Collaboratus: Joined up Social Media

Social Media, when used effectively and correctly can be a very powerful tool for good and not so good causes.

Like many brands, GAP went through a process of launching a new branding and design of its logo.

Once having launched the new logo it caused a strong public outcry via Twitter, Blogs and other Social Media platforms.

Sadly, rather than embrace the feedback, the immediate response of the CEO was to defend the new branding.

From a design persepective, there are many lessons that can be learnt, but also from a Social Media perspective, there are similar lessons to be learnt:

1. Ask customers what they think of changing a current design/product

2. Get feedback on any new ideas before developing the ideas

3. Don’t persist or defend what is clearly seen as a bad idea

What was clearly a gap (no pun intended) in how they launched and responded to the feedback, is how long it took them to respond to the Social Media uproar.

These faux-pas happen almost everyday with organisations, but get brushed under the carpet as a “lesson learnt” i.e they didn’t know what they were doing in the first place and often still don’t know.

Meanwhile, profits are effected and money is wasted on badly thought out campaigns as they had not thought through how to use Social Media platforms in an efficient and profitable way. Social Media is more than just another PR medium to raise awareness.

Will they learn the lesson that a specialist professional is actually of more benefit rather than reading a few books or asking an enthusiast to do the work?

Only time and loss of profits will tell.