Clearly Branding is important in any major organization. The issue here is really with the smisek team not understanding priorities.
He should have focused on bringing the employees together and melding the cultures, and doing the same with the customer base. Then he could grow revenue and build loyalty... instead he focused on making UA into CO, all the way down to their coffee.
If he had properly prioritized, no one would have cared about the logo at this point. Instead he tore down a product (or 2) and made it ugly at the same time.