We’re sure this has never happened to you, but sometimes brands misstep and the results aren’t pretty. Whether it’s because of bizarre weather patterns, changing stylistic trends, the rise of American Idol style voting, or slow news cycles, some logos just aren’t well-received. And to be fair, some logos are crappy, objectively. But assuming the work you and your team have launched isn’t a horror show, chances are that it’s decent, solid and professional. But that doesn’t mean everyone will like it. Sometimes the Internet brings the hate.

Take the recent GAP logo debacle, or an even fresher example, the Big10 identity created by Pentagram. Both launches set off firestorms on Twitter and Facebook, with hoards of supposedly-livid commentators going off about how terrible each design was. In a situation like that, what is a brand to do? It’s easy for commentators (who didn’t design the project or pay for it) to say that “public opinion” is king, and encourage a brand to quickly retreat, scrapping months of work and tens of thousands of dollars. But is that the correct response?

In this era of instant Internet feedback, it’s easier than it’s ever been to voice an opinion. We are rapidly becoming a society of people who comment on anything and everything online, from what we ate for lunch, to the people we see picking their noses on the train. There’s also a certain kind of mob mentality and overzealous hatred unique to the bowels of the Internet, message boards and blog comment fields, and when it’s your brand caught in the crossfire, it can be difficult to decide how to respond. It takes a savvy team to sift through the feedback and determine if it’s legitimate, important, and weighty enough to shift the direction of your brand efforts.

So, if you find your organization (or yourself) in front of the Internet firing squad, it’s not advisable to automatically head for the hills. Instead of acting on the instinct, it’s probably worth it to expend the time and effort to figure out what’s truly going on. That time can lead to crucial insights, helping your team determine if a remedy is indeed necessary, and what the possible repercussions might be. Here are some important issues to consider:

Determine Your Audience
Before digging into the feedback you’ve received, it’s helpful to revisit the project goals and creative brief. Who it is your brand/campaign/effort trying to reach? Has your target audience changed, or does it need to change? What are the end results – better word-of-mouth? More website traffic? Increased sales? Bringing your brand back into the spotlight? Without setting a specific benchmark for success in reaching a target audience, it’s nearly impossible to differentiate success from failure. You’ll never know if the logo redesign was successful, much less whether the feedback you’re getting is significant in the life of your brand. Keeping these goalposts in mind as you parse the public feedback will help direct your course of action in beneficial ways.

Look Who’s Talking
Once you’ve firmly established your target audience and goals, it’s time to dig into the feedback itself. What is the quality of the commentary? Who are the people trash talking your new logo? What vehicles are they using to communicate their displeasure? Are there pockets of negativity being riled up by certain outlets? Do certain opinions stem from a few specific tastemakers, or are they more grass-roots driven? Do these people (or representatives of certain demographics) fit into your target audience? Not to put too fine a point on it, but do these people truly matter to your brand? If you’ve redesigned the on-air identity for Lifetime Television (aimed at middle-aged women), then it’s largely inconsequential whether Xbox playing, Mountain Dew chugging 14 year-olds respond negatively or not. This seems obvious, but it’s a major call – not a call based on gut instinct, but a qualitative decision focused on the pre-determined needs of your brand.

How Is The Criticism Affecting Your Brand?
Whether your target audience if part of the firestorm or not, in this connected era, it’s important to consider how quickly negativity can spread. You might be concerned about your brand receiving a media black eye, but it’s best to set true numbers to those negative impressions. The business bottom line is this: Do you believe that the negative feedback is affecting your business goals? Is working to preserve your brand’s reputation worth the price of scrapping your shiny, new logo? Or does your particular situation support the adage that “there’s no such thing as bad publicity?” Is it enough that people are talking about your brand again? Has your redesign led to a drop in sales? Do your front-line sales associates hear from customers about the logo? Are your other brand touchpoints being affected by the logo’s negative reception? It would be self-serving for us to say that a graphic identity is the end-all, be-all of a company’s brand, but it just isn’t true. There are organizations with amazing products and mediocre visual identities, while some brands hide crappy services behind beautiful design. Design is just part of the equation, and you need to ascertain how large a part it plays in what you do.

What Actions Do You Take?
Even if you decide to stay your present course and weather the storm of criticism, this negative experience can be a fruitful one. What can you learn for future efforts? Are there any nuggets of wisdom you can pull from all the chatter? Are the criticisms specific and concrete, or just generally harsh? Do your dissenters offer up any constructive thoughts or ways to improve? Is the criticism true or valid? Or are people just generally displaying our innate resistance to change? Maybe you can determine if it really was a content issue, or a problem with the way the design was released instead. (Yes, we’re looking at you, GAP.) Perhaps there was a better way to announce your intentions and plans for the future.

In deciding to respond, it’s important to note that there’s a lot of territory between appearing defensive and offended on one end, and seeming aloof and unresponsive on the other. Your answers to the above questions can help you figure out a next-step response. If you do rush to defend your position, what you say (and possibly as important – HOW you say it) is crucial. Possibly there’s a strategic and understanding way to affirm the voices of dissent while still forging ahead with your brand plans. You might engage people on Facebook, or email specific audience influencers and ask for some deeper discussion. Or you might decide to remain silent and let the storms of criticism die down while normal business continues. (Sometimes, engaging in the argument just legitimizes the “opponent’s” arguments, so it might be better to remain above the fray.) You might need to provide additional context – like supporting your new logo with more imagery that shows it in use. Or adapt your positioning accordingly – a more thoughtfully-crafted statement could help clarify your brand position.

Finally, it’s important to remember that even if you’re the client (and it’s your brand), you’re not the only involved party. Your design partners have a huge stake in how their designs are received, and they will be motivated to make sure things go well. If any of the above negativity is visited upon your brand, how will you work with your design firm (in partnership) to right the ship, allowing both parties to save face? Among all the options, surely there’s a scenario where everyone – your brand, your audience, and your design team – can come out positively.

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.