In case you missed the 9,000 or so listings on Google, here’s the story: On October 6, Gap unceremoniously unveiled a new logo on its website, jettisoning the familiar “white Gap in a blue box” logo it had been using for the past 20+ years. The outrage on the social media was immediate and almost universally negative. Among the thousands of comments posted online, some of the less terrible remarks were that the design was banal and probably done using Power Point – it got worse from there. One week later, Gap announced that it was yanking the new logo and returning to its old one because it realized the “passion” that consumers felt toward the old brand. This in itself seemed strange since most rebranding programs are months in the making, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to execute, and involve dozens of corporate managers, departments and outside suppliers. What made Gap cave in to public pressure in less than seven days, rather than consider that the “shock of the new” always causes some discomfort? Why not wait to see if the furor dies down in a few weeks or months?

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