Sticky Sheep

In an earlier post, we mentioned “Listen” as one of the major components in creating a Disciple Exchange. By listening you create a relationship, not a one-way broadcast system.

However, listening to customers may not always be the best approach. Let’s take the Gap logo “incident” as an example. After a few months and settling of voices, the perspective slightly changes.

In early October 2010, Gap introduced their brand new logo. Clearly, the new logo was a mistake. Even I, with my admittedly horrible graphic design eye, had to agree with the masses. There was a backlash in the social media world about the bad decision of the new logo. It was mocked across the country, day and night. It was plain and simple, an ugly logo. Criticism like “boring”, “corporate power point”, “poorly designed”, and “clip art”, were some of the nice comments.

So, what’s a company to do? Gap took three steps.

1. Acknowledge
   On October 7, Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, posted a response on HuffingtonPost.com.
   • “It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward.”
   • From their Facebook page: “we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding”

   Those statements clearly indicate that they were not actually listening. “Passionate debates”? What debate? It’s not like there was another passionate group who liked the new logo. This was clearly a large population telling them they did not like the new logo.

2. Crowdsource
   Gap went on to say “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.”

   Crowdsourcing a corporate logo? This was not for a small, low-funded start-up. This was not a church or other non-profit group. This was a well established brand, a brand with lots of history.

   This caused the design community to bark louder. If there is one thing designers and graphic artist are more passionate about then bad logos, its crowdsourcing. Having “the masses” design your logo, can go wrong in multiple directions. Not only is it bad from a design standpoint, it shows lack of decision-making skills from Gap.

3. Give In
   After finally “listening” to the masses, Gap turned back. On October 11, Gap announced, “after much thought, Gap will keep its classic blue box logo.” Hansen goes on to say, “It wasn’t the right project for crowd sourcing.“

In the last sentence, Gap finally got something right. Crowdsourcing can have its value, but not when it comes to company branding. The new logo was horrible, but changing the branding (within 4 days) based on the crowd, showed uncertainty.

I am not going to dare say Gap is better off with the new logo. In the end, the right decision was made. However, there were many wrong decisions made along the way to get them to that point. The first mistake was in changing logos, especially to that logo. Another mistake was showing “fear”. Gap showed uncertainty. They showed they lost control. They showed they had no idea which direction to go. How does Gap ever gain leadership back in their communities now?

Gap lost their voice. Without a voice, it’s hard to lead a flock.

“The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.” - John 10:3 – 5

Yes, listening to customers is important, but only to a certain point. Gap listened to customers when they told Gap they did not like the logo. They attempted to extend that listening to hear customers’ logo ideas. This was too far. By adding the crowdsourcing element in the discussion, they became spineless. Instead of seeing Gap for making a bad logo decision, they are now seen as indecisive, uncertain, and clueless.

Ultimately, they lost the voice they needed to gather flock. Gap changed. They went from becoming a comfortable voice that sheep recognized, to a stranger. Sheep do not follow strangers.

Written by John Ellis

John Ellis is a frequent online marketing industry speaker and blogger. He can also be found at www.JohnWEllis.com discussing search engine marketing ... (more)

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