This is not a crowdsourcing project it’s a cock-up: Gap listens and ditches new logo
Well that didn’t take long. The life of a logo can be short, but Gap’s new logo might have set a set a record having debuted last Monday and was officially ditched last night after storm of social media driven protest. Fair to say Gap dodged a bullet with that one.
Gap put out a statement last night having been publicly flailed on Facebook where thousands left comments and thousands more posted on Twitter and created spoof logos.
Gap deserves (some) credit for acting so quickly, but maybe if someone had actually looked at the new logo for five minutes (apparently the time it took Laird & Partners in New York to design it) they would have realised they didn’t need it. Whoever had final sign-off has some questions to answer. This was a case of the emperor’s new clothes and no one had the balls to say: “this new logo isn’t any good”.
Gap is lucky. It is a brand that already owns a design logo classic: clean, visually strong and beloved by customers who showed themselves to be very passionate.
Gap’s main failing in this episode was its crises management fumbling. It really dropped that ball. There is nothing worse than making snap evening promises. In Gap’s case this translated to hastily coming out on its Facebook page and announcing that: “We love our version, but we’d like to… see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project”.
There’s no crowdsourcing project and that’s no bad thing. That was just someone typing before anyone had sat down and properly thought it through.
As Marka Hansen, president of Gap brand north America, says “this wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing”. Nor will it be any time soon.
Anyway, all’s well that ends well, I don’t think this has harmed the Gap brand in any significant way. Everyone loves a brand that listens and acts on what its customers say. It just doesn’t happen all that often.
Press release in full
GAP LISTENS TO CUSTOMERS AND WILL KEEP CLASSIC BLUE BOX LOGO
STATEMENT FROM MARKA HANSEN PRESIDENT OF GAP BRAND NORTH AMERICA
“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. “
All Comments
GAP do not need to bring their logo to life.
the existing logo is strong and bold and stands for everything about the company. Once again though, well done GAP.
Hold on a minute?! Surely someone pretty senior at Gap signed it off! It should never have got through that process?… No credit nor congratulations to either party whatsoever. Cock-ups and reprimands all round more like.
@Al no doubting this is a corporate embarrassment – someone was asleep at the wheel – the post mortem on that one will be interesting.
Gap marketers missing the point I feel … if the product was still inspiring people wouldnt care about the logo so much – thats why google can change its logo every day – fix the product first!
Sorry, but how can *anyone* “possibly* be passionate about…. a clothing company’s logo????? Have people not got anything better to care about? Herd is the word.
@Nick and yet people do seem to care or saying they do.
So this is how design agencies are supposed to work now is it? Canvasing thousands of different opinions of mostly un-qualified people? Design-by-committee doesn’t work. The brand was never given a chance. Obviously the new logo is nothing new but that’s not the point. A creative decision can never be made from asking the masses. you would get nowhere.
You say:
“I don’t think this has harmed the Gap brand in any significant way” Well it has with me. They took the decision to re-brand and should have had the spine to back the Agency that won the contact (an agency that have done some good work for Gap in the past). I for one think the ‘classic’ logo is dated and a new direction may have helped them regain some of their lost market share.
http://www.zeta.net/web-design/gap-scraps-their-new-logo.html
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