There’s an old YMCA poster on a wall outside Colleen Temple’s office.
Its message asks if you’ll be needing a good place to stay. In the vintage ad, the answer is that Everett’s YMCA could be the place.
It’s been a long time since anyone could accurately say, “It’s fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A,” as the Village People first sang in the 1970s and sports crowds have been dancing to ever since.
The pop group said this week that it will keep performing its hit song despite the national organization’s announcement Monday of an official name change.
From now on, it’s just the Y.
Temple is director of marketing and communications for the YMCA of Snohomish County. The local nonprofit organization, with branches in Everett, Marysville, Mill Creek, Monroe and Mukilteo, will retain YMCA of Snohomish County as its corporate name, Temple said Thursday.
Yet like every other Y in the country, it will soon have a new logo reflecting the national name change.
Temple said all YMCAs were given up to five years to fully make the change. In Snohomish County, a big rollout of the logo is planned for January, she said.
The old logo is on gym floors, buses, banners and signs, business cards, stationery and staff shirts. “We have to identify all these things, and put costs with everything too,” Temple said.
“Everybody will be required to use the new logo, and it’s long overdue,” she said. Around the nation, Temple said there are more than 50 versions of the logo for the YMCA, an acronym for the Young Men’s Christian Association.
Founded in England in 1844, the Y’s triangle represents spirit, mind and body. In the United States, the Y began in Boston in 1851. The organization has long welcomed men, women and children without regard to religion or ethnicity.
Sundar Balakrishnan, a business administration professor at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus, said the brand change makes sense in showing the Y’s mission of inclusion.
“They don’t want to be alienating people,” said Balakrishnan, whose expertise is in marketing. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken’s change to KFC — “they don’t want to sell only fried chicken” — the professor said the Y more broadly defines the organization.
Still, there’s risk with change. “Sometimes people feel a brand is no longer authentic. A deep level of trust gets violated with some people,” he said.
Sure enough, Facebook now has a page called “Don’t change the YMCA Logo.”
Temple sees practical reasons for the switch, despite costs and hassles. “It’s now very fragmented. Even in the same communities you could have different logos, unlike Nike, Coca-Cola or McDonald’s,” she said.
In Monday’s announcement, Kate Coleman, the Y’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said the change comes with new emphasis on three goals: youth development, healthy living and social responsibility.
Temple first came to the YMCA for child care. My two older children went to preschool at the Y’s Everett branch. From fitness and teen leadership to camps and family programs, the Y has much to offer. A Young Men’s Christian Association, it isn’t.
As for staying at the YMCA, Temple said it’s been many years since visitors could rent a room at the Everett branch.
“My brother-in-law stayed at the Y when he first moved to Seattle in the 1960s,” said Alice Kaderlan, a spokeswoman for the YMCA of Greater Seattle. At the Seattle Y, she said, rooms haven’t been available since the 1990s.
It may indeed have been fun to stay at the YMCA. Times change.
These days, we text. We tweet. And we say the Y.
“Why fight the public on what it already is?” Balakrishnan said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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