The big red bag
As sports go, pro tennis ranks right up there with auto racing for bringing a sort-of branding bonanza in to its everyday existence. Almost everything is sponsored - from the nets to the timepieces to the apparel and equipment each player wears - and that’s probably a function of the fact that each player is a brand unto themselves, free to make deals with outfitters and racquet-makers as their game and their fame commands.
If you’re a brand person and a tennis fan - as I am - then there is this ongoing branding-related subplot to the tour, one which reaches its apex at the Australian Open, the first major tournament of the calendar year, and thus the one where offseason branding changes are most noticeable.
The Australian Open reaches it conclusion this weekend, and while there was, as always, some interesting movement (Frances Tiafoe from Nike to Lululemon!), the thing I’m most hung up on is the lumbering, bright red bags any player who uses a Wilson racquet carries on to court.
Wilson, as a brand, has been around for more than a century. It is probably most famous for supplying game balls to the National Football League and then for its volleyballs, thanks to a memorable “cameo” in the film Cast Away, but right behind that somewhere must be its association with tennis, which dates back to just after World War II and stretches right to the present. Serena Williams and Roger Federer both played with Wilson racquets, so if you’ve watched any high-level tennis at all over the last two decades, that iconic, curly red “W” is probably emblazoned in your mind.
Serena and Roger are, of course, retired now, but if I were to do some sort of ranking based on overall brand presence in tennis, I think I’d have to go with Wilson over all other comers (Nike and Rolex are close behind), and it’s all down to those big red bags being lugged around by players sponsored by Wilson.
This is branding at its best. Wilson is leaning in to its heritage hard. Both the color and the script in its logotype possess a timeless and classic quality, which is especially important in a sport like tennis that is obsessed with and reverential toward its own traditions.
But the bags themselves are at once bold - the color jumps off the screen - and astonishingly simple relative to the lines of other competitors. There are just the two colors - red and white - and that familiar script.
Those bags might look quite simple, but they are no simple feat. They tap in to a century of history - the kind of positive brand associations that many of us pick up when we’re kids - but also zag against a field of zigging competitors.
It’s almost enough to make me think about ditching my Head racquet.