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.