The Springbok: To be, or not to be? The solution is simple

The furious and passionate debate of whether to cull the Springbok, or not, has had one reading nearly every single one of the articles for and against the existence of the Springbok.

It has been exhausting, but most of all it has been painful to observe how South Africans have turned on each other and savaged each other with such relentless energy and vitriol. On the one hand it is pleasing, as it has been a cathartic process; and on the other hand it has revealed people’s true colours and orientation in South Africa today.

Some downright scary, but nearly all passionate, which makes one proud to be a South African.

All of it has been extreme polarisation. It is either one or the other. You are either for it, or you are against it. No middle ground here.

The wagons are circled and only continued ill-feeling and acrimony can come out of this, which will damage individuals and especially the game of rugby.

We only see SA Rugby defending itself and countering with trumped-up hearings, and all manner of people and riff-raff organisations are weighing in and venting, without offering any kind of sensible offering or proactive solution. This requires damage control and crisis management, which means today, not next week or next month.

The reason is that no business that places such value in its trademark would permit days and weeks to pass by with its brand being savaged and pilloried on a daily basis, with nary an effort of damage control.

The latest is that this will be polled by SuperSport. Hardly scientific research and all it will reveal is that those with access to SuperSport and internet will declare their position.

This is not how to protect your brand equity and manage your brand asset. If nothing is done now to correct this perception of SA Rugby’s brand, it will put the brand into freefall and into a position from which it will never recover, and it will be relegated to history and a memory going back to 1903.

This brand has both positive and negative attributes, and any brand czar worth their salt will tell you that the negative attributes must be shed with immediate effect and replaced with new revitalised attributes that enable SA Rugby’s brand to resonate with South Africans nationally and internationally. It has to be made a contemporary brand or it will be relegated to the scrap heap.

Why no one, most of all SA Rugby, has not yet tabled a solution that meets both For and Against extremists halfway, so we can be done with the debate and move on to winning games as a nation, is a massive missed opportunity to heal these divisions.

Just as an aside. Can you imagine the chit chat in the boardrooms and rugby stands of New Zealand, Australia, France, the RFU and the IRB watching this brawl? They must be loving it as what a distraction to the mighty rugby nation, South Africa.

So consider then a middle-of-the-road solution, which is not brain surgery by any stretch of the imagination, but is a potent solution nonetheless and it strikes a brand position that satisfies, or should satisfy, the extremists on both sides, at least halfway. This is not entirely original either, but it does take a cue from the Australians and how they managed the presentation of their icons on their national team jersey.

So this is how the new, revitalised branding and livery for the South African national rugby team should look:

1. The new South African national team jersey design has the Protea over the heart, the Springbok on the right breast, leaping towards the heart, the apparel sponsor’s logo in the middle and the national team sponsor logo across the chest.

2. This design can be implemented for the end-of-year tour to the UK in a few weeks and can demonstrate SA Rugby’s responsiveness and ability to be proactive.

3. The brand becomes revitalised and contemporary and relevant to South Africa today.

How easy was that?

Post Script:

Just in case you want some nostalgia from SABC’s Springbok Radio, go to: http://www.springbokradio.com/