gap logo

London 2012 Olympics logo under attack again

Published on 01/03/201101/03/2011 by brandconsultantasiaLeave a comment

When the logo for the 2012 London Olympics was launched back in June 2007, Seb Coe, the London 2012 organising committee chairman announced, “This is the vision at the very heart of our brand.” Continuing his speech, with just a hint of advertising industry spin, “”It will define the venues we build and the Games we hold and act as a reminder of our promise to use the Olympic spirit to inspire everyone and reach out to young people around the world.”

He concluded with “It’s not a logo, it’s a brand that will take us forward for the next five years.”

The new logo, sorry brand cost about £400,000 and features a jagged emblem designed around the date 2012. It comes in shades of pink, blue, green and orange and was supposed to evolve in the run-up to the Games although I don’t see much change in the design. Initially the animated footage created to promote the design at launch caused epileptic seizures and had to be re-edited. It was also suggested the logo represented a sexual act and a swastika.

Anyway, the logo received mixed reviews from the trade and consumers alike. Steve Douglas of the logo factory said, “(it) looks like someone dropped a perfectly good logo on the floor and broke it.”

An ongoing BBC poll asked readers to rate the 2012 logo as Gold, Silver, Bronze or wooden spoon. At the time of writing, 10,384 votes have been cast with 79.82% rating the logo a wooden spoon.

And logo and marketing guru Seth Godin called it, “A slightly jarring, very bright piece of abstraction.” However, Seth preferred to focus on the spin finishing his brief comment, “If you are paying money to someone who talks like this (see above), may I suggest you stop? And if you work for someone who talks like this, time to look for a new gig.”

For the record I’m with Seth on this but what he, many others and myself didn’t realize was that apparently, the logo is actually a subliminal attempt at pro-Israeli propaganda and spells Zion. That is according to the Iranian Olympic committee and is the result of someone’s racist spirit.

The Iranian Olympic committee has written to the IOC claiming it is a revolting act and threatening to boycott next year’s Games in protest at the supposed use of the biblical term for Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.

And Gap thought they had a problem!

Do I need a Social Media element to my brand strategy?

Published on 04/01/2011 by brandconsultantasia2 Comments

Anyone who has studied marketing or business or has only read one article on marketing, will know that word of mouth is a powerful form of marketing.

When I first started out, trainers would explain that a consumer would communicate a good experience with a brand with 5 or 6 people in their physical community and communicate a bad experience to 15 people.

Today, people spend their lives in crowded digital social networks or communities that are far more fluid and dynamic than those physical communities and as a result, negative brand experiences are communicated quickly and efficiently to large numbers of consumers around the world.

We only have to look at recent brand events with GAP (bad), Philippines (bad) and Qantas (Good) to see the impact of social media on brands. Not only can consumers discuss and voice opinions about brands more vocally, they can now challenge strategic initiatives and tactics used by those brands and influence those initiatives to such an extent that the once powerful brands are forced to review tactics and strategies and take into account consumer needs.

In the physical old world, consumers may have influenced the decisions of a few. Today, in the digital environment, the voices of a few can reach millions and influence their choices, to the detriment of the brand.

If you run a company you probably use a courier to deliver important packages. You use the telephone or fax (maybe for a couple more years) to contact customers.

Not that many years ago you wrote a letter to customers, today you email them. Whereas in the past, you went to the library to source information, today you use Google. In much the same way as these technological developments changed the way we do business, social media is doing the same thing. It isn’t about to do it, it already is. So if you are asking yourself if you sneed a Social Media element to your brand strategy, the answer is yes.

But it is important to understand that developing a social media strategy is not a technological challenge, it is a branding challenge. This means that the responsibility for the social media strategy rests not only with CIO but also with the CMO and the CEO. And they must understand the relationship between the architecture, innovation and the strategy and know how to integrate the three.

If you are the CEO or MD of a SME then you probably don’t have a CIO and a CMO. If this is the case you need to take on the responsibility yourself. You cannot ignore it because Social Media will not go away. Moreover, as more and more people engage with Social Media and join those networks, to the detriment of traditional media, it will be the only way you can reach and collaborate with those consumers and build networks of brand evangelists talking positively about your brand.

6 branding lessons from the Gap logo farce

Published on 13/10/201013/10/2010 by brandconsultantasia10 Comments

The Gap logo story has been playing out for almost a week now. At the time of writing the long term impact on the brand is unknown. What is known is that the reengineering of the Gap logo has cost a lot of money that need not have been spent.

In their book Measuring Brand Communication ROI (1997) Don Schultz and Jeffrey Walters describe how marketing now represents 50% or more of a company’s costs, up from roughly 20% after WWII. At the same time, manufacturing and operations have reduced their costs from 50% in the 1950s to in the region of 30% today.

This is hardly surprising when we witness such disasters. Why is it that costs are coming down in all departments except marketing?

Part of the reason is Brand owners believe that although it makes sense to invest in the most cutting edge technology to improve manufacturing and other processes, when it comes to branding and branding activities such as advertising, marketing, identity and so on, they assume that what worked in the past will work today. So, if creativity and a generous advertising budget was enough to build a brand in the 1970s, then surely it is enough to build a brand in the 2010s?

But of course it isn’t. And there are multiple reasons for this but the most dominant reason is the arrival if the Internet. The Internet has transformed supply chains, processes and the way we communicate and more, but most important of all, it has given consumers a chance to play a part in the evolution of a brand.

Last week, to much (Gap generated) fanfare, Gap unveiled and launched a new logo that it described as “a more contemporary, modern expression”. The new logo was designed by Trey Laird of the design company Laird and Partners. Laird and partners has worked with DeBeers, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein and others.

Gap spent a fortune, in the mass economy way, creating the new logo, developing an advertising campaign and buying airtime to tell the world about the new logo and what a great and cool company Gap is. A Facebook page was created, essentially to broadcast the same message.

Unfortunately customers, consumers, designers and others universally hated it, expressing their feelings via thousands of tweets and, ironically with Facebook messages on the Gap and other often humourous but always derogatory, Facebook pages.

Under immense consumer and other pressure and in a matter of days, Gap vowed to return to the original logo. But the company has spent a small fortune developing the new identity and as a result the company had little choice but to go ahead with its upcoming advertising campaign. This is probably because the company has already booked and/or bought the airtime. Yet further wastage of valuable marketing resources.

What lessons can aspiring retail or other brands learn from this debacle?

1) Carry out research with customers. Even an established brand must carry out research with customers before making a decision that will impact its relationship with those customers, the people who made the brand what it is. The new logo was tested internally but never externally. Big mistake.

2) Social media is not a fad or to be taken lightly. I get the impression, perhaps wrongly that Gap paid only lip service to Social Media. Social Media CAN effect change so learn to work with it. But remember it is not a soapbox. Simple consumer research at the logo development stage on Facebook and Twitter would have saved the company a lot of money and also improved consumer engagement.

3) Have a strategy for your tactics. Not many new Logos are well received initially. But many of them are now very familiar – Pepsi, Citi, Accenture, Qantas etc. Has Gap done the right thing by giving in to consumer pressure so quickly? It’s too early to tell, but one thing is for sure, they weren’t prepared for the reaction.

4) React quickly and positively. Despite initial fumbling, Gap has reacted well to the situation and is seeking suggestions to improve the logo on Facebook. How they manage the responses and implement any recommendations will have a major impact on the brand going forward.

5) Maintain your stand. Again, Gap has reacted well here. They are letting the initial storm die down whilst making it known that they are seeking recommendations for improvement from customers at the same time. Over the next couple of weeks there will be numerous meetings to review social media chatter. Don’t be surprised if the new logo is retained, perhaps with only minor alterations.

6) Brand identity should not be confused with branding. Gap has had a tough time over the last few years will poor sales and a weak share price only gaining support around US$18. Some industry insiders say the company panicked and thought a quick makeover of the logo, if received positively, could raise the profile of the brand and improve sales. Personally, I don’t believe Gap management is so naive but if its true it may prove to be a costly mistake.

It’s too early to tell what will be the impact of this event on the Gap brand. It hasn’t had much of an impact on the share price, even though the financial cost maybe high.

One thing is for sure, it is only a matter of time before boardrooms and business owners get fed up with the profligate attitude of traditional marketing departments.