Gap learned the hard way that sometimes you just don’t mess with a good thing. After quietly launching a new logo, the clothing company was recently ripped to pieces on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The fervor of fan fury swiftly saturated the internet and in no time at all the company reverted to the original design.
The idea to change the logo was an effort to entice a more youthful and trendy audience and move past the purely preppy image the company has gained in the past 41 years. While stepping out of the box might help their declining numbers maybe they shouldn’t have done it so literally in the logo. Most of the outcry that arose was not so much about the change but about how poor the new design was. Instead of feeling young and cutting edge fans felt it was corporate and cold.
Perhaps the speculations that the redesign was a calculated move for publicity instead of a rebrand are justified. The logo change was made with virtually no fan fare until it went viral and since then there has been an uptrend in the company’s sagging sales. While the previously popular Gap commercials are reaching less people with the advent of DVR and online TV, their faux pas has reached credible media outlets from the Washington Post to the LA Times ad everything in between. With the commercials being quite pricey to produce and social media being practically free it seems it couldn’t have gone better if Gap had planned it themselves.
While it was a whoops on their part, in the end they come off as the large company that listens to the little guy. (Maybe BP should look a little harder at their social media pages) Either as an effort to take this concept a step further or to just step ahead of what fans are already doing, Gap has called for public suggestions on what their new logo should look like since their initial attempt failed so miserably. Vice President of Corporate Communications Bill Chandler has made mention that they would like to incorporate the new design in their holiday marketing but he also notes “Before the launch goes any further we’re going to see what other ideas are out there.” Gap is still coordinating an effort to organize user submitted ideas.
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By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer, business owner, and work-from-home mom.
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