Gap is Still Missing the Rebranding Point

From Gap’s Monday press release (emphasis mine):

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…ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand.

The outpouring of comments wasn’t in support of their iconic logo. The outpouring of comments was because the proposed redesign was horribly unimaginative and lacking in any supporting collateral to show how the identity might be successfully implemented. The outpouring was a gigantic, crowdsourced “seriously, this is not an improvement.”

Don’t mistake outrage at a new solution for unswerving support of an old one. Sometimes new ideas are just so bad that the old ones were a lesser evil. And lesser evils are not the same thing as energetic support.