How could a billion dollar company develop a new brand identity and end up with customers hating it?
Creating a new brand identity or updating an old one is a process that has happened for decades with many major global brands. The shocking part about Gap’s disastrous misstep is that it shows their lack of connection to their own consumers, which is incredibly important. The fact that they had no clue that customers would absolutely rail against this new brand treatment shows they had no finger on the pulse of consumer loyalty.
Here’s what Marka Hansen, President of Gap Brand North America, said: “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.”
Crowd sourcing? This term has been thrown around for the last five years and is virtually meaningless to anyone who does real brand research. What does crowd sourcing mean? It can mean just about anything you want it to mean and it’s not necessarily reflective of what loyal customers want. Being able to “get the voice of the community” by just putting things out there and seeing reaction does not discover customer motivations, why they care about the brand, how the logo connects back to their personal experience.
Gap has been continually losing sales. This, I suspect, is an issue of brand to consumer connection – loyalty. The new logo was a “patch” to the problem of really connecting with what customers feel represents them. It just showed that corporate was not spending the time to figure out where to go with their customers, listening to them and working with them.
To understand brand loyalty and the connection consumers have with a corporate identity you need to focus on a process that clearly measures, records and reviews what customers think, desire and want. This requires a methodology and approach that has a rationale behind it. This process, properly and thoughtfully pursued, can reveal simple values, images and connections customers have with brands – why they have loyalty and what represents it. But you have to ask the right questions. When Tropicana’s new orange juice packaging entered the market it was a disastrous flop, losing the company some $6 million in sales within three month. Do you think anyone ever asked customers whether the orange with the straw on the carton was important to them? I don’t think so.