RESEARCH
Target Audience
For this brand, the obvious target audience is hockey fans in Las Vegas, but Las Vegas is home to over 640,000 people, so it must be more focused on who exactly the brand is directed towards (U.S. Census Bureau). The target audience is defined with the demographics as working-class people, young professionals, and suburban families, and psychographics as those who live active, causal lifestyles, and enjoy sports and hanging out with likeminded people in their communities. By adding specifics to the target audience, a mental image of a someone who is a user or consumer of the brand can be formed, also known as a persona (Chase, 2008). Personas are a user experience tactic that formulate potential users that serve as an icon for a group of users (O'Grady, 2017). An example of a persona for The Enforcers could be Dan, a 47-year-old, carpenter who lives in Enterprise, Las Vegas, NV, with his wife and three children. As a family, they moved to the area two years ago. His wife works as a teacher at the elementary school his children have attended. He is active, and as a family, they enjoy watching sports games. By using Margo Chase’s model for personas, Dan and his family are a working-class, suburban family who are active and enjoy sports. With roughly 230,000 households in Las Vegas, Dan and his family are very likely to be descriptions for many other families.
Competition
The competition profile is used to evaluate the threats in the area, in this case, it is mainly the organizations that would be competing for a similar target audience. It serves as a formative tool that understands the ins and outs of the organizations, their location, core values and affects (O'Grady, 2017). In the Las Vegas area there are several organizations that could be considered competition, including a new organization. There is a possibility of competition with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas sports. Home to 16 teams, almost all compete in the NCAA Division 1 (UNLV). With alumni staying in the area, there is the potential for a section of the young professionals going to their games regularly, but the university does not have an ice hockey team, leading it to be a window of opportunity. Recently returning to competitive play, the Las Vegas Legends Soccer team have become a member of the National Premier Soccer League (Las Vegas Legends). While they have the national status, the type of sport offers very different features than the Enforcers.
There are three organizations that create direct competition are the Golden Knights, the Knight Hawks, and the Silver Knights. The Golden Knights are an NHL team based in Las Vegas which was founded in 2017 (NHL.com). The differentiation to focus on is that the Golden Knights have a much larger name due to their NHL status, because of this, their games and events can appear less community-oriented and more expensive. As the first success professional sports team to be in Las Vegas, the Golden Knights have gained a lot of followers showing that ice hockey in Las Vegas can gain a large following. However, the Henderson Silver Knights are an American Hockey League team based in Las Vegas. They are currently playing at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas but are awaiting a new event center to be finished in the City of Henderson, located just outside the Las Vegas city limits (Henderson Silver Knights, 2021). Lastly, the Knight Hawks pose competition as a new franchise to the city. They are the newest edition to the Indoor Football League and will be competing for new fans as a team focused on supporting the community and providing an affordable experience (The Vegas Knight Hawks, 2021). These three teams have their visual identity very similar; they are all based around Knights, which have no cultural ties to the area, other than referencing the large nightlife in Las Vegas. The Enforcers bring new-ness to the city, the team is named after a position of a hockey player, it does not use gold or silver in the colors like the other teams, and it uses the mascot of an animal found in the surrounding desert.
Brand Personality
The brand personality is reflective of the target audience and is described as active, chaotic, tough, family friendly, community-oriented, spine tingling, fun, and energetic. These descriptors follow the voice and tone of the brand communication and messaging. It shows that it is exciting, but not shocking, tough but not scary, community-based but not low-grade, and humorous but not disrespectful. Each of the is/isn’t phrases lay the grounds for the brand values, it defines who the brand is, and ultimately reflects the audience and their desires (Behrens Goodall, 2017).
The colors for the Las Vegas Enforcers hockey team are a mid-scarlet red to show strength, it also represents the roughness of the game because it is a hot color (Call, 2017). The deep scarlet matches the blood spilled in the beloved hockey fights. Arranged with the scarlet, is a full four-part grayscale ending in black. Visually, this allows the scarlet to pop most on their uniforms and while on the uniforms, it presents as a set of armor for their lawlessness. As a tough, strong team, they are packed with armor to defend themselves when needed. The colors pay homage to the team’s predecessor The Wranglers but bring a new life to ice hockey in the desert.
The logo and mascot for the team is a mountain lion, which inhabits Nevada and connects the team to its surroundings. A mountain lion is much like a hockey enforcer because it does what it needs. By showing its teeth, it emphasizes the aggression of the animal. It defines the brand being a brute force that protects its pack. The triangle is used to emphasize the lion and gives it a space to break out of the geometric shape with the dynamic angle adding to the interest (Paget, 2020).
The head of the lion has undergone several refinements and works both as a single-color design and a full-color design. In the first single-color icon, it uses the positive and negative space, as well as Gestalt theory, to unify the whole image (Christie & Carson, 2017). The viewer notices the white space, but naturally their eye fills in the lines. The second single-color icon has the gaps filled in and serves as an identical version of the full-color icon. In a color adaptation of the design, it focuses on maintaining shapes as complete lines to fill in with color. The team’s main color, a scarlet red, is used as the fill for the triangle, and emphasizes the mountain lion’s head. Throughout refinements, various parts of shading were removed or adjusted to simplify the design. The overall design is meant to be aggressive, but not scary.
References
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