Mind the Gap

From Mike Myers, President

It still surprises me when clients and friends ask if their businesses need to be involved with social media.

Last week when dropped into this dialog with a client who felt that they weren’t “ready” yet, I simply said as I often do “OK, but you have to listen in on the social media dialog because people are already talking about your brand whether you’re involved with the conversations or not. You don’t own what your brand stands for in isolation anymore.”

Listening is important – responding appropriately and engaging in the dialog even more so.

Like it or not, social media isn’t going away. If you’re not on board, you might as well jump overboard.

And if you aren’t ready yet, just ask Marka Hansen, Gap North America President.

Last week, the Gap rolled out a new logo which seems innocuous enough as companies do own and control their brands, right?

Wrong.

Within hours of the announcement, Twitter was abuzz with designers, customers and anyone who had an opinion and Web access ripping the Gap’s new branding apart.

The Gap’s Facebook page became an open forum and the company tried to allay concerns and deal with the customer backlash.

The company even started a customer logo contest to see what people could come up with on their own.

Yet four days after their decision, Gap has recanted and is returning to their old logo.

Gap has about 3,100 stores in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, Ireland and Japan. They are a multibillion dollar company.

Yet, a basic marketing decision of theirs was just undone by social media.

If you think it can’t happen to you, you think wrong.

Mind the Gap. If you haven’t at a minimum started to listen into the social media maelstrom, it has the potential to pull you in and under.

What do you think? Any thoughts?

What are you doing to engage your customers and communicate about your brand through social media?