By now you've heard that Gap is keeping its old logo.  And that they were really close to making a grave mistake.  It was not a social marketing ploy, although some thought that was the case.

Problem is, even with not changing their identity, they still have a massive identity problem.  And I'm not talking about their graphic identity.

I'm talking about Identity identity.  Who they are.  Who they are for.  Why they exist.  Why anyone should care.

The sad fact is, Gap brand has not had consecutive quarters of positive growth for years.  Not quarters, years!  And the growth it had a decade or more ago was largely due to new store openings, not real organic growth and demand.

I'm not talking out of school here…my experience as the EVP of Global Marketing for Gap has nothing to do with this except I have a few dear friends that still work there, and I desperately want the brand to be relevant again.

My issue is this - Gap consistently avoids the really hard decisions required to get the business back on track.

Who is Gap for anymore?  You can't build an apparel brand trying to be relevant to my wife and my daughters.

What is their value proposition in a world where they are too big to be fashion-forward, and too expensive to be value-oriented?

What about all the bad stores in all the bad locations?

Why do they exist in a world today with really great, very clearly positioned specialty retailers?

What about fit and quality?

As I've already said over the last few days as this debacle unfolded, the great irony to me is this:  if consumers showed their passion for Gap by expressing their love for the "old" identity, why do they not show their passion by shopping at the stores?

America wants Gap to win, as do I.  But they must think more about the strategy for the business, not the upcoming season, and give the world a clear sense of their true identity.

If not, I literally see the day when Gap is either an outlet-only brand or goes in the direction of many other storied businesses that now cease to exist.

Last night our own Nick Jones started a firestorm when with a single tweet drove nearly 100,000 visitors to his site, www.narrowdesign.com/future, in about 24 hours.

His revelation was our inspiration - to design a website for McKinney that demonstrated our understanding of user experience and the massive move to mobile happening in the world.

Now, David Teicher of ADAGE has called out a number of agencies who's mobile sites are varying degrees of usable, jumbled or inaccessible.  The retweets and blog posts are growing too fast to count.  What an amazing reminder of the absolutely true power of social media.

http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=145956

Our desire to simply create a better user experience for more people on more screens has turned into a rally cry for the entire industry!

Well done, McKinney.

Late last week I was asked to comment about behavioral economics on the heels of the Obama administration reporting in Business Week how it had impacted their decision making.

To be clear, i'm a believer.  Have been since Freakonomics.  Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational has been the most concrete and inspiring account of this field for me, personally.

Like i say in the article, behavioral economics gives PhD credibility and academic rigor to intuition and what smart marketers have been trying to practice for ever. 

http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=145091

The progress we have made over the last eight years toward being an agency that fundamentally operates real time shaping and participating in consumer conversations has been nothing short of very hard work.  I call it McKinney 2.0, and it was a huge leap forward from the prior decades.

We probably had an easier start than many agencies because we didn't have to break down silos or collapse business unit P&L's because we never had them.  But it did require an orientation shift, big bets and a belief in where this business was headed.

Lately, however, it seems like I've seen a rash of holding company babble about new "chiefs of things" that are supposed to come in and make networks integrated or digital or something other than irrelevant.

ADWEEK, May 11, 2010:  UM's Daryl Lee becomes Worldgroup's chief integration architect

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i1ad262646f40d099b24b73b0885a480f

ADWEEK, May 10, 2010:  The twisting path to new agency models

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ieedb56d6b7d314952ff36536412ceca9

Unfortunately, the list goes on...

What strikes me is this is not a new trend.  It's easy to find links dating back 5-7 years ago as "major" agencies hired major talent to solve their integration woes.  You know the drill, hire rock star up-and-comer to walk into a new holding company or network and make people integrate.

This has not and does not work (see link above about TBWA's 10 Digital Artist superstars).

Integration, and particularly digitally-centered integration, is more orientation than mandate.  It's more bottoms-up than top-down.  It's more spontaneous than planned.  It's more consumer-driven than process-driven.

We fundamentally believe and require digital competency for every role and level in the agency.  We start everything with the business opportunity (not the brand or consumer).  We approach creative development based on a Conversation Architecture - a deliberate and flexible tool created to help our clients' brands engage consumers.  We're really clear on what we do and don't do as an agency...and have killer partners to fill the gaps.  We do more every day to learn and optimize our work.  We put in place process to prevent chaos.  Etc., etc.

Yet, despite all we have done, we are not done.  We have more work to do. 

One thing this new world requires is a constant look ahead.  Clients want to build their brands and create demand.  They understand the power of emotional connections and the reality of daily results. 

I'm ready for McKinney 3.0...the even faster, more big-idea-integrated and more digitally savvy version of us!

I'm incredibly restless about figuring out what is next, and I know that mastering this new world doesn't happen by one "chief" no matter how big the title or stick.

On a recent internal email exchange with folks in the interactive community, I felt compelled to pile on.

The topic was the current mckinney.com and the fact that this site used Papervision3d and a totally new approach to navigation.  It was a reinvention in its own way.

Unfortunately, I have been a vocal critic of the site when I think about its intended audiences.  But I've never been critical of the fact we took the chance, we set a high bar and were not afraid to fail.

As a leader of this agency and one of its owners I'm constantly wondering what I'm doing/not doing/should be doing to help us fail forward more often.  I'm not sure I'll ever know THE answer to this.  But I do know that I've never been afraid to fail.  I've failed a lot.  And I've learned more from failure than success.

I also believe, from my experience, that failing forward happens most and best when people take it upon themselves to make shit happen...not waiting to be told or asking for permission.

Here's to failing more, learning a lot and moving forward!

There is no way I can be objective about this.  I'd buy the Apple house if they made one, and upgrade it every time I was notified.  Seriously.

Let me also say that this is not my first experience with tablets.  In 2003 while President and CEO of LB Works we were selected by Microsoft as the professional services industry vertical for a pilot program.  We gave the Compaq Tablet PC to account planning, account management and creative.  The hardware was junk.  The software was first generation.  The idea was brilliant and one that people loved!

Over the last 5-7 years we've become an iMac, MacBook Pro, AppleTV, iPhone, multiple iPod household.  I've got this lonely Lenovo ThinkPad on my desk at work just to ensure I don't show massive signs of complete addiction.

The "out of the box" experience with Apple is typically pretty special, albeit simple.  Opening the iPad box was just the same, but even more simple.  What struck me was the absence of all forms of instructions other than classic Apple card.  No manual.  No operating system CD.  I picked up the iPad, pressed the home button and immediately begin using the device.  The iPhone had trained me well.  By contrast, with the pilot program referenced above, I was sent to Microsoft for training!    

Within :30 minutes I had synced with iTunes, downloaded several iPad specific applications and was sitting on the couch holding the internet in my hands. 

Holding the internet in my hands.

I know no other way to describe it than that.  I literally found myself interacting with the web in a way that simply isn't possible on a laptop or with a mouse and keyboard.

I also found myself walking around the kitchen watching television.  Not walking around and watching the television on my wall - walking around and carrying television with me.  Thanks to the free ABC application, I was standing at the counter making dinner with the iPad setting next to the cutting board and watching the last episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. 

Television lying next to the cutting board.  Holy shit!

Having met and presented to Steve Jobs on two occasions when I was at Gap, I have just a tiny bit of an understanding of his obsession for simplicity and the human experience.  So while I'm not surprised at my initial iPad experience, once again I am WOWed!

What's funny is a couple days before receiving my iPad I read this article in Time:   http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1976932,00.html

Like many people, the author was really trying to understand who the iPad is for and what it does.  Now that I've had a few hours with it I can answer both questions definitively.  Who's it for?  Apple made it feel like it's incredibly personal and for me.  What does it do?  It makes me feel very good and completely changes the way I interact with content.  Not too shabby for v1.0!

I think the real "unspoken" genius of the iPad is that Apple is creating the most intuitive, most user-centered, most human user interface we've ever known -- our hands!  The iPhone trained us to use our fingers to control media -- think about it, we never flipped or pinched before the iPhone (you know what I mean!).  Scrolling took on a whole new meaning.  What the iPad is sure to create is a new user interface where the screen and all media are literally, in our hands.  Who knows what kinds of applications can be created when keyboards and mice disappear...and everything we do is with gestures...soon to be eye, thought, motion gestures!

I confess, I'm addicted to golf and anything Apple.  I guess as "transgressions" go, that's not so bad!

Well today I met my maker - a glimpse at the kind of content being created specifically for tablets.  While it was a relatively primitive video, a friend from Golf Digest showed me what was presented at this year's PGA show in Orlando - the way Golf Digest will be created for iPad.

Conde Nast has made a few public statements about this for Wired magazine http://www.switched.com/2010/02/17/wired-takes-ipad-to-task-with-impressive-tablet-app/  and there are a few other bad videos online too.

To me, "magazine" content on an iPad is the melding of the aesthetics and storytelling of print with the emotional power of video with the instant-access-to-anything-ness of the web, all in the palm of your hands on what appears to be a very intuitive device.

Imagine being able to "tear" pages of a magazine and save them digitally with a swipe.  Or being able to double-tap content and instantly share it socially via Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Or uploading my golf swing and comparing it to Michael Jordan's while reading an article about him.  Or being able to view products in ads in a 360-degree view and turning them with my finger.  Or having what appears to be a print ad turn into video with a finger swipe.  The possibilities are endless and we're just getting started!

There will be real barriers initially in terms of hardware pricing, service plans, etc.  But I think this will be the end of many magazines while simultaneously being the second coming of the publishing business.

For me, bringing golf and technology together like this is a match made in heaven.  And I cannot wait!

I had the honor and pleasure of spending most of yesterday at the North Carolina Central University School of Business. 

Twice a year they host the Management Professionals Forum and I was the 2nd of 6 business leaders sharing why I think i have the best possible profession.

I have to say, I was expecting this to be a "speech" and it turned out to be an incredibly well organized, student-led, forum to prepare the attendees for what is ahead.  Everyone came in business attire.  The entire auditorium stood to welcome me to the stage.  I had lunch with approximately 12 students where we discussed the industry, trends and tips for landing their first jobs. 

Having the chance to spend time in the classroom is one of the most rewarding and fulfiling aspects of life in the Triangle for me.  This opportunity at NCCU was won of the most special experiences I can remember in a long, long time.

Thanks to the University for having me.  And a special thanks to the student organizers who made me feel incredibly welcome all day!

I couldn't sleep last night, literally wide awake ALL night (this will be very ironic in a second).  At about 1:45AM I went to my home office and checked email (why, I don't know), checked Facebook, watched a few iWeb tutorials on my Mac and ultimately went back to bed at 3AM where I turned on television.  Right before my eyes was a PBS Frontline program called Digital Nation.  As it turns out, the show was about me.  Seriously, I saw myself in a scary way...as a technology user, as a marketer, as a parent.  There is no question the digital tsunami is coming.  What this show revealed to me was what it might be like in a few years when the barrel crashes and we push through the back of the wave.  I'm thrilled by all the new possibilities technology brings...and now super aware of some of the potential downsides in the years ahead.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/