The GAP Symptom

Just a short post on the problem that the ludicrous GAP logo saga represents.

Did anybody have any problem with the old GAP logo? Was it the logo that put people off buying clothes form GAP stores?  Of course not. As we all know, but as labels and retail giants refuse to admit, the popularity of clothing stores goes in cycles.  I know of no store or brand that has remained fashionable and/or popular for an extended period of time. They rise, they fall and quite often rise again only to fall....again.

Look at M&S and Burberry, look at Tommy Hilfiger, look at GAP.  It has nothing to do with the logo, it merely reflects human behaviour. Brands have a time when they are tapping in to what people want, whether it's clothes, furniture or electronics.  Then that time ends and the brand suffers. Nobody can predict when a brand will rise and whilst we cannot predict when it will fall, we know that it will eventually fall.

When that happens, trying to get it back by changing the logo, the image, the name or whatever just will not work. A brand has to spend sometime in the darkness being scorned and derided before it can be "discovered" again by the cool people, the arbiters of taste. Not every brand can be fashionable at the same time, and there is nothing less fashionable than an "old" brand making a blatant attempt to re-invent itself. Think middle-aged crisis, 40 year old Harley riders, hair dye.

What a brand should do is hunker down, keep doing what's it's good at, perhaps tinker round the edges and experiment a little, wait for inspiration and for its turn. If it does more than that it will lose its core customers, those who keep coming back even though the brand is no longer fashionable, without gaining new ones. GAP had those customers, those who would keep buying their chinos and white t-shirts there because they were good quality at a good price and because they had always had a good experience at GAP.

The logo nonsense at GAP simply demonstrates that yet another company has no idea why it has been successful. This is becoming a common theme, and one that I will expand upon tomorrow.