Sosyal Network’ün Gücü ve GAP Vakası 10/15/2010

 People on Facebook
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pages)
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 More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.)
shared each month.
 Global Reach
 More than 70 translations available on the site
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 Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application
 Mobile
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devices.
 People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile
users.
 There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook
mobile products

10 Largest Countries

United States       140,475,700

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Canada       16,958,800
Philippines       16,800,860
Mexico       15,965,160
India       14,310,680
 It took Gap a week to declare its new logo a bust, likely making it the first large-scale corporate
revamp with a shelf life shorter than milk.
 In case you missed it -- and if you blinked, you probably did -- the clothing retailer recently
replaced its iconic blue logo with a more contemporary emblem that set the Gap name in bold
Helvetica against a white canvas, with a small blue square in the upper-right corner. Online
reaction was swift and sadistic, ultimately leading Gap to scrap the redesign just seven days after
its introduction.
 Net denizens everywhere are practically bruised from patting themselves on the back -- blessed be
"the power of social media," etc. But marketing insiders say Gap got its khakis in a bunch too
quickly, setting a precedent that the brand can be bullied.
 "Gap has extremely damaged its credibility with this move," says Scott Chapman, partner with
Instinct Brand Equity Coaches Inc. in Toronto. "The next change they come out with, everyone
will be thinking, 'If I just say something, they'll revert back.' "
 Chapman isn't suggesting the will of the public should be ignored. But he's steadfast that blogs,
Twitter and Facebook should've been part of the communication stages leading up to the launch, as
opposed to the reason for its abandonment.
 "They severely mismanaged the change by failing to really explain it to the public," says
Chapman.
 In a statement released this week, Gap North America recognized the missed opportunity to
engage, and cited the "outpouring of comments" from the online community for the logo's
shelving.
 Social media mavens praised the response as a sign Gap was listening to its audience. Others
deemed it a knee-jerk reaction too hasty for collective wits to catch up.
 "There's far more to logo design than just what looks good at first, and even third, glance," says
Harry Beckwith, a world-renowned branding expert with Beckwith Partners.
 Factor in the ease and immediacy of sharing opinions online, people's penchant for the familiar and
the kick of being part of a protest, and you could have a skewed compass pointing in the opposite
direction of progress.
 "Who was likely to weigh in? The old loyal fans who were attached to the old blue box," says
Beckwith.
 "The fence-sitters and the persuadables . . . might've seen the new logo and reasonably thought,
'Maybe there's something new here, let's go take a look.' And heaven, Gap management and the
stock market know Gap needs those people to stop in."
 In North American Gap stores that have been open a year or longer, sales have declined for six
consecutive months. And according to Bloomberg, the parent company hasn't increased annual
sales since fiscal 2005.
 The challenge is determining when, and how, to gauge opinion effectively.
 "If Twitter were around in the late 1800s and the French government listened, there wouldn't be an
Eiffel Tower. Bold ventures are almost always hated before the public becomes enamoured," said
ad executive Cal McAllister.
 t's no secret by now that the use of online social networks is exploding.
 The latest figures in Quebec show more than 78 per cent of Internet users have logged on or
contributed content to a blog or a social network such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
 And 74 per cent say they are influenced by opinions and recommendations on products and
services discussed on such networks, according to the study by the Quebec research group
CEFRIO.
 Use of social networks is growing in Quebec at a 41-percent annual rate and is coming despite
well-publicized concerns about privacy and protection of personal information, notes the CEFRIO
report.
 What's interesting here is how the trend is changing the way companies and public relations
specialists pitch their messages. The traditional news release may not be dead, but it's far more
likely to be accompanied by video and other content links, as well as forums for public discussion,
says Thomas Bastien a social media specialist with the PR firm Morin Relations Publiques.
 "We are still addressing our message to journalists but we're also addressing a public that is
directly targeted," Bastien says.
 An agency such as Canada News Wire -long a publisher of news releases aimed at the media -has
developed a product it calls the Social Media Release that features interactive links and ways for
companies to start a conversation with the public. Nearly two-thirds of Internet users read reviews
or recommendations of products before buying. Nearly a fifth have had some interaction with a
company online, such as viewing a commercial video or delivering an opinion on a microblog like
Twitter.
 Those findings simply reinforce what public relations experts have been saying for a while: that
companies ignore the power of social networks at their peril.
 "You've got to be in the social media game because you're going to be left out in the cold if you're
not," says Rick Leckner, president of the Montreal PR firm Maison Brison.
 "Consumers are very much aware of the benefits of social media. They know how to use it and
how to leverage it."
 Leckner, who handles financial communications for several publicly traded Montreal firms, says
securities rules require such companies to publish significant announcements in a news release,
disseminated by agencies like Canada News Wire or Marketwire.
 But clients of his like Dorel, a big consumer products company, still need to add the power of a
Facebook or Twitter to their overall communications strategy.
 Word-of-mouth endorsement within a social circle is worth gold to companies. The challenge,
however, is to manage the message and the reputation of a company in cases where public opinion
turns negative.
 "There are some media-savvy consumers out there who can start a firestorm in seconds by
launching a message on Twitter or Facebook or posting a 30-second video on YouTube," Leckner
notes.
 One recent example: when retailer The Gap recently consulted customers about a proposed change
in its logo, it was forced to withdraw the plan after a customer revolt led by bloggers.
 Bastien of Morin Relations Publiques says his firm still encounters resistance when it meets
corporate clients to explain the advantages of using social networks to communicate with the
public.
 Their biggest fear is they will lose control of the message.
 "That's something we discuss in training sessions. We are trying to understand the fears of our
clients and to reassure them.
 "A lot of them are worried that their message will not be communicated properly, and that negative
comments will get out of hand. We show them how they can respond and how to turn the situation
in their favour."
 Clients also need to understand the different ways that success can be measured, he adds.
 "There are a lot of different tools available to measure the impact of Twitter and Facebook."
 The goal isn't necessarily to enlarge the audience, he says. "It's more about quality than quantity."
 "The old approach relied on communicating to the journalist, who would then filter the
information to the public. We still pitch the message to journalists but we are also reaching people
in a lot of other ways."
 Gap Inc. abandoned a new logo after consumer criticism and will revert to the blue-square emblem
that has been featured in its marketing for more than 20 years.
 The clothing retailer released a redesigned logo on its website Oct. 4 and had planned to roll it out
in marketing campaigns starting next month. More than a thousand people left comments on Gap’s
Facebook page, a majority of them disparaging.
 “We’ve learned a lot in this process,” Marka Hansen, the Gap brand president in North America,
said yesterday in an e- mailed statement. “We are clear that we did not go about this in the right
way. We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community. This
wasn’t the right project at the right time for crowd sourcing.”
 The new logo set the Gap name against a white backdrop, with a blue square in the upper-right
corner. Gap, which ownsBanana Republic, Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta, has been updating its
clothing lines and stores to appeal to so-called Millennials -- consumers in their 20s and early 30s.
The logo change was part of that evolution of the brand from “classic, American design, to
modern, sexy, cool” Louise Callagy, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Gap, said last week.
 Two days after the logo release, Gap responded to the outcry on its Facebook page, welcoming
design suggestions and calling it a crowd-sourcing project.
 ‘Different Way’
 “We’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand, and after much thought, we’ve
decided to go back to our iconic blue box logo,” Callagy said yesterday in an interview. The
change will take place starting today, she said.
 Chief Executive Officer Glenn Murphy has focused on the Gap brand since he joined the company
three years ago, part of a bid to revive growth. Sales at Gap stores in North America open at least a
year have declined six straight months, including a 1 percent drop in September, while Old Navy
and Banana Republic have made gains this year. The parent company hasn’t increased annual
sales since fiscal 2005.
 “There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a
different way,” Hansen said.
 Gap rose 44 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $18.71 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange
compositetrading. The shares have dropped 11 percent this year.
 Latest LinkedIn Facts
 LinkedIn has over 80 million members in over 200 countries.
 A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are
outside the U.S.
 Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

 In a remarkable testament to the power of social networks, Gap withdrew its proposed redesign
after Gap customers and online fans slammed the new Gap logo — as clearly and rapidly as only
the Internet makes possible. More than a thousand negative comments had been posted to Gap's
Facebook site, and @Gaplogo had its own Twitter stream to lambaste the fashion giant for daring
to change the iconic "blue box" logo.
 The online outpouring worked. Just one week after Gap introduced its Helvetica-round logo, it
rescinded it with an online mea culpa.
 “Since we rolled out an updated version of our logo last week on our website, we’ve seen an
outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue
box logo," said the statement from Marka Hansen, president of Gap in North America. "All roads
were leading us back to the blue box, so we’ve made the decision not to use the new logo on
gap.com any further."
 Ms. Hansen managed to avoid mentioning Facebook or Twitter by name, but did refer to "the
online community" and added that she and her staff had "been listening to and watching all of the
comments this past week." Gap handled the removal of the logo with increased Facebook aplomb.
Last week, the logo changed on gap.com without fanfare, and was defended on Facebook two days
later. This time, the announcement was made directly on the social network.
 Hansen also reminded fans that the blue box turns red for the seasonal campaign, either to forestall
angry complaints in a month or two or to begin the holiday buzz early.
 Most of the new online chatter celebrated the return to the classic logo. By Tuesday afternoon,
almost 2,000 people had clicked that they "like" Hansen's announcement of the logo's withdrawal.
"Thank GOODNESS! The new one was just absolutely HORRID! (>_<)," commented Leslie
Arambulo.
 Other comments speculated about marketing motives behind this tempest on the Twitter feed. A
dozen denounced it as a publicity stunt, while others speculated that the Gap had been hoping for a
crowdsourced logo but chickened out.
 Mike Czuboka wrote, "A company as large as The Gap doesn't launch a brand new logo by just
slapping it up in one place on their website. If this had been a genuine logo redesign it would have
been introduced much more consistently across a wide variety of mediums."
 "Looks like whatever you guys did, worked," wrote Kym Zwick. "Whether positive, or negative, it
got people talking about Gap again... I'm willing to bet sales will skyrocket today. Marketing is a
funny little thing isn't it??"
 A few comments announced that customers are planning to run to Gap and buy something today in
celebration, so Ms. Zwick may be onto something.
 It now appears that Gap will use its classic logo for the foreseeable future. Gap executives also
acknowledged they'd learned an object lesson in the role and power of social networking media.
"We recognize that we missed the opportunity to engage with the online community," wrote
Hansen.
 “There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a
different way," she concluded. Marketing students, pay attention: If Gap did indeed learn its lesson
or orchestrated this online furor, its next redesign attempt should be a social marketing masterpiece
 Twitter COO Dick Costolo offered some updated stats at theConversational Media Summit

 today in New York City. Twitter is now attracting 190 million visitors per month and

generating 65 million Tweets a day. “We’re laying down track as fast as we can in front of the
train,” says Costolo . These numbers are up slightly from 180 million self-reported unique visitors
per monthback in April, and 50 million Tweets per day in February.
 The number of visitors to Twitter.com is not the same as the number of registered users.
(ComScore, in contrast, estimated 83.6 million worldwide unique visitors to Twitter.com in April
and 23.8 million U.S. visitors in May, see chart below). Most users, says Costolo, don’t Tweet at
all, but rather use Twitter as a consumption media. How many of those 65 million Tweets are
automated spam is not clear.
 Once again, Costolo reiterated  Twitter’s stance that “we will not allow third parties to inject ads
into the stream.” When Twitter rolls out its Promoted Tweets, it will control them 100 percent.
Some brands doing early beta testing with Promoted Tweets are seeing, on average, 2.5 percent
“engagement rates,” as measured by replies, retweets, clicks and so on. He also mentioned that
Twitter soon will be rolling out an analytics dashboard for commercial customers and brands.
Advertisers will be able to target messages by interest and topics, but not by individual users. And
on Twitter’s privacy policy, he says , “Our privacy policy is very simple: You can have a protected
account, or not. If not, everything is public.” Nobody seems to be having fits over the fact that
everything on Twitter is public, but then they knew that going in.
 http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/twitter-190-million-users/
 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
 http://www.canada.com/technology/logo+reversal+sign+social+network+power/3678050/story.ht
ml
 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-12/gap-scraps-new-logo-after-online-backlash-will-
return-to-blue-box-design.html
 http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/new-economy/2010/1012/New-Gap-logo-withdrawn-The-
blue-box-lives-on
 http://press.linkedin.com/about
 username:3754076password:lnrvae
 10/15/2010

What if talent managers could hire or promote someone and predict

whether or not the individual would work out?

Michael Blair said it's possible. Blair is strategic staffing leader for
CenturyLink in Overland, Kan., which operates in 33 states and employs
some 20,000 people. He said in his experience that those who do well on
personality assessments tend to outperform those who don't.

Blair goes further: Within customer service and sales, he said he's
documented that those who assess well generate more sales revenue and
have less turnover. Tying assessment outcomes to potential interviews
means hiring managers can do two interviews instead of five, which
means across 10 hires, they can save 15 hours for other purposes.

"By using the assessment tools, we can help the business make
better hiring decisions, improve performance and improve business
outcome measures," Blair said.

This is the result of using high-quality assessments that are backed

by research, closely tied to job requirements and done in conjunction with
personal interviews and reference checking.

Don't Cut Corners Now

It's likely that cutbacks mean there is less talent in many

organizations right now. At the same time, recovery has begun, and there
are thousands of would-be applicants looming on the horizon, motivated
in part by months of unemployment. Couple that with a continuing need
to cut costs, and personality assessment tests might well be one of the
first things to go.

Those in the trenches likely will say that would be a mistake.

"We have found that if we ignore [personality assessments], we

ignore them to our peril," said Meredith Patterson, director of human
resources of Logical Choice Technologies.
 Using assessments as part of a process to choose finalists can mean
that fewer candidates need to be interviewed, which translates into more
time for talent managers to devote to higher-value activities, such as
employee relations and rolling out policy changes within the organization.

Companies that use personality assessments as part of a well-

planned and - implemented selection process can readily demonstrate
their value and the value of HR as a whole to an organization's bottom
line.

"We have hired, despite the results of the assessment, and it has
always come back to bite us," Patterson said. "We religiously follow it
because it has been successful."

Michael Spremulli, founder of The Chrysalis Corp. and a corporate

personality profiler, said he has had large clients use thousands of
personality assessments a year for labor-intensive positions, and smaller
ones use a combination of assessment tools to identify higher-level
positions.

Given that assessments have been validated by experience on the

ground and proven by a century of scientific research, there shouldn't be
a question of the usefulness of this particular tool. Spremulli said it is
critical to look at the research for the specific tool an organization is
considering.

What Could Go Wrong?

There are still those who doubt assessments' usefulness, especially

in an economy where talent leaders are looking for places to cut
expenses.

"'What's the point? Anybody can fake them.' We hear people ask
that question," said test designer Robert Hogan, president of Hogan
Assessment Systems.
 Hogan said well-designed personality tests are quite difficult to
fake. Such instruments are as good at screening out fakes as they are at
illuminating the personality traits needed for a job.

Hogan described a "faking profile" that well-designed tests can

generate to ensure no one games the system. "When you're doing a
whole personality profile, they may be able to fake a whole scale [a single
aspect of the measurement], but they won't fake a whole profile."

Ken Lahti, vice president of strategy and content for PreVisor, said
the easiest questions to fake are those that require a response ranging
from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree" or those that ask for a
ranking on a scale from 1 to 5.

Tests that use forced choices, or those that involve the tester
issuing a warning about faking, tend to show less faking. Lahti also said
faking can be minimized through the use of computer-adaptive testing,
which automatically refines questions based on responses.

The nature of good assessment instruments is to extract a set of

scientifically objective metrics that filter out most efforts to game the
system. Anyone who has taken a personality test will relate to the
seemingly repetitious questions. That's part of the filtering process, but
there is a good deal more built into assessments that can assure an
organization receives accurate and reliable information.

Lahti said the key to good assessment instruments is the word

"good." It's best to ask first what kind of research is backing them up.

"There are good tests and bad tests out there and good and bad
uses of them," Lahti said. "You can have a test that measures pretty well,
[say] an entry-level customer service test, which may be effective for
predicting performance and retention in those roles, but it might not be a
good test for measuring leadership potential or predicting success in a
director-level or manager-level role."

Get the Most From Assessments

 Spremulli said that it's most important to use an assessment that
has one or more validity indexes built in. A validity index is a scale that
assesses how candid and honest a person is when he or she responds to
the assessment, thus revealing whether he or she is attempting to
manipulate the outcome.

"Every test you use needs to be reliable and needs to be valid," said
Spremulli.

Reliability means the test yields consistent results over time, while
validity means the test actually measures what it claims to measure.

The best ways to achieve accountability in establishing an

assessment process include:

a) Make certain that all jobs have personality requirements. Set

high accountability as one key requirement.

b) Monitor the process. Though it may be convenient to have

applicants take online tests at home, this can invite outright cheating.

c) Use two tests. The chances of successfully deceiving two tests

are considerably slimmer than those of deceiving one.

d) Tell participants they will be discussing their answers at a later

date.

e) Conduct personal interviews at least partially based on the test

results to reveal discomfort, hesitation or inconsistencies.

Lahti said to choose a test focused on the skills required by the job
at hand, and then use it in a consistent, objective manner. Remember,
too, that it won't be enough.
 "These are great tools, but you never want to use just these tools,"
Lahti said. "Use personality tests with structured interviews and with
ability and aptitude tests, with measures of skills and experience, and
certainly with measures of past performance as you have those
available."

Logical Choice Technologies uses a three-part test for selection. The

first part assesses an individual's personality and cognitive skills. The
second tests how an individual is likely to react in a given situation. The
third determines what motivates an individual. Managers then use a
comparison between the results of all three tests and the requirements of
a particular job to make hiring decisions.

Spremulli also said that it's best to look not only at personality, but
at a measure of cognitive abilities. Otherwise, personality assessments
may not serve any useful purpose.

"You have to run some type of cognitive measure," Spremulli said.

"How do you measure a person's horsepower mentally? You may have a
perfect personality and everything is in place - everything's ideal, but
[you] may be dumber than a bag of rocks. It is not just one factor; it's
the whole person. That's how we operate."

The assessment outcome is then carefully matched with the job.

"If the assessment is way off, then it is a deal breaker," Patterson

said.

Someone who is going to be an independent salesman working out

of his home 3,000 miles away from the office likely will have a much
different assessment than someone who will be working in the finance
department, for example.

Assessments Improve Efficiency

Both Patterson and CenturyLink's Blair also see assessments as a

way of cutting down on the number of resumes that must be reviewed,
for different reasons.
 Patterson said many applicants faced with an assessment will opt
not to pursue an application any further. Blair said in a large company,
which will often get 500 applications for a single position, tying an
assessment to a position and using research to identify the top 30 percent
reduces that number to 150 potential candidates, making it a more
manageable group.

Blair said assessments are useful after the hire, when comparing
later job performance to how an employee scored on a personality
assessment for a given position. Successful employees who scored high
and do well on the job mean that talent managers can predict similar
success for those who score similarly in the future.

"One thing we try to do here is rather than talk about someone who
performed better or didn't, or who stayed with the company longer or
didn't, we turn it into a dollar figure," Blair said. "Those who do better
mean better revenue and longevity as well, and we don't have to retrain
them."

He acknowledged that large companies like his - that make more

than 2,500 hires a year - often have their own in-house data to use. But
there is enough similarity in jobs, such as retail sales, that talent
managers can pull data from a variety of companies, organizations and
industries to predict what kinds of personality attributes they need to look
for.

Given the current state of assessment instruments, their

demonstrated accuracy and their ability to help predict performance,
talent managers are wise to continue to apply them in hiring. A disciplined
process supported by scientifically valid instruments is time consuming
and expensive, but the alternative is far more costly.

[About the Author: Paul M. Connolly is a licensed psychologist and

founder of Performance Programs Inc.]
10/15/2010