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Brand Name
Angels and Methodism
By George Mitrovich

Dennis Kuhl is president of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, one of major league baseball’s most successful franchises. He became president of the Angels when his college friend, Artie Moreno, who had bought the team in 2002, invited him to lunch and asked if he wanted the job.

 This is not a decision you ponder. Dennis didn’t. He said yes.

 Moreno knew what he was doing. Dennis had been a key part of Moreno’s vast business holdings since they were classmates together at the University of Arizona. The Angels’ owner knew that Dennis had one of the best advertising and promotional minds in America. And the Angels, playing in the shadow of the Los Angeles Dodgers, up the freeway from Orange County in Chavez Ravine (actually several freeways), needed their own identity. In a fiercely competitive market they needed a brand name—separate and distinct. The team, previously owned by the Disney Corporation, was more Disneyland than baseball.

 When Moreno bought the team they were known as the Anaheim Angels, and he wanted a larger, more significant identification. People associated Anaheim with Disneyland, not the Angels, and in a tough market, with the Dodgers to the north in L.A. and the Padres to the south in San Diego, Moreno wanted a name worthy of his team—The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

 The City of Anaheim didn’t want the name change, and the city’s political leadership spent time and money to stop it—first in the state legislature, and next in the courts, but they lost on both fronts (and a lot of taxpayer money, to boot). Dennis Kuhl was at the center of the name change, of a change in identity, of change in the all-important brand name. Because of Kuhl, the Dodgers knew they no longer owned the LA/Southern California market.

Last summer, when the Red Sox came to play the Angels, a group of us from San Diego, about 30 in number, rode Amtrak to the ballgame (the train stops at Angels Stadium). We wanted to see the game, of course, but we also thought a tour of the ballpark would be fun. We worked out the details with Dennis who said he would put a tour and dinner together for us, with one caveat: No Red Sox hats, jerseys, jackets, or t-shirts in evidence. We agreed.

After our tour prior to the game, we sat down to dinner in one of the stadium’s private dining rooms. Dennis was our speaker.

He told us his first objective in becoming the team’s president, with the full backing of Moreno, was to establish the Angels’ “brand name.” That strategy, including the name change (which was huge) was to make people think Angels, dress in Angels red, listen to the team on the radio, watch the team on television, and, of course, come to Angels Stadium.

In his initial meeting with the staff of the team, the people responsible for running the day-to-day operation, Dennis told them they would be expected to wear Angels polo shirts and blouses at the ballpark, that everyone who worked at the ballpark would be seen in the team’s traditional red; and, he said, whatever the practice had been under Disney concerning stadium dress codes, it was no longer applicable.

When Moreno and Dennis took over the management of the Angels, the team was televising only 90 games a year. Since major league teams play a 162-game schedule, why was the team so seldom on television? Moreno and Kuhl wanted to know. They set out to get every Angels’ game on the air. They sought a new contract. Today, the Angels are seen 162 times a year. Plus they have gained a new $500 million contract with Fox over 10 years—which means even before they play game one of a new season they have $50 million in the bank! Now, that’s a heavyweight brand name!

Last season the Angels drew 3,365,632 fans to their beautiful ballpark. They averaged 41,551 a game. Thirty-five times they sold out. Every time they played at Angels Stadium, 92.2 percent of all seats were filled! The only teams that finished ahead of the Angels in home attendance were the Cardinals, Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees—all of which play in significantly bigger ballparks.

Dennis declared that night over dinner that your brand name is who you are. You have to create it, hold to it, cause people to identify with it. And, he stressed, never relax your efforts to keep your “brand name” before the public.

Do brand names matter? Does having an enterprising owner and a marketing genius running the business side of baseball operations make a difference? Obviously.

 

Branding Methodism

There was a time in American history when the name “Methodist” mattered. From the time of the 1784 Christmas Conference gathering at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, when the Methodist Church became the nation’s first denomination, the name Methodist was a significant part of our history; it is not a stretch to say the Methodist Church was America’s church.

But what was true then, and remained true for the next 176 years (through the 60s), is no longer true. Yes, we’re still America’s second largest Protestant denomination, but the name Methodist no longer resonates as it once did. Our brand name has been marginalized.

When you review United Methodism’s decline, which has been overwhelming in its sweep—remember when the Council of Bishops a couple of years back reported 41 percent of our churches had no membership gains the previous year?—it is startling to realize how far we’ve drifted from our original mission: to preach good news and to bind up society’s wounds. Some elements within the UM Church do the first; others do the second. The genius of our church had been to do both. But from our divisions and confusion our distinction as a church, as a denomination—our “brand name”—slipped away.

In our muddled state, United Methodism no longer provides a clear message as to who we are. “Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open Doors,” may resonate with Madison Avenue but not Main Street. Yes, it sounds clever, but that doesn’t quite get it done. Besides, while often quoted, I’ve never heard it adequately explained.

When I was a young man the denomination to which you belonged was thought significant. There were reasons why one was a Methodist, a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Lutheran. People associated with a particular church because that church stood for something distinct and different. Methodists were Methodists for a reason, likewise for Presbyterians.

In my own circumstances I did not become a Methodist by chance, but by choice. I spent seven months deciding whether I should leave the Church of the Nazarene and become a Methodist. I spoke to many people in the process of that decision, including Bishop Gerald Kennedy and Dr. K. Morgan Edwards (then at First Church in Pasadena). I reflected and prayed whether making a transition from Nazarene to Methodist was right for me. My only choice, I thought, was either to remain a Nazarene or to change denominations. There was no second choice. I wasn’t going to become a Presbyterian or a Baptist. My Arminian/Wesleyan roots run deep. The Nazarenes had taught me well as to why James Arminius and John Wesley mattered theologically, spiritually, and how Christians understand and face the world.

That was 46 years ago and lots of things have changed—not least a great leveling of the walls between denominations, especially in the mainline churches. Having been a board member and president of the Ecumenical Council in San Diego, I am hardly a critic of our coming together, but we’ve paid a price in allowing our brand name to be lost in our desire for unity.

Yes, unity is a good thing and rightly to be desired. Against a secular, corrupt, non-believing world, our togetherness in Christ is a strength, but why was it thought that in order to achieve unity we needed to lose our distinctiveness? Of what ultimate value is unity if you forfeit your identity? If you lose that which makes you, you?

We had a history of preaching the necessity of salvation in Christ and believing that personal salvation, independent of a concern for others, was no salvation. While our faith may be, as Jim Wallis of Sojourners says, “personal, it is never private.”

There is nothing wrong with taking pride in one’s history, not because you think your history is more important than that of others, but because it is your history, your story. That basic lesson appears lost among our church leaders today.

So how do we restore our brand name? How do we make “Methodist” relevant again?

In May of 1964 Bishop Gerald Kennedy made the cover of Time. The title the magazine chose for its cover painting of the bishop—which followed the General Conference in Pittsburgh the week before—was, “The Methodist Church: Concern for Religious Relevance.”

In his Episcopal Address, Bishop Kennedy stated, “The Christian task is to pursue our ancient course of attacking our own imperfections, keeping our life open to God, and perfecting our society. We are not trying to sell a system, but to demonstrate a Way which is incomparably better than all others, and shines with the promise of a more abundant life for all men.”

Time said that Bishop Kennedy was the contemporary Methodist who “best seemed to express the peculiar quality of his church’s active, outgoing faith: pragmatic but perfection-aimed, equally concerned with personal morality and social order, loving discipline yet cherishing freedom. What the bishop called  ‘sanctified common sense.’”

Of John Wesley Time said, “In the time and place of its founding, Methodism was a great response to a great challenge. The 18th century was a time of torpor in the Church of England, which was slow to answer the antireligious skepticism of the Enlightenment and to meet the new missionary challenge of the unchurched poor in new industrial towns. John Wesley, a High Church priest turned highway preacher, found the answer. Instead of confounding the deists with reason, he responded to their arguments with religious fervor; and when the poor were reluctant to enter the church, he brought the church to them on city streets and country roads. In place of liturgy and creed, he put fellowship and the personal experience of salvation at the center of Christian life. It was an emotional faith, summoning men to work hard and live well for their Saviour’s sake.”

Reading again that cover story, loving as I did Bishop Kennedy, I am painfully reminded of what we have lost as a denomination; not just the brilliance of that special bishop, but our own distinctiveness, our brand name—something the bishop thought important.

To recover it we must return to the values of John Wesley, for they are as relevant today as then. We must be clear about our doctrines, of what makes us Methodists still—and to proclaim without apology or ambiguity why that matters in today’s world.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim believe brand name is important. Should the United Methodist Church believe differently?

 

George Mitrovich, a member of First United Methodist Church, San Diego, is president of two leading American public forums, The City Club of San Diego and The Denver Forum. He also chairs for The Great Fenway Park Writers Series for the Boston Red Sox. He can be reached at: gmitro35@gmail.com.



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