TO THOSE who find corporate speak irritating, "branding" is something you do to cattle.

It is a marketing term as empty as the stands at Melbourne games if the"brand" does not reflect a genuine football club.

When Paul McNamee was given the monumental task of turning Melbourne around — a tougher gig than restoring the grand slam bona fides of the Australian Open tennis — he said his mission was to build the club's"brand" into something powerful and potent, with an unashamed tilt towards the big end of town.

Designing a new logo or hiring consultants to come up with a branding strategy won’t be the salvation of the Demons. They aren’t Mars Bars or a soft drink.

What needs building is the sense that the Melbourne Football Club is actually a footy club. The place needs flesh and blood and passion. Of all the Victorian clubs, it is the one that most lacks emotion and pride. And, yes, the bricks and mortar of a home.

If that slur causes offence, well, that’s a positive. An angry Melbourne fan is better than an indifferent one.

Talking about a brand only enhances the impression that this club is an empty shell, a commodity, rather than a community.

Richmond is often the butt of jokes about its vicious volatility, but anyone who has ventured into the Punt Road jungle knows that the Tigers don’t lack passion, hope or pride. The Tigers are the least successful of all clubs over the past quarter of a century — much worse than the Dees — yet they retain a far more palpable spirit. They haven’t been crushed.

The coteries are vibrant, and Richmond past players are a tribute to their club’s spirit.

When 1980 premiership player Terry Smith was dying of cancer in 2006, his former teammates such as Michael Roach, Dale Weightman and Jimmy Jess rallied around their beloved "Brutus", who had little family support. That is what football clubs are all about.

That’s not to say Melbourne people aren’t as compassionate — the reaction to Troy Broadbridge’s death demonstrated the club’s heart. It’s just that Melbourne seems to have fewer people who deeply care about the institution.

Who is that club’s Glenn Archer?

Size does count, but it isn’t everything. North Melbourne, even smaller and more impecunious, has magnificent spirit.

While the cliche of the "Shinboner spirit" is wearing thin, there’s no denying that North has special qualities, and a collective self-esteem that transcends inferior resources.

People belong to North, and the club's inner sanctum is highly accessible to its supporters, almost like a country footy team.

The club’s volunteers are front and centre when you hit the rooms.

St Kilda, well supported but often poor and always mad, has been unprofessional and inept at different stages. But it has never lacked chutzpah or charisma. It seldom fails to entertain and engage.

Whereas other struggling clubs struggle and are man enough to face up to their problems, Melbourne — and a good portion of its complacent followers — behaves like a family of impoverished aristocrats: the manor is run down, they can barely pay the bills, but appearances must be kept up.

Pride is evident only in maintaining the fiction that Melbourne is OK. The club is not OK; it relies on the kindness of strangers (the AFL).

Perhaps if it levelled with its supporters and made a call to arms, there’d be more energy and emotion. The Demons need a jolt of electricity.

McNamee was a successful tournament director of the Australian Open, not because he"branded" the tournament as"the grand slam of the Asia Pacific". What he did was ensure that the best players turned up.

Just as the Australian Open had been a grand slam in name only until Sampras, Agassi and co became regular attendees, Melbourne cannot have a great brand until it becomes a great club.

In 1996, after the Melbourne-Hawthorn merger was scuttled by Don Scott’s "Operation Payback" and Scott ripped the tiny velcro Hawk from the Dawk jumper (one of the great moments in football history), Melbourne and Hawthorn took vastly different routes.

The Hawks, led by Ian Dicker, turned their club over to its members.

Hitherto, Hawthorn, true to its conservative eastern suburban culture, had eschewed populism.

The club attached itself to the oft-maligned Waverley Park, and became a champion of the outer-eastern fringe dwellers, for whom the MCG is an hour away by car.

Volunteers invaded the club, cats and dogs were signed up as members and the club freed itself from debt. It developed a slogan — proud, passionate and paid-up — that reflected the transformation of the club.

That’s the kind of branding that works.

Melbourne, which had been the predator in the merger, turned not to the masses, but to one man, Joseph Gutnick.

Diamond Joe pumped money into the club.

Unfortunately, this created a temporary form of de facto private ownership. There was no groundswell of rank and file.

Worse, the Dees descended into hellish factionalism. That the football department still managed to reach a grand final, and was a regular finalist amid the Gutnick-related squabbling, was a tribute to Neale Daniher, Danny Corcoran, Chris Fagan and Craig Cameron — the quartet that stuck together and ensured a respectable football department.

Hawthorn played finals only three times — including 2007 — since the failed merger, compared with Melbourne’s six Septembers.

On-field results don’t explain the Melbourne malaise.

Melbourne might need a white-hot cattle prod to reinvent itself. But it doesn’t need branding.