The Gap: Retail Social Media Pioneer

Take it from the Gap, the retail clothier that has truly embraced social media and allowed consumers to affect the direction of the company. Today I was a part of the latest social media risk taking experiment that the company undertook. As a part of this venture, Gap teamed up with Facebook to help promote its new 'Places' feature to compete alongside popular location based application FourSquare. Thus it would seem that although the company is taking risks, they are calculated in that they chose to partner with the social media leader rather than choosing to align with upstart FourSquare.

Earlier in the year the company also aligned themselves (and are still the only major corporation to have done so with a simultaneous nationwide deal) with social purchasing phenomenon Groupon. That risk paid off handsomely for both partners in that it was the single day sales record with more than $11M worth of sales that day. This deal, sold for $25 entitled the purchaser to $50 worth of Gap merchandise.1

Then came the so-called social media hiccup for the company. In an attempt to"modernize" the company's logo/image, they quietly and softly debuted a new logo. In my opinion, the logo was "too simplified" resulting in a logo that looked more like that of an IT consulting company than a hip clothier. What this led to was a huge public backlash against the company's decision on social media platforms. Groups were created on Facebook criticizing the company's new logo. It seems that the emotional bond to the company's classic logo was stronger than the company anticipated and stalled their efforts to change their logo. The company vows that they will eventually try again to introduce a new logo but will do so first through getting feedback from their consumers via social media. Ergo, this so-called mishap can be considered a success in the realm of interacting with their consumers and a huge social media triumph.

Today's experiment's success is yet to be determined. I was first in line at 9AM before the store's 10AM opening. There were eleven (11) people in line and the generational "gap" spanned young professionals to middle-aged businessmen who took an hour out of their day to participate in the giveaway. Not surprisingly, there were no patrons there under the age of 18 (not counting the infants that the stay-at-home moms brought along). Gap promised 10,000 pairs of jeans to those who checked into the store's locations using Facebook Places, which translated to about ten (10) redemptions per location. Was this their target audience? Was it met with the fanfare that the company expected?

I polled those that were there and those in line heard about the deal from one of three sources: 1) a New York Times article earlier in the week; 2) Facebook notification the night before; 3) Good Morning America broadcast this morning; or 4) other social media outlets (such was my case). The company's strategy has yet to be revealed, but in my book, it was a success and I've scored myself a nice looking pair of jeans ;-)

Source:
1 - http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/gap-groupon/