Syfy, it’s not too late to thwart the fan backlash.
I’ve just found that old post lost somewhere in my digital mess. I can delete it or share it. I choose the last solution.
Warning: This is not another post about whether or not SciFi rebranding into Syfy is strategically relevant.
Most of the articles I have read, have focused on the name itself and I don’t believe that a name alone is enough to judge an entire rebranding strategy. We don’t actually know, for example, how this new name will impact across the entire organization.
But this recent rebranding -and the hullabaloo around it remind me of something I’ve been thinking about for a while: “How does fandom turn into a reluctance to change or adapt and how can brands help to resolve or address this type of discord ?”
This question is all the more critical now since fans are not the exception anymore, they are the norm:
“As television becomes an active, engaging medium all television viewers become ‘fans’ of something” (Denise D. Beilly).
Fans are often driven by what Ivan D. Askwith of the Convergence Culture Consortium calls ‘The Logic of Mastery,’ which he defines as the following:
“Mastery involves recognizing opaque references, seeing through red herrings, or simply being able to form a sophisticated assessment of a program by applying one’s own interpretive and analytical skills to one’s knowledge of the program.”
The fans that Askwith describes are strongly engaged in the content. This behavioral logic is especially developed in Science Fiction given the complex storylines. Sci-Fi’s fans literally act as experts. And what does every expert tend to think about their field of expertise? That he ‘owns’ the field.
Involved fans may therefore deny the legitimacy of the true authors of a given show or brand. In the case of Sci-Fi, at first glance, we may think they blame the decision-makers of the channel but their true disappointment may lie in the actual decision-making process.
By not being included in this process, they may feel as though their best friends have failed to acknowledge their skills and take their long-term loyalty and dedication into account.
And while some may argue that it is too hard to bridge the gap between creative and strategic business considerations and that fans only care about the creative side of things, I would argue that fans are acutely aware of the inherent conflict between the two. So, they can take into account the underlying dimensions, provided that they are included in the process from the start.
At the end of the day, it is not too late; Sci-fi can still tap into its basis of loyalists. If the channel behavior proves fans their favorite brand values them as trustworthy partners, they will help that brand move forward in the right direction.
