What a scary band in rubber masks taught me about sports, loyalty, and why everything is branding.
I’m a lifelong metal fan. Actually, let me rephrase that: I am obsessed with metal music. There’s a je ne sais quoi about an angry dude or gal screaming while the band chugs on with blast beats in the background. But I didn’t fall in love with metal because of the music, at least not at first. I fell in love with a mask. Well, nine of them.
It all started with Slipknot, a band of outcasts from Des Moines, Iowa, in matching industrial jumpsuits with barcodes on the back, each one hiding behind a homemade horror mask and going by a number from zero to eight instead of a name. As a 12-year-old me watched The Nameless at 1 a.m. at a sleepover in my best friend’s bedroom, it looked like the scariest, coolest thing on the planet. I haven’t looked back since.
But let me be clear: Slipknot is made up of great musicians. Joey Jordison redefined what it meant to play drums. Mick Thomson and Jim Root are riff gods. And I don’t have time to get on about Corey Taylor’s vocal prowess. Plenty of bands could play fast and heavy and play well. I’ve forgotten more than I can name. But Slipknot became a phenomenon.
They weren’t just a band. They were a brand. The masks, the numbers, the jumpsuits, the nine-pointed star logo. You didn’t need to know a single member’s name to recognize them. That was the point.
Call it a gimmick if you want. I’d like to think of it as the most effective brand system in modern metal (I see you, KISS).
And here’s what makes Slipknot’s longevity truly stand out: over the years, the faces behind the masks have changed. Founding bassist Paul Gray died in 2010. Then Joey Jordison in 2021. Percussionist Chris Fehn split with the band in 2019. Other members have come and gone. But the masks stayed and numbers stayed. More importantly, the fans stayed. And despite my musical preferences getting much more technical and heavier (any Meshuggah fans reading along?!), I stayed.
The people changed. The brand didn’t. And that might be Slipknot’s true superpower.
You’re Not a Fan of the Team. You’re a Fan of the Brand.
Think about your favorite sports team. Now think about the roster ten years ago.
How many of those players are still there? The coach? The GM? Maybe the owner? Probably none of them. Possibly not even the stadium. Yet you still bleed those colors.
Jerry Seinfeld, a rare non-metal hero of mine, nailed this years ago on Letterman. Players come and go, so what we’re really cheering for is the uniform. In his words, we’re “rooting for laundry.”
It might be a joke, but it’s also one of the sharpest brand insights ever delivered on late-night TV. (Or on TV. Period.)
A team is a logo, a color palette, a fight song, a city, a set of rituals, and a story about who “we” are. When your team wins, you say we won. You didn’t throw a single pass but the brand let you borrow a piece of its identity, and you took it gladly.
Social identity theory says part of how we define ourselves comes from the groups we belong to. Psychologist and famed author Robert Cialdini’s research on “basking in reflected glory” found that college students were more likely to wear their school’s gear after a big win. Same people, same school. The only thing that changed was how good it felt to be associated with the brand.
Being a sports phenomenon, it’s a human one.
Once You See It, You Can’t Unsee It
Here’s what all boils down to: everything is branding, and not just in the way marketers tend to think about it. Branding shapes our preferences, our loyalties, how we see other people and, perhaps most importantly, how we see ourselves.
Think about the coffee shop you’ll drive past two others to get to, the truck brand your family has “always bought” or the college you’ll still defend in a bar argument decades after graduating. The same holds true for the church you attend, the gym you belong to, the political party you support, or the guy at work everyone knows as “the AI person.” Each carries a set of associations, expectations, and stories that we’ve come to believe in and, in many cases, made part of our identities..
Even you (especially you). Your LinkedIn headline is a tagline, your email signature is a brand guideline, and even the way you walk into a meeting is a brand experience, whether you designed it or not.
And that’s really the point. You don’t get to opt out of having a brand. You only get to choose whether you build it on purpose or let other people build it for you.
Slipknot built theirs on purpose, right down to the barcodes. Sports franchises build theirs to survive losing seasons, trades, and the occasional relocation.
The brands that fade are the ones that mistake a great product for a compelling reason to buy it. Products can deliver on a promise, but it’s the story behind that promise that gives people a reason to care.
So, What’s the Learning?
If people can root for laundry and fall in love with rubber masks, they can absolutely embrace your brand. But not because you have the best product in your category.
The lesson from Slipknot and every franchise that’s outlived its roster is the same: build a brand people can belong to. Create a story that includes and a look they instantly recognize. . It’s about rituals, symbols, and a point of view that remain rock-steady, even when everything behind the curtain changes.
Your people, products, prices, platforms, and org charts will all evolve over time. But your brand needs to remain the constant that gives people a reason to believe in you, no matter how much everything else changes.
So, put on the mask, pick your number, and wear the jumpsuit like you mean it.
Because whether you like it or not, you’re already a brand. Might as well be one worth screaming for.