For those of you that followed the latest development of the "new" GAP logo, I hope that you are relieved as much as I am about them returning to good ol' blue. But this post isn't about the logo, this is about the social media swarm that caused GAP to ditch the new and replace with the old. I first saw a post on facebook about the new GAP logo on October 7th. Just 5 days ago. As the NY Times puts it: "Days after unveiling a new logo for its Gap stores, Gap Inc. has bowed to overwhelming negative comments online and brought back the previous logo. The turnabout is indicative of the faster pace of such reconsiderations that the Internet makes possible."
I don't know who GAP has working for them, but to almost make matters worse they opened up an idea to crowd source their logo on facebook. Talk about millions of people throwing crap together just to post something. Here is what GAP had to say about that:
“We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.
“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way. “
We live in an age where information comes at you fast and learning how to use that speed is becoming a must. We also need to remember who we are as a brand, whether we are a company, or a single entity. We need to observe our customers to see where we are going or where we should go. Then use social media to work with our brand, not against it.
