If it aint broke, don’t fix it- at least that’s how the saying goes. And high-street retailer, Gap, could have certainly done with a bit of common sense advice prior to launching their new company brand logo. The furore that surrounded the decision suggests the fondness towards the old design was far from exhausted.  

Just one week after the unveiling of the new logo, Gap were forced into a humiliating retreat back to their former 20-year-old banner, leaving a large number of Gap executives with red faces- either from embarrassment, rage, or quite possibly a combination of the two.  

So what lessons have Gap taken from this experience?

“Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand,” said a Gap company spokesperson. “All roads were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo on gap.com any further.”

Another lesson should be the Crowdsourcing process, which had been proposed soon after the unveiling of the new logo (but eventually not implemented). Although Gap acknowledges “this wasn’t the right project at the right time for Crowdsourcing,” this isn’t the full story. The problem was the timing and the way Gap introduced Crowdsourcing  to their project.

On the 7^th October, Gap announced (via Facebook): “Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing.

“We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

It appeared Crowdsourcing was used as a mere after-thought, either as a stalling process while the company’s big-wigs decided what to do to get themselves out of their sorry predicament, or a very half-hearted effort to engage with the consumer in order to get the online audience to come up with a more popular design.

Without some sort of purpose, vision, or direction, Crowdsourcing is a pointless model. Under these particular circumstances, the model was futile. Having caused an enormous uproar by changing the logo once (with little consultation with their consumer audience), there was little point trying to disillusion the consumer any further. And so it proved. The Crowdsourcing contest never came to fruition and the old logo has been restored to its former glory.

Gap is hardly the first famous brand to make a Crowdsourcing faux pas. Just last year, well-established Australian brand, Vegemite tried to Crowdsource a marketing ‘name’ campaign for a new product. Public entries were taken in, a shortlist was drawn, and Kraft executives picked out their winning entry- iSnack 2.0. And it was withdrawn just two days later.

Nevertheless, in this instance, credit must be given to Gap for the speed at which they attempted to rectify their mistake.

Rana Khodadoust, a strategist at brand consultancy Wolff Olins, said: “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 customers in a better conversation.”

The challenge isn’t so much Crowdsourcing for an idea- there are plenty of ideas and campaigns aimed at providing Gap with alternative logo suggestions- but getting the public to connect with the change is quite another. However, it is achievable.

As we highlighted on this blog back in May, Procter and Gamble have built a Crowdsourced model to supplement their 7,000 person workforce, which they use for nearly 50% of their products in areas such as packaging, design, marketing models and research methods.

P&G use Vocalpoint.com- a virtual crowd of 240,000 female consumers in the US to promote its own and partner bands. Vocalpoint is an open forum which tests out P&G’s proposed strategy to discover what works, what people like and what creates an initial buzz about products and designs.

Perhaps Gap may consider adopting a more thorough research process, if they make another attempt at changing their logo again at some point in the future. There’s a fair bit of wisdom in the Crowd- and it’s time to listen to what they’re saying.