Gap bungles crowd sourcing in logo crisis
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Gap Inc. has been criticised for its handling of social media and crowd sourcing after the retailer scrapped its new logo just a week after it was introduced following an online backlash.
The US clothing retailer revealed a new logo across its website in the US last week but it was immediately derided as “unsophisticated,” “uncreative” and “devaluing the brand”.
Gap then attempted to initiate a crowd sourcing project by asking its Facebook fans to “share their designs”.
This drew further criticism and Gap has since scrapped the new logo and crowd sourcing project and retained its original 20-year old “blue box” brand logo.
In a statement Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, recognized that it “did not go about [crowd sourcing] in the right way” and if Gap looks to “evolve” its brand identity in the future, it will “handle it differently.”
She adds: “We’ve learned a lot in this process. 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.”
Observers say Gap should use the incident as an opportunity to build relationships with customers.
Rana Khodadoust, strategist at brand consultancy Wolff Olins, says that it’s a “surprise” to see a brand react so quickly to what customers were saying online and that Gap is “doing the right thing” by scrapping the new logo.
“Brands have to accept that with social media they no longer control their brands in the same way they did 20 years ago. This might be damaging today but it’s a future opportunity to engage consumers in a better conversation,” she adds.
Readers' comments (8)
ranjana mahajan | Fri, 15 Oct 2010 2:05 pm
its a classic example wherein customers don't like that their band should be played with , the way it was happened in case of coke when the co tried to change its coke and was not accepted by the brand loyal customers.
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Tim Parry | Fri, 15 Oct 2010 2:40 pm
This is a little like what happens when you let the inmates run the asylum.
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Matt Mickiewicz | Fri, 15 Oct 2010 8:28 pm
While GAP never officially launched a crowdsourcing initiative for its logo, we decided to take it upon ourselves to help GAP out. We opened the project up to 81,000 designers over 5 business days... here's the result:
http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/design-better-gap-logo-community-project-54693
We're currently running a global vote to help decide the winning design from the 4500+ submissions received.
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bongkot ronghanam | Fri, 15 Oct 2010 9:17 pm
power to the people
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bruno | Sat, 16 Oct 2010 1:03 pm
@Tim - do you mean the agency or the mktg department?
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Gerry Wisniewski | Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:25 pm
Gap has successfully turned this into a high profile media story for the brand. One sign of it working for me was that I walked into a branch of Gap for the first time in about two years last week - the story must have stuck subconciously and reminded me that, at one time, I quite liked shopping there.
Consumers really do feel emotionally attached to brands and their logos as they're designed to attract instant public recognition. In equal measure, we can be scathing about them. Remember the hoo hah about the 2012 Olympics logo?
A really interested project, Unlogo, is trying to turn our emotive responsive to logos on its head and, using very clever technology, aims to remove corporate logos from digital videos and images, replacing them with the heads of their CEO - http://bit.ly/cnKoeq.
Playing with our collective conciousness in this way is a great way to win the attention of hearts and minds - what would the world be like without any branding at all?
I think Gap's experiment has almost certainly worked in its favour in this instance.
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Mark Ritson | Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:33 pm
Hey Gerry
I have written an article about exactly your splendidly incorrect viewpoint.
Have a look at "Conspiracy Theorists Wide of the Mark" and do let me know what you think.
Mark
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Maho | Mon, 19 Dec 2011 7:22 pm
The figures in The Gap’s total revenue from Forbes.com show revenue for January 2010 ($14,197,000,000), January 2009 ($14,526,000,000), and January 2008 ($15,763,000,000). Obviously, The Gap’s revenues have been declining every year.
In January 2010, The Gap introduced the new logo for its company to catch the trend just like H&M, UNIQLO, Forever 21, and so on. The Gap wanted to present its brand as fashionable, sexy and cool rather than simple. However, The Gap received a number of negative feedbacks about the new log through social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. After a week, The Gap scrapped the new logo by listening to its loyal customers who use social media platforms. It is a good thing that The Gap listened to what consumers think about its brand. Each customer has his or her image or memories with The Gap, and so it is not a good idea to change the brand image and logo, especially after having the traditional logo for almost 20 years.
The Gap’s crisis shows how social media has power as a marketing tool in both positive and negative ways. The power of social media is about how to engage with customers. Once companies use social media platforms in order to listen to customers efficiently, their loyal fans and clients will support them.
According to The Gap’s total revenue from Forbes.com, January 2011($14,664,000,000) was increase of 3.29% from last year. By listening and engaging The Gap’s customers through social media platforms, The Gap has had positive results in its revenues compared to the past several years.
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