White said he could hardly stand to look at the old logo anymore. Other changes include cohesive posters and billboards with the fight date in the same place on every one, gold imagery for championship fights promotional material and unified logos for UFC-related TV shows, events and interactive fan experiences. Statistics packages and the fight time clock for live events all encompass this more current look. The new graphics rollout debuted for UFC 189 earlier this month. The event, which featured a co-headliner bill of Conor McGregor vs. Chad Mendes and Robbie Lawler vs. Rory MacDonald, broke attendance records for a UFC match in Las Vegas and brought in a record $7.2 million in gate receipts. Still, ratings on Fox Sports 1 were pedestrian, pulling in at just under 850,000.Â White boasted that pay-per-view projections would set records, though the official numbers aren't yet available. Those who worked on the re-brand say they won't simply be looking at viewer numbers and dollar signs to determine if the project is a success. "It wasn't so much about 'will the visual identity greatly change the number of people that tune in on Saturday night?'" says SVP of Global Brand Marketing Jackie Poriadjian. "It will likely lead, we hope, to more consumption, more relevance, feeling more invested, but not necessarily in only one vertical."Â With a more (dare we say) dignified branding look and all this talk of cross-platform cohesion, it's natural to wonder whether diehard fans will lament the UFC's bad old days, when the organization truly was an outsider in the sports landscape. While marketers at UFC agree these changes are meant to appeal to a broad audience, they aren't meant to soften any of the sport's rougher edges. "We are true to our DNA," says Poriadjian. "There's never a desire to soften anything.".

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