

Twitter wins: Gap Bows to Outcry, Nixes New Logo and Crowdsourcing  - cliffkuang
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662470/gap-bows-to-outcry-nixes-new-logo-and-crowdsourcing

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Tyrannosaurs
"Will companies know when an outcry isn't pointing to a terrible design, but
rather just people refusing to embrace change?"

I was thinking this this morning. Gap aren't amateurs, the new logo will have
been tested, focus group-ed and all - and likely those groups would have been
more representative of the target market for Gap than the general blogosphere
which criticised the new design.

So, what seems to have happened is that they've overruled the views of a more
representative but less vocal group, in favour of a more vocal group who may
have no relationship with or interest in Gap at all bar criticism.

And remember, the default position for most people is conservatism (with a
small c). We dislike change so the default position for a majority of people
to this sort of thing will be to keep what's already in place.

People keep drawing the parallel with New Coke but that seems wrong. New Coke
was launched, bought and disliked by actual Coke consumers. In this instance
we have no real idea what the actual Gap customers thought or what impact the
new logo might have had because it never got that far.

This will go down as a formative moment in marketing and branding but I'm not
sure whether history will show Gap acted wisely or foolishly. My gut feel is
that later.

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vannevar
It's got nothing to do with Twitter, brands have made big shifts before and
failed due to public opinion. The 'New Coke' debacle happened before the web,
and I don't recall the telephone being given credit.

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thewordpainter
i still think gap is on the positive side for 2010 after their tie-in with
groupon. wasn't it the most popular deal to date?

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cliffkuang
Interesting POV. I wonder though if Groupon has quite the same reach -- or
branding influence -- as a logo everyone can picture in their head? One gets
at how the brand actually lives in people's minds; the other maybe affects
whether they think there's cheap deals to be had...

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thewordpainter
i rarely ever think of gap...am i really going to become anti-gap now that
they backed off their potential logo shift?

if anything, i think the "any press is good press" saying could apply here.
the only people that expressed their distaste are loyal customers as it is.

as for groupon, the fact that a big brand like gap adopted it for a day was a)
a HUGE get for groupon and b) a good way for gap to show how they're embracing
the hottest tech approaches.

i bet a great amount of the buyers that day won't even remember to use the
groupon...they just bought it cuz they thought "hey, it's gap. i could find
something there. i'll use it one of these days..."

