Gap’s u-turn on its logo is the funniest thing that’s happened in retail in ages

Any financial journalist will tell you that dealing with American companies is a nightmare. When it comes to corporate pomposity, even the least helpful UK retailers can’t hold a candle to their US counterparts.

Which is why Gap’s decision to backtrack on its new corporate logo is so amusing. Logos don’t really matter that much in the scheme of things, and no-one’s going to change their mind about buying a pair of chinos because of the logo on the front of the shop. The new one was rubbish though - the sort of thing a firm of accountants comes up with when they decide to go all cool and modern.

But in today’s world everyone has the ability to have their say online about what companies are doing, and Americans are particularly vociferous. So in the face of an online furore from people who spend all day in front of computers, Gap says it’s going back to the old logo, although it hadn’t changed yet on the website when I just looked.

Anyway, rather than make fun of it myself, I thought I’d just present in full the Gap statement issued this morning. I thought it was fantastically pompous, and the whole episode will go down in business school textbooks as how not to engage with the online world. Here goes:

GAP LISTENS TO CUSTOMERS AND WILL KEEP CLASSIC BLUE BOX LOGO

 

STATEMENT FROM MARKA HANSEN

PRESIDENT OF GAP BRAND NORTH AMERICA

October 11, 2010

“Since we rolled out an updated version of our logo last week on our Website, we’ve seen an outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue box logo.

“Last week, we moved quickly to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. 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.

“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.

“In the meantime, the website will go back to our iconic blue box logo and, for Holiday, we’ll turn our blue box red for our seasonal campaign.

“We’ve learned a lot in this process. And we are clear that we did not go about this in the right way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community.  This wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing. 

“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way. “