So by now everyone know the horrible mistake gap made with their “new” logo. If not you can read about it here.
Today Gap announced that they are retreating because of the backlash from the “interwebs” and people “tweetering”.
“At Gap brand, our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.”
The problem is two fold first of all the old gap logo is horrible and completely dated. It absolutely needed a facelift, I wouldn’t have recommended an overhaul just an update.
The second part of the problem and this is what Gap found out the hard way. You don’t own your brand your customers do. You can shape perceptions of the brand through years of behavior to enforce it, but ultimately the crowd decides.
I personally don’t think the new logo is any worse that the original – they both look like they were designed by the CEO’s son who is learning how to use illustrator the problem with the new one is it was then voted on by a large committee of Harvard yes men. Who with robot like precision removed the soul and turned it into the manchurian candidate of logo’s.
Chances are if the new logo was a dramatic improvement over the last one the crowd wouldn’t have gotten unruly. But if you take something people kind of like and easily recognize and trade it for something they hate and don’t recognize they you have a problem.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE THE INTERNET WINS AGAIN!
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