Based on buzz-metrics the Gap made a boneheaded blunder trying to foist an ugly new logo on us. That this occurred during the weeks running up to the busiest shopping season of the year didn’t seem to make the conversation. The brilliance of this non-event is the amount of discussion and attention it generated at just the perfect time for a major retail brand to be on everyone’s radar. Especially Santa’s.
Now, it’s Starbuck’s turn. News of Starbucks logo redesign focuses in on the mermaid and leaves off the Starbuck’s coffee logotype and framing for a simpler, cleaner image. Judging from the reaction this announcement has left a bitter aftertaste with Starbuck’s loyalists. One of the best reactions is this designer’s cheeky prediction of how Starbuck’s logo will evolve from here.
Whether or not the Starbucks logo redesign is better will always be a subjective call. What’s hard to argue is the value of getting feedback on an epic scale. If you dislike having focus groups second guess your ideas, the Internet’s making this kind of consumer research bigger, faster, cheaper and more quantifiable. So get used to being judged in public. It’s going to be standard operating procedure.
The real question is whether or not you should be judged before you make the change, or after. Before has very little downside compared to after, if you remember the new identity from Tropicana just over two years ago.
The Gap and Starbucks didn’t walk blindly into a buzz saw of public opinion. They could have easily pulled a few groups together and gotten a read. Maybe they did. What’s exciting here is the willingness to put corporate decision-making into such a public forum. Brands are organic and are changing all the time. As a reminder, here’s a list of Adweek magazine’s better or worse changes from the same story.
Tropicana might have saved themselves some significant loss of business and the embarrassment of recalling a disastrous new logo and package design, if they’d done a virtual launch first and listened to the feedback. Blogs like this are still up forever reminding the world that a more public discussion before the launch might have averted a more costly and public discussion later.
New York Times reporter Stuart Elliot did a terrific story on the Tropicana identity debacle back in 2009 on how tampering with brand loyalty can bring disastrous results.
But, another and perhaps bigger lesson is to consider doing your tampering more publicly before you’ve launched hundreds of thousands of fresh packages, new storefronts or millions of impressions. People love telling marketers what they think. Marketers should learn to love to listen.
It’s amazing how far we’ve come since 2009. Top brands are learning to go public with their changes before making them. Bogus leaks of new products or concepts have been around a while, like iPhone prototypes forgotten at the bar. Car magazines have had “spy” photos for years. But, deliberately announcing changes ahead of making them is a new way of opening the process before it’s too late to go back.
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