You Hurt Your Brand Sting

The entertainment business masters program at Full Sail requires students to create a unique company from concept to completion. My company is Marque Branding, a creative branding company for entertainers. As a fan of professional wrestling, I would love to manage the brand of a wrestler one day. With that said, I believe Sting tarnished the strength of his brand long term last Sunday. Sting is a professional wrestler that rose in popularity in the 90s with World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Sting did not sign with WWE when they brought WCW in 2001. Sting has worked for various other wrestling companies since 2001, but never WWE. Sting’s brand transcended from just being a popular wrestler to being the only big name WWE never had. A high profile wrestler on your program that WWE has never had increases ratings. This has helped Sting negotiate large sums in his contracts with other wrestling companies. Recently Sting has allowed WWE to use his image in their video games and make a DVD about his wrestling career highlighting his best matches from WCW.  Sting made his first ever WWE appearance last Sunday at the Survivor Series pay per view. Even though WWE has probably paid Sting an incredible amount for this appearance, this will hurt the strength of his brand in the end. Prior to Survivor Series, Sting was the hot commodity that smaller wrestling promotions would spend as much as possible to acquire because it meant they would have something already known to wrestling fans on their program that WWE never had. Now that he has been with WWE, Sting is just another old wrestler. A smaller wrestling company will not be as determined to get Sting to appear on their show as they have been in the past because his brand has lost value. There is nothing special about it anymore. Sting will need to come up with a new way to make himself stand apart in the eyes of smaller wrestling companies from all the other retired wrestlers out there.