In case you haven’t heard it, here’s the background: two weeks ago, Gap tried to introduce a new logo to replace its decades-old blue box icon. Customers and designers piled online to heap criticism and venom on the new artwork, and ultimately forced the retailer to bring back the old version in a public show of humiliation (and probably at great expense).

I’m not a graphic professional, but I know where to find some experts in the field. So for a little perspective I asked some of CMD’s design pros for their thoughts and what they would have recommended to Gap. Here’s a little taste:

Jenn Brewer, CMD designer, says brands need to look at their logo and brand history while keeping an eye on their audience when they go through a rebranding exercise. Only then can a redesign campaign (slight modifications or a total overhaul) be determined. Does she think Gap should have given in to the criticism?

“No, it should have been confident enough in its new logo that it could rationally and intelligently deflect the criticism,” she said. “Giving in to the criticism tells me that perhaps the company was not in agreement about the new logo in the first place.”

Thom Marchionna, CMD creative director, said that a logo is only the tip of the spear for a brand evaluation, and other companies could learn from this situation by paying attention to core issues first before introducing a refreshed logo.

“Solve any underlying business problem first, such as product quality, customer service or differentiation,” he said. “Only when you can make a promise to your audience that things are positively better and different, can you introduce the symbolism that reinforces that. To do otherwise is like putting a fresh coat of paint on the hull of the Titanic.”

And what should Gap have done differently?

“Pretty much everything,” he continued. “Forget the lousy logo. Those happen all the time. Entrusting a logo redesign to a traditional ad agency may have been the first mistake. A branding firm would have started with more probing questions, the first three of which might be, ‘how much equity exists in the current logo with our most loyal customers and influencers?’ ‘what is the nature of that equity?’ and ‘what do we risk by changing our symbol?’”

Marchionna said the real failure, in his opinion, was a surprising lack of understanding of the power of the social web.

“It is the most immediate and powerful focus group technology in history,” he said. “And it dictates a code of conduct that one would expect a company such as Gap to be attuned to. Its response to the criticism was disingenuous at best and tragically underestimated the audience’s intelligence to see through ill-conceived efforts to save face. All of which violated the implicit social contracts on which all relationships are based: trust, honesty, and authenticity, to name but a few.”

As this situation showed, indeed every brand change is now open to debate and fair game for backlash by the public and the marketing community. The key to success, in my opinion, is to do the research, answer the tough questions that need clarification internally, and have the confidence to stick to what your gut tells you. I had a basketball coach once who said “you can’t lie to yourself,” so if Gap was lying to itself about its overall business shortcomings and thought a new logo would help distract the public, it was asking for criticism.

What do you think?

1)      Take a picture

Pictures really are worth a thousand words. They’re a fast way to create content and a fast way for users to consume content. Be sure to add keywords to the photo to grab SEO juice as well.

2)      Hoard your posts

Most blogging platforms allow you to schedule your posts. Write a few when you have time and inspiration, and schedule them to post later.

3)      Read the news

Industry news, world news, or news from an admired blogger are all great places to find inspiration. Check out the top stories and write a paragraph about your opinion or thoughts on the topic and ask your community for their thoughts as well.

4)      Make a list

Just like a picture, a list is easy for a reader to consume quickly. Some great lists are your industry’s top five blogs, five blogs you like to read at home, or five inspiring Twitter users. Be sure to add links for added SEO benefits.

5)      Keep a notebook handy

I know we’re talking blogging, but we’re not always in front of the computer when ideas for blog posts appear. Keep a small notebook for those moments and return to that notebook when you need inspiration.

Do you have a quick tip on creating killer content? Leave it in the comments!

This post goes out to all the technology marketers who, like me, are drowning in a seemingly bottomless bowl of acronym soup. You know who you are—diving into your DMs, composing your CTAs and issuing the occasional OMG.

Acronyms are formed from the initial elements in a phrase, and are pronounced or spelled out as new words. Thanks to the EM team at CMD, here’s a short list of strange and ponderous ones, as well as a few acronyms commonly used in business situations. Think of them as pepper in your next PPT—just don’t overdo it.

At the risk of looking like a n00b, here goes …

1337: elite software developer, abbreviated from code

AR: action requested

BOM: bale of materials

BTS: back to school

COB: close of business

CTA: call to action

EOD: end of day

EOW: end of week

KPI: key performance indicator

MBO: management by objectives, pronounced IM-BOH

KTHXBYE: OK, thank you, goodbye

OOBE: out-of-box experience, pronounced OO-BEE

RT: retweet

SMB: small and medium business

SME: subject-matter expert, with the unfortunate pronunciation of SMEE

TAM: total available market

VAR: value-added reseller

WW: work week

When in doubt, don’t strain yourself. Consult the handy Acronym Finder or the Urban Dictionary.

OK, did anyone have an aha moment? WDIM—what did I miss?

Next up, observations on onomatopoeia in #hashtags. (JK, folks.)

It’s the retweet that says you like what someone else has said. The personal reaction to a post that signals you’re listening. The random DM to a stranger to respond to a question or share a piece of information you think might be helpful. And when something bad happens, owning up to it and apologizing. Simple stuff, which unfortunately can also be pretty easy to overlook.

A recent example is one of our clients who had a not so great experience with a reporter. After stewing about what went wrong and owning up to how it could have gone better, they wondered whether it was worth reaching out to the reporter personally, to help clear the air. Even though it was a few days later, that’s exactly what they did. Yes, especially with the time that had gone by, it would have been easier to ignore it, move on, and take the chance that maybe the reporter would forget about it. But in the end, respect and courtesy won out, to the benefit of a stronger long-term relationship.

So many brands make major investments, coming up with massive cause-related campaigns. Certainly, those efforts are incredibly powerful, as well. But they don’t take the place of ongoing common courtesy and respect. After all, at the end of the day, isn’t that how we all want to be treated?

What favorite random acts of kindness have you seen, or experienced yourself, recently?

-From Faceless to Fantastic, @ekaterinawalter of Intel and @JeffWidman of BrandGlue

When launching something new, an online service, content, social network or otherwise, it’s much easier to succeed with a subset of your target audience, then scale up to a larger market. For example, Facebook started by saturating its target audience at Harvard. Likewise, Twitter launched in the fishbowl of SXSW. Both scaled up from there based on the success with the in-crowds who represented the larger user base they were ultimately seeking.

-From Zero to a Million Users, @drewhouston of DropBox and @asmith of Xobni

Web analytics is not about quantity of visits, it’s about the quality of the interaction. We should be getting the most out of everyone who visits, and to do so, we need to understand their behavior beyond simply looking up the initial referring site. Three fundamental metrics that you need to be tracking on your website:

1.       Where people first came from to your site

2.       What they did before they converted into a paid customer (or took the desired action)

3.       How long before they started paying you

-From Tracking People, Not Just Numbers, Neil Patel of KISSmetrics

When news spread that the university had fired Mike Leach, the beloved, eccentric head coach of the Red Raider football team, Texas Tech fans, students and alumni stormed the university’s social media accounts to find answers, voice their opinions and vent their frustrations. What fans and high-paying students and alumni found, however, was that the university’s athletic department had locked its Facebook wall, was deleting fan-generated notes and comments, and had suddenly abandoned its regularly active Twitter stream.

Eventually, every company or organization will face a crisis or issue that plays out in the social media world. How you respond says a lot about you and your brand, and how committed you are to social media success. CMD counsels many of its clients on crisis preparation, and here are five tips that can help your organization face a predicament in the age of social media (Red Raider Athletic Department: Are you listening, yet?):

• Prepare
  • Do you have a social media crisis communication plan? Start by revisiting your existing crisis plans—do they include the use of your social media accounts? Spend time to develop messaging for each of your crisis scenarios and draft Facebook posts and Tweets so that your first communication during a crisis occurs within minutes, instead of hours or days. Are there prominent bloggers or Twitter users that can disseminate important information to target audiences during a crisis? Include them in your crisis plan. Also, assign a team member(s) to monitor and administer your social media accounts. In the case of Texas Tech, new Tweets and Facebook wall comments were coming in by the hundreds each hour—there needs to be a person dedicated to monitoring these conversations.
• Listen
  • An essential aspect of social media is listening—especially when a customer or fan is expressing a concern. What are the key issues your audiences are focusing on? What type of action are they calling for? Take this opportunity to let your customers and fans know that you not only hear their concerns, but you are taking them into consideration when planning your next course of action. The insights you gain from listening will help shape additional communications during a crisis as well as improve your communication plans in the future.
• Contain the conversation
  • People can be downright rotten at times, and unfortunately, the worst often comes out in the midst of a crisis or dispute. While you might not enjoy the name calling or what’s being said about your organization, it’s important for those conversations to occur in the appropriate space and that they don’t extend the reach of the crisis to unrelated digital properties. Don’t lock your Facebook wall or blog comments section, because detractors will simply find another place to voice their criticisms and these actions can add significant fuel to the fire. In the case of Texas Tech, the athletic department’s decision to lock its Facebook wall spread the flame war to the university’s general fan page, which is moderated by a separate office on campus and opted to remain open. Like Texas Tech’s general fan page, foster a place for open, two-way communication on a space that you control and are able to track. Also, keep in mind that your social media accounts should maintain the right to delete vulgar content; but don’t delete a comment because it states a point of view that you don’t agree with—after all, disagreements are simply human nature.
• Respond
  • Social media—especially Twitter—is all about what’s happening now. Your social media accounts will soon be, if they’re not already, the first places people visit when a crisis breaks. Become the main source of news by offering valuable information, such as insights from key executives on how they are taking steps to solve the issue. At the onset of a crisis, a post as simple as this could suffice while your team listens to the conversations and develops a forthcoming plan of action, “Hi all, we understand your concerns and we are here listening. We are taking everything you have to say into consideration and you will be the first to know when we plan our next steps.” Other actions include adding more robust content in the form of videos, additional information, updates, etc. to help balance the ongoing dialogue and achieve search benefits for your side of the story. For particularly influential detractors, determine whether it’s possible to take the conversation offline by offering to talk through their concerns or misgivings directly—person to person.
• Research
  • Research is essential to effective public relations. In the days and weeks following a crisis, track the conversations across your social media channels. Where did most of the conversations take place? What was the key issue that users focused on? Use this information to see what messaging was effective or what key events triggered a shift in your audience’s tone. This is also invaluable when modifying your current crisis communication plan to fit the behaviors of your target audience.