Gap's Re-Branding Misfire

Here’s another story about a big company and a big social media disaster. For those of you who aren’t aware, early last week Gap unveiled a new logo on its website. The new logo, which is quite a dramatic change from Gap’s previous branding, was met with less than optimistic customer opinion throughout the social sphere.

What happened?

The new logo, which was supposed to, “signify Gap’s transition from classic America design to modern, sexy, cool,”  according to a company spokesperson, wasn’t very well received to say the least.

Within a few hours of being released an enormous flood of negative public opinion was posted across the internet from Twitter  to Facebook  and the usual chaos ensued. In an attempt to stem the tide of angry customers and fans, Gap decided that they would attempt to get the public involved (a little too late) and as a result they published the following post to their Facebook Page:
 


Unsurprisingly, this attempt failed to re-engage the public in a positive way. As two particularly peeved commenters posted,

“For those of you actually posting design alternatives for GAP, i'd [sic] encourage you to visit http://www.no-spec.com/ cheating yourself or another designer out of the fee that a multi-million dollar company like GAP can easily afford is just plain silly. Why [sic] would you give away for a few pairs of khaki's what you could and should earn thousands of dollars for?”

“Asking designers to re-design your logo through this spec work stunt is completely appalling and beyond unethical! You are blatantly devaluing an already devalued profession. I am boycotting Gap and all its affiliates from here on out. You should be truly ashamed of yourself…”

And, of course after this suggestion from Gap several mocking logo creation sites were created including “Make Your Own Gap Logo”  and “Crap Logo Yourself”.

Following the extreme online abuse the new logo was receiving Gap’s North American President Marka Hansen, turned to social media herself by blogging on popular internet blog The Huffington Post, trying to defend Gap’s decision.

What are the end results?

After a mere week of existence, the company will be scrapping the new logo and returning to its classic “blue box.” As stated by Marka Hansen on the company’s website,

“Since we rolled out an updated version of our logo last week on our website, we’ve seen an outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue box logo.

“Last week, we moved to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. All roads were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo on gap.com any further.

“At Gap brand, our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.
“In the meantime, the website will go back to our iconic blue box logo and, for Holiday, we’ll turn our blue box red for our seasonal campaign.

“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.”

Sadly this statement shows without a shadow of a doubt both the power that online communities do have over brands and the fact that even big brands with a supposed grasp on social media, still just don’t really get it.

Now, there are always going to be people who complain in a situation like this. The die hard Gap fans who have harbored an intense love for the original logo were most likely always going to turn to social media to vent their anger over the change. However, the extreme outpouring that followed the event showed how quickly an entire online community can turn sour when you don’t go about dealing with them in the right way.

As stated by the Gap on their Facebook Page:

Please not the 2010 likes and 556 comments this post received since it was posted on Monday. 

What lessons can Gap and other companies learn from this mistake?

1. If you have taken the time to build an online community, take the time to consult them first. Many big companies make this mistake when they get involved with social media. They jump into the social sphere, creating accounts, building communities and talking to their audiences, but when it comes to decisions that actually affect their customers, they seem to forget that social media is one of the best platforms to gauge customer opinion. If Gap had taken the time to ask their fans about whether or not they should change their logo, this entire disaster could have been averted.
2. Failing to understand your target audience costs you money. Obviously in this case, Gap didn't do the appropriate audience research. Understanding your key customers' wants and needs it essential for making decisions that will have a positive benefit for a company's business strategy. If Gap had understood that their customers were satisfied with the current branding and logo and in fact had a strong affinity for the current design, they might have saved themselves a lot of money.
3. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I don't know how many times we've said this with regards to web design. Whether your redesigning a website, or re-branding your entire business, make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. If there is nothing wrong with your current branding, and it's working for your company (and has worked for decades, as in the case of Gap) why change?
4. Social media is extremely powerful. Don't underestimate the power of word of mouth and the way that social media facilitates it! If you make a mistake, and you participate in social media, then trust us, the world is going to hear about it faster than you thought possible. Ignoring this is one of the biggest mistakes a company can make when dealing with social media.

Posted by Amberlie Denny at October 14, 2010 8:00 AM

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