The Gap Box Flap - An Apologist's View

Ok, so everyone and their ninth cousin has now weighed in on the issue of The Gap's blue box flap. And from what I've seen, most reviews have been favorable to how The Gap has been responsive to their fans on Facebook and Twitter, loyally changing their branding back to the old look. I, however, take the opposite view: this could potentially be a bad benchmark in the history of insta-branding.

I saw a study once that showed how Coke's branding changed relatively little compared to Pepsi's between the years 1886 and 2009, and this was supposed to show how not changing your brand's identity meant something important to people's brand loyalty. This is just a gut reaction to Gap's move (because we obviously have no evidence at this point as to the net effect of this snafu), but I have to think that crowd sourcing brand changes like this is not a good idea.

The reason I say that is this: people are not constructed to embrace change. Sure, there are those among us who love change, and they are often visionaries and really interesting people, but they do not represent the human creature. People were designed, for better or worse, to latch onto safe ideas and dig their claws in. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I think The Gap's new logo looked super amateurish. Please don't tell me they paid someone more than $5 to create something my 10 year-old nephew could've drawn in his sleep.

That aside, Gap, you've got to stick to your guns. If you think this is the best you could do, and you have a vision to back up your cubist nightmare, then go for it. Don't look back. At least give it a few months. Doubling back and second-guessing yourself in such an immediate and public way speaks (in my mind) to a great deal of insecurity among the management. It doesn't give me that warm fuzzy feeling I'm supposed to get walking into one of your stores. And please don't fire anyone over this. Just look forward.

The takeaway? Understand that when you're changing a feature of your brand that has been in place for a very long time, you will have vocal critics. Most people, despite what it may seem, are not so dialed into social media that your walls will come tumbling down if a large percentage of Twitterers dislike your new logo. Just stay the course. And if the course eventually becomes grown-over with the crab grass of declining sales, then pull out the shovels and start clearing a new path.

Two Question Marks Too Many

“Did you just tag me as a friend on facebook???”

Those were the stunned words emailed to me by my younger brother yesterday. After several years of advances and retreats, fits and starts, and outright hand-wringing, I finally took the plunge and joined Facebook this week.

What took me so long? I don’t know. I guess it’s the whole privacy thing. I mean, when you read about the British girl who meant to invite 15 friends to her birthday party on Facebook and ended up having 21,000 people RSVP her, you get a little nervous. The security settings seem dubious to me. And then you read about the government pressing websites to install back doors for them to spy on people if they want to, and, well, you go weak in the knees.

Plus, trying to register on Facebook as a business (which is what I'd originally intended to do) is not a great experience; you don’t get all the perks that you do if you register as an individual. Which I guess makes sense for a site that’s trying hard to connect people to people and not so much people to products and services.

Let me quickly add that I’ve been on Twitter and LinkedIn for years, so I’m no social media dilettante. But for some reason, for hardcore Facebook devotees (like my brother), none of that matters. You can tweet all the way to the stars and back; it doesn’t mean a thing. All that matters is Facebook. If you’re not on it, they think, then you must be on something.

Yes, I know that taking the Facebook plunge now makes me hopelessly behind the times. But I’ve got a few projects in the works that will probably involve me taking on some social networking responsibilities, so I figured the time was nigh. For a few years now there’s been a 500 million pound gorilla sitting in my room, eating my bananas, drinking my Capri Suns, so I figured I’d better educate myself on the biggest player in the social media game.

But what of all my brother’s question marks?(??)

For my tastes, and I am a teetotaler when it comes to grammar and politeness, he added two question marks too many. This indicates (I think) a contempt by the younger generation for us oldsters wanting in on the action. I mean, he doesn’t even know yet that I’m getting on the Facebook carousel primarily for business reasons (to promote non-profits that I am working with to develop media outreach strategies).

I can only imagine how many question marks, peppered with exclamation points, that revelation would elicit from him.