Occasionally we’re asked to partner with organizations who are looking to revive an old brand, resuscitate a product, or reclaim dormant intellectual property. Sometimes it’s for a brand new venture, or it’s a company rummaging through its archives for untapped assets. These behaviors can make a lot of sense, because typically, someone else has already put money, time, and effort into making that brand a recognizable one. The math seems deceptively easy: on paper it looks simpler to breathe life into an older brand than starting with a blank canvas. Some firms have even built their business models around reviving these castoffs. But it’s not always that easy.

The discard pile can be treasure or trash, and picking from this mixed bag comes with a set of concerns that shiny, newly-minted organizations don’t have to contend with. There are potential pitfalls a-plenty, but with a combination of well-deployed legacy and fresh direction, reviving an old brand can become a worthwhile endeavor.

Here are 10 thoughts for anyone who aims to reclaim an aging brand and reconfigure it for today’s world. These nuggets might be the difference between dumpster diving and panning for gold.

1: What drives you to drive the brand? There are many motives for reviving a dormant brand, and most of them revolve around the possibility of good ROI. This is business after all, but like Billy Joel said, you gotta have soul. If your organization merely sees that brand as intellectual property to be exploited, or are looking to squeeze the last drops of blood out of it, you might think twice. Better to bring it back to life because there is something within worth saving — passion or ideas worth mining. Is there an untapped promise or potential in that comatose brand? How does it relate to what you want to do? If you can successfully coax out that unique spark and marshal it on your behalf, the profit will eventually follow.

2: Assess your assets. Where are the valuables stored, and what exactly is your team getting when inheriting this brand? What bits of value does this brand still have? A recognizable logo? Memorable colors? Taglines or famous catchphrases? Or maybe it’s a loose association or connection to a cultural ethos? In this stage of the process, it’s important to dig deep and do the necessary research to understand what’s still valuable. Are the strengths transferable? Sometimes it’s the subtleties and nuances — echos of a brand’s mark in the world — that can hold the most lasting value.

3: Standing for something. Whether it’s today or tomorrow, you need to ascertain the foundation — what does the brand stand for? At its apex, what intangibles and meaning did it contain? Can it represent those same things today, or does it need to embrace a new spectrum of symbolism to survive (and thrive) in the current marketplace?

4: What do all the people know? Where public-facing brands are concerned, it’s all about the audience. You might see something redeeming in that sleepy brand of coffee or stereo manufacturer’s name, but what do people out in the world think about your new treasure? How do they relate to the brand today? Good research will be able to help uncover the current feelings and associations the brand has among the people who matter.

5: Find your fan base. Do niches and segments of brand lovers still exist? One of the biggest benefits of claiming an old brand is finding the dedicated pockets of true-believers who still carry a torch for your reawakened brand. In it’s absence, they wrote, created, argued, and reminisced about the products, services, or benefits your brand once offered. Can you tap into those fans? Will those sparks turn into a towering inferno as you help mobilize these self-made evangelists?

These die-hards can be your best friends or your worst enemies, depending on how you play your hand. While they might be devoted to the name or cause, they will be a major headache to your team if you can’t live up to the legacy of the original name (at least as they might see it). Sometimes re-engaging with a brand’s devotees can be more arduous than building a brand new audience. Zealots come in all flavors — choruses of angels or a busloads of devils.

6: Has time healed all wounds? Sometimes history is kind, and the rough edges or missteps of organizations get lost to time. But in other situations, one single act can turn a company name into a hated buzzword. Have the years been kind to your brand? What timely facets and associations have evaporated? History can be a helpful benchmark for what is still valuable — because sometimes cream rises to the top. What has stood the test of time? Those might be the brand assets worth preserving.

7: Evolution or death! Like sharks, stagnant brands die, regardless of how old they are. Remember that all brands need to grow and evolve, and if your brand isn’t moving forward, adapting, and morphing to fit the needs of the culture and marketplace, it’s heading backwards. And that’s how the brand got swept into the dustbin in the first place.

8: Show me the skeletons. While it might be cheaper to build on an existing foundation, you have to do your due diligence as well. Brands are no different. Sometimes you’re also inheriting the dirty laundry and rotten floorboards in forgotten corners of the house. Will those landmines hamstring your new efforts? It’s probably best to consider if you’re equipped to deal with the imagined worst-case scenario.

9: Grey isn’t always gold. Not all old things are worth reviving. LPs might be cool, but is anyone itching to fire up their old 8-track player? There’s a difference between momentary fashion and a brand hook that can evolve back into a sustainable business model. Sometimes that layer of dust is just irrelevancy, and the savvy marketers should be able to spot the difference through the cobwebs.

10: Have a plan. Crafting and building brands is not like investing. Stock values move on just one axis — they can go up or down. But brands are more mercurial, and require more than just capital to refresh them. These rebuilt brands need passion, vision, and strategic planning for the future in order to grow well. Forgo the passion, and brand resurrection just becomes the mechanical act of squeezing more blood from the same stone. Think brand love will win breed success alone? Unfortunately, passion isn’t a business plan.

Without a strategy for growth, development, and communication, your brand will never evolve into what it could be. Still, when it comes to reviving a brand, true love and care for the brand will shine more brightly than a holding company’s financial stake. And brand audiences can sense true passion, because it shows itself in all touchpoints for a particular service or product.

When brands are reborn, often the intangibles are the only things left. Emotions, associations, and half-remembered connections are the clay that can be molded and shaped for new purposes — those of your new endeavor. The teams who can harness those spirits and weave them into provocative brand stories are the ones who will win the day.

Some examples. The good, great, and meh:

Shinola, watches, leather goods, and bicycles all made in Detroit. Previously makers of shoe-polish.

“It would be a company steeped in the values of an older era, and the founding team wanted a name to match. ‘We didn’t want to try to invent a name that had heritage and pretend there was history behind it,’ COO Heath Carr says, so they looked for inactive brands that were on the market. They eventually came across Shinola, along with the ‘ever-so-famous saying that comes with the name,’ Carr says.”

Shinola is experiencing strong sales, great buzz, and success because they’ve zealously stuck to their brand’s plan and ethos. Their leadership team also seem to have a deep understanding of how much to accentuate or downplay certain aspects of the brand’s name and heritage for the best results. Full story by Fast Company.

Polaroid, digital and imaging products. Previously innovators and originators of instant film.

“It’s one of the famous brands, like Rolex, Nike, Coca-Cola,” Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy said. “Polaroid went through its troubles, but its asset was its brand, and now we are going through a tremendous resurgence of that brand,” he said.

While Polaroid has jettisoned much of the innovative tag that surrounded the original company, the current caretakers are being judicious about their licensing model. Their choices seem well-selected to avoid hitting any sour notes that would contradict what the brand has come to stand for. Also, they get high marks for clever transference of the brand’s personality into their physical locations. More details at TwinCities.com.

Atari, pioneers of home video games and coin-operated arcade games with a meteoric rise in the 1980s. Today, current rights owners are struggling to escape bankruptcy and reform.

“To many of us, the name Atari represents the birth of the video game industry, both in the arcades and at home—which, coincidentally, were also two separate Atari businesses. Either way, the name is synonymous with video games.”

Sadly, the Atari brand is a mere shadow of what it once was under its original banner. The most recent incarnation’s leadership realized too late that merely recycling its popular properties wouldn’t be enough to sustain it as an organization. But their pre-bankruptcy move into smartphone games and apps was a promising step. The jury is still out. More at PCMag.

Indian Motorcyles, one-time competitors to Harley-Davidson, original company closed in the 1950s.

“It’s a phenomenal American story with an entrepreneurial spirit,” said Steve Menneto, Vice President of Motorcycles at Polaris. “We wanted to bring that forward and blend it into what we’re doing with the brand. We want to show riders what we learned from Indian’s history.”

An interesting brand that has a small-but-passionate audience, Indian is still young. But its focus on engineering takes a page from what the original company was known for, and fundamental focus on innovation rarely goes out of style. Whether this will be enough to make a sizable dent in the market versus Harley-Davidson remains to be seen. More at Fox Business.

The glowing age of celebrity endorsements is fading. Sure, large corporations still hand out millions to basketball players and pop stars to attach themselves to some level of current “cool,” but no savvy audience truly believes this is anything less than a financial transaction — a paid endorsement, dollars for smiles. Insert cash, and a celebrity will say whatever you like. But is this good or bad for your brand?

Other smart people are correctly predicting that we’re nearing the end of the era where advertising is a driving brand force of large organizations. And that has advertisers concerned — a concern that leads to desperation. In a move designed to repackage the tired old “paid celebrity endorsement” for today’s cynical audiences, the latest spin is to hand out creative titles to celebrities, in order to show how they’re influencing a brand’s offerings.

Alicia Keys is BlackBerry’s Global Creative Director (who also uses an iPhone). Lady Gaga is “fairly involved” as a Creative Director at Polaroid, actually attending meetings, brainstorming, and providing feedback on products! Newly-minted Bud Light Platinum Creative Director Justin Timberlake apparently produces and stars in his own commercial work for the beer giant. Now that’s called “creative direction?” Color me skeptical.

While I have plenty of respect for what each of these musicians does behind the mic, this leads one to wonder how much talent crossover there is between pop stardom and branding and marketing. Should designers, creative directors, and product engineers be worried about our jobs? I doubt it.

The people who should be concerned are the stewards of these brands. What are these celebrities doing to their most valuable asset, the brand image? The potential negative impact is more far-reaching and brand-critical than it might seem on the surface.

Your brand is a constellation of products, thoughts, emotions, and ideas — some generated by the actions, offerings, and communication of your brand, and others created in the minds of your audience. The classic thinking behind celebrity endorsement is this: Brand X wants to raise its stature or reach a new demographic, and so, hitches its wagon to a star. Ideally, Celebrity X has a cultural orbit somewhat closely matching Brand X, and now that the two are aligned, new light from that star shines afresh on the product or brand.

But does that work? Many times the whole thing backfires, and companies find themselves distancing their brand from cheating golfers or cocaine snorting supermodels. Sure, celebrities shine brightly for a time, and when they are allied with your brand, they can bring a new set of orbiting loves, attributes, and audiences into your universe. But I’d make the case that drafting off another “star body” is harmful in the long term, because it muddies the overall brand message, draws attention away from more immutable brand attributes, and dampens the passion and communications that spring forth from a healthy brand. Here are three major reasons why enlisting a celebrity “creative director” is a mistake for many brands and organizations:

1: Creating Is Your Job, Not Theirs

Marketing, product creation and development — these must be done by the people who are intimately familiar with the brand, those who care about it, inside the organization. Those who are part of a brand or tasked with its communication have a stronger vested interest in success than a (famous) hired hand who has no long-term attachment to the parent brand. (And this is not a slight against outside agencies or firms — after all, we are one of them. In typical situations, consultants are hired for their skill and track record in partnering with brands, whereas celebrities are hired chiefly for their fame. It’s hardly the same thing.)

Bringing celebrities in to get their feedback and input also sends counterproductive messages to your brand’s workaday teams — that their contributions are not as valuable, and can be overlooked or overruled in the name of fashion and fame. This isn’t good for your internal and contracted teams, or the long-term health of your creative folks, who are a major engine that fires your brand.

2: Your Message Is Not Their Message

In 2013, celebrities are their own brands, and they stand for their own set of personal values — beliefs, ways of creating, political or cultural leanings, etc. Each tweet or press release is calculated to provide maximum exposure and appropriate alliances, for that person. For a celebrity who trades on their name and likeness, this is the endgame. It makes sense. And while there might be some temporary overlap with your brand, if these famous faces are savvy, their eyes are still fixed on the long term, and their own overall branding. This requires them to remain loyal only to themselves, and guarantees that they will continue transmitting their own brand messages. Whatever paid endorsement you’ve agreed upon (your brand message) is just subtext to the celebrity’s larger, personal brand messaging. Your own communications get muted and muddled, because they will never be the primary message. A transmission containing many voices is invariably less powerful and evocative, and your brand’s ethos is more valuable than that.

3: Great Brands Must Power Themselves

Finally, at the heart of the celebrity endorsement premise is a fundamental flaw, because brands cannot effectively draft off the power of another body. Like a swimmer, a drafting brand requires power from somewhere else, and the “coolness” of a celebrity will only help sustain brand movement for a limited time. Celebrity attachment can’t create movement, just pass it along. It’s this unique, powerful, and singular inertia that brands need to define their personalities and carve a unique place in the universe and in the minds of audiences. Like forces of nature, great brands are powered by the will and imagination of those inside the company, to provide vision, clarity, creativity and something worthwhile to the world. This isn’t a responsibility that you can cede to a momentarily-cool celebrity.

In general, I believe that bringing out the benjamins for a celebrity is an inherently insecure brand position. It makes it seem like the brand itself isn’t special or unique enough to chart its own course, and develop its singular position. The (considerable) money needed for a celebrity endorsement or “creative partnership” is better spent developing new products, messaging, and concepts that build upon the ethos of the brand, rather than seeking a transfusion of energy or coolness from some famous person.

The brand identity of your organization is at the heart of all communications with the outside world. It’s an identifier, a signature, a symbol loaded with meaning that flows from the brand itself, and most importantly, from people’s experiences with that brand. Crafting great brand identities is our main focus at Hexanine, and we believe it’s vastly important in business, culture, and the world around us.

However, in the arms race that is today’s business landscape, it can be tempting for those of us in branding and marketing to take shortcuts by looking to the latest in trends, “secret” strategies, or so-called silver bullets to make our brands stand out. It’s so easy to succumb to the latest brand bandwagons or popular approaches, but for good brands, this isn’t necessary. A simple storytelling approach will work powerfully. But what story to tell? How do you create these elusive brand narratives?

The irony is that great organizations are often sitting on gold mines without even realizing it.  Fabulous, valuable riches are at your fingertips — unique drivers, compelling histories, and singular stories waiting to be told. Often, these critical assets are easy to miss because they’re far too familiar, or they’re the buried treasure locked away in some lost closet of organizational knowledge. To recognize the riches your brand already has sometimes only requires re-adjusting your viewpoint, or taking on an outsider’s perspective. We love to play the outsider role, and combine it with the insider knowledge and expertise of those inside organizations. But the groundwork can be so much fun, and deeply rewarding as well. For all of the strategy and identity work we do with client partners, the first steps involve an archaeological dig of sorts, to mine and uncover what brand stories are waiting to be found.

Once a project sets sail, there’s a lot to be done before we ever arrive at the conceptual or strategy-writing phases. Rather than wastefully starting from scratch, we’ll often begin instead by assessing what stories a company or organization already has that are of value — both in the minds of leadership, and in the audiences a brand touches. Our chief roles as strategic brand designers involve excavation, curation, and storytelling — digging deep to find these nuggets of stories, evaluating them for use, and then weaving them into powerful, relevant brand communications.

Good stories are at the heart of every great brand, whether these are explicit and product-centered, or aspirational and loosely connected. Some are association-based, tying themselves to positive experiences and memories. Coke has essentially been evolving this message for decades: “Drinking Coca-Cola is a refreshing, essential part of whatever fun you’re having!” Other brand stories seek to connect to an audience’s shared values and desires, creating a stronger connection to the brand by tapping into already-active beliefs: “TOMS Shoes improves my wardrobe and style, and also lets me help kids in need.” There are many other stories to tell and billions of ways to tell them, but the tales begin with digging through the existing treasures an organization has.

The best stories and materials that emerge from the excavation become part of the creative process, serving as the raw materials we can polish up, refine, and use strategically as part of the new brand identity, messaging platform, or initiative we’re creating.

Here are some of the high-level steps and questions we ask ourselves (and our clients) as we dive deeper during this process:

Figure out what elements exist.
This is all about mining your history, digging into archives, memories, and previous work. It’s helpful to do categorical and deep dives into campaigns, efforts, internal initiatives, brand books, ads, taglines, and anything else in your archives. This cataloging process is something that many brands avoid, but it’s helpful to take stock of everything that exists before deciding what’s of value. But it’s helpful to use some of these criteria: What do people remember? What campaigns, slogans, or historical images have potential value? What are the pros and cons of those things that people remember? Can they be utilized to stir or germinate something new?

What are the stories that your organization tells itself?
How do you communicate inside the organization about what’s important? What does the organization claim as important externally, and how do those stories and values differ from what the company says in internal communication? How does your organization view itself? What lenses does it use to evaluate history, progression, and the future? Do these lenses change over time, or with shifts in leadership?

What is the organization’s “reason for being” that isn’t about making money?
Being profitable is assumed for any successful organization, but what sets yours apart? Why do people in your organization care? Why did the founders do this instead of something else? What gets your leaders up and out of bed in the morning?

What stories are others telling about your brand?
Is your company known as a great place to work? Do you have a reputation (deserved or not) for something specific? What assets or liabilities are attached to your name? What data do you collect from places like customer service, Twitter mentions, or media overviews? What trends begin to emerge? What are brand interactions like for those not drinking your company’s Kool-Aid? In the name of brutal honesty, it’s easy for these research efforts to become sensitive, because shortcomings often itch for someone to blame. But it’s important to focus on the data-gathering, not problem-solving at this point. Of course, an organization still needs to own any negatives and constructively see each as part of a larger change process for the brand — of correcting issues and moving towards better solutions. Oftentimes, giving first aid to your brand’s reputation can become a brand story in itself. Domino’s is an amazing example.

What is your organization’s culture and personality?
It can be tempting to graft in a new corporate culture or way of working, but the most powerful organizational ethos grows organically. How can you step back and observe what’s happening under your own roof? Is there something unique about your processes, or how you think about those ways of working? What stories are to be found there?

After this process is completed, these stories and many other elements flow into a brand brief, which then becomes the fertile soil for all development, whether it’s strategic, visual, or otherwise. It can seem more sexy, fresh, or interesting to start with a blank sheet of paper, but the greatest brands don’t throw away stories of value. And the best brands and marketers know that unique and authentic stories are gold for the people who see their worth. Stories are the well we all draw from, and ensuring that your company has a strong grasp on its brand stories will help guarantee success long into your future.

When you talk to startups, CEOs, and others, it seems like everyone wants to be the “next Apple,” “just like Nike,” or to do things “the way Starbucks does.” Admittedly, these companies are icons and have surpassed the competition to become larger-than-life brands, symbols that stand for things both larger and more sweeping than the commerce they generate. But it’s not like any of them pushed a magic icon button to make it all happen. There’s no road map to guaranteed iconic status, or our world would be vastly different, to say the least. But if we dissect these kinds of rockstar brands, and remove the lucky breaks, the passion, sweat equity, and visionary leaders, what is left? We believe there are some fundamental activities remaining that help illuminate the roads a brand must take to becoming an icon.

Here are a few of them:

Ubiquity
You need to be everywhere your audience is. That doesn’t necessarily mean event-driven Super Bowl commercials or plastering your brand messages on every free inch of real estate. But it does require an intimate knowledge and understanding of the people you’re trying to reach, and then unobtrusively inserting your brand into their lives in useful and meaningful ways. This is less the persistent stalker syndrome and more the reliable, friendly presence. And it requires more than holding a sign that says “Remember, we’re here!” Today’s audiences want more from your brand than just a pathetic “Call me…?” Give them the means and a reason to follow you and follow up when their need arrives.

Repetition
To remain in that elusive “top-of-mind” position, it requires some sort of regular and consistent presence in the lives of your target audience. It’s up to you to determine the how and who, and which messages and means are crucial elements in your brand strategy. Repeat these in a way that doesn’t feel monotonous or self-absorbed (no one likes the people who only talk about themselves!), but slowly unfolds what you’re doing, what you’re about, and why it matters. This means that your brand’s messaging, look, feel, style, voice — all need to be consistent, working in concert to provide synergy that makes it sound like your organization speaks with one voice.

Emotional Connection
This might seem silly to a company that sells toilet brushes or distributes freight containers, but the honest truth is that nearly every purchase or product decision carries some sort of emotional weight to it, however slight. The hard part is finding out what that bit of caring is, and when it’s liable to happen to your audience. Someone might care very much about getting their morning coffee quickly, so the brand touchpoint of a fast line is crucial to evoking satisfaction. Simple, bold nutritional graphics might make a harried parent’s shopping a bit easier at the point of purchase. Audience empathy will lead to the discovery of these moments of emotional connection, allowing you to use your service, product, or offering to make a positive difference to them.

Spark
This is one of the least quantifiable aspects, but no less important in stepping up the ladder to brand stardom. What is a spark? It’s that “new and different” aspect that sets your brand apart from others. It could mean providing something that’s never been seen before (a Segway?), revamping an existing category (the iPad), or just offering a completely fresh point of view on familiar products (like Method did with cleaning supplies). The commonality in all of these is some type of “unique selling proposition” in marketing parlance, but we prefer to think of it as a brand’s soul, it’s spark, or reason for being. (And making money doesn’t count as a “reason for being.”)

Something Worth Sharing
Finally, you know you’ll have an iconic brand in-the-making when you have something people want to share with others. Sharing is a highly-overused term in our sphere of retweets, Likes, and thumbs up , but this principle has been around a lot longer than social media. In fact, it’s centuries old and very simple. Your brand needs to contain something that people want to tell others about. Other than the occasional brand train wreck, what brands are truly worth discussing? You need fans and people who want to selflessly evangelize about what you do, because they love it and want to tell others. The motivation might come from wanting to be the first kid on the block with the new toy, a desire to be the resident expert on something, or just an overflow of genuine delight.

These five aspects are no magic recipe, but instead, we hope that they’re a handful of crucial steps on the painstaking road towards brand greatness. Now get going.

By now you’ve heard from many corners of the Internet about Gap’s failed rebranding effort, their response, and eventual recanting. Large corporate rebrandings, their challenges, and failures are nothing new. But the particular way in which Gap presented, backpedaled and reversed leaves our heads spinning. The drama has played out in the blogosphere, on Facebook and in the media. Hopefully Gap has learned something and closed what seems to be a (pardon the pun) gap in the understanding of their own brand.

For your consideration, we bring you five things that Gap should have learned from their rebranding debacle:

Stand behind your designs and your creative firm.
Other than lackluster execution, most of the problems were caused by Gap’s handling of the logo. From an outside perspective, it smacked of an organization not fully supporting a new design. The logo debuted online with little of the usual press releases and fanfare. Regardless of whether this was a social media experiment or just cold feet on Gap’s part, it gave off an uncertain impression that the new logo wasn’t able to shake.

As soon as negative reaction sparked online, Gap was quick to backtrack, suggesting that “sharing of other ideas” was always part of this logo’s launch (it wasn’t — this effort was a fully-baked design). When that didn’t fly, and criticism grew, Gap ultimately scrapped the (presumably expensive) end result. This waffling and morphing of the company line made the change feel even worse. Gap seemed to shrink back from all the negative feedback and left their design agency, Laird & Partners, twisting in the wind. Instead of some justification or explanation why the new identity was on-target, we heard crickets chirping.

A well-crafted positioning statement and explanation of the change would have shown support for the design, and ultimately, the firm who created the mark. Instead, Gap’s stance left Laird in an awkward place, unable to defend the work that was approved and commissioned by its client. After all, Gap’s internal team signed off on the logo themselves. The work might have been a brand misstep, but all parties are responsible. The quick way Gap washed its hands of the logo leads us to wonder if there really was true internal support for the change within the company. Or maybe it’s just the sign of a fearful executive team, unwilling to commit to a path and stick to it. A brave and committed client who brings something new into the marketplace often has to ride out the first waves of criticism, and Gap seemed unwilling to do so. This spells failure for any project, design or otherwise. And in an environment like that, bold identity and design work doesn’t have a chance of being born.

Familiarity is not the same thing as brand equity.
Henry Ford’s “faster horses” quote comes to mind here. Consumers don’t always know what they want (see also iPod, the Internet, etc.) and often fear the unfamiliar. So brands need to discriminate between inertia and actual brand love. A lack of willingness to change doesn’t mean that the new thing is automatically bad (though in this case, the Gap logo seems to be quite flawed) because people are comfortable with what they know. Maybe customers knee-deep in a recession didn’t respond well to big changes in their comfortable, mass-market brand.

Many established brands have reinvented themselves with positive results, and Gap has the challenge of figuring out which step in this process was the wrong one. From our vantage point, it seems that the Gap logo reaction is less about the mark itself, and more about how Gap customers see themselves. They aren’t embracing a cold, Swiss-style type treatment and minimal color. Given a choice, they cling to a logo that has associations of Christmas shopping bags in the mall, college-era hangtags, and middle-class, reasonably-priced clothing.

On the Internet, people hate things.
Twitter and Facebook have become avenues for brands to get a better sense of what their audiences are thinking and saying, and this is a valuable resource to mine. But it’s important to note that the Internet also fosters a unique kind of snarky, “hater” behavior that doesn’t mirror real-life reactions. Scenarios such as this one cater to negativity, piling on, one-liners, spoofs, and a bastion of meaningful feedback like “I HATE the Gap logo!” Brand managers and executives need to have the wisdom to know the difference and intestinal fortitude to embrace the results.

Crowdsourcing is still a dirty word.
This statement only made matters worse, and was a thinly-veiled attempt to backtrack on the new logo’s prominence, leaving Gap with egg on their face. This looked like the poorly-conceived spin doctoring that it was, and didn’t jive with the Gap brand or its existing strategic plan. The only thing the design community hates worse than poorly-executed work is poorly-executed free work. In a moment where Gap’s design acumen was questioned, this abandoned idea only raised the hackles of brand designers who might be more understanding about how difficult this process is.

Sometimes bad is just bad.
It’s easy to Monday Morning Quarterback logo designs, but it seems pretty clear that the new Gap logo was a flawed effort. Its derivative use of Helvetica, and the casual tossing away of its brand equity both seem wrong for the company. We may never see what else Laird & Partners presented to Gap, but ultimately the mark seems to strike a false note, and moves the brand in the wrong directions strategically and creatively. Maybe this blowup can serve as a wakeup call for Gap, highlighting the fact that established brands aren’t often built to chase after tired trends.

In the end, if all Gap gains from this costly exercise is better understanding of its logo’s strength and emotional currency, then maybe it was worth it.

So, in that spirit, this occassional feature will showcase brands who are putting their “souls” out there in unique and engaging ways. The marketplace is a challenging arena, so we hope to bring some encouragement and inspiration from these brand moments, even if we didn’t have a hand in creating them.

Timbuk2
Timbuk2 makes custom travel bags, messenger and other kinds. They state that the company was “born in a San Francisco garage and bred on the backs of messengers in the city streets.” A few weeks ago I received my new 17″ laptop messenger bag from them, in this plastic shipping bag.

I think the images speak (loudly) for themselves, and for the roots, feel, and heart of the Timbuk2 brand.

Domino’s Pizza
Much has been made of the latest Domino’s Pizza campaign that centers around their newly-formulated pizza flavor and ingredients. It’s an uphill battle to change any brand’s image, and even gutsier to question its soul by admitting your primary product tasted like cardboard.

But they did it, and it seems this brutually honest new set of values has taken hold in a big way. Domino’s has now made a pledge to go against the grain with their food photography, promising not to use food styling or fake ingredients to depict their ‘za. Building on these new brand foundations, they are soliciting un-retouched photos of their new pizza. What a bold way to back up your new brand approach.