不能一味向顾客让步

不能一味向顾客让步
Listening to customers can be bad business
露西•凯拉韦
 
Last week, for the first time ever, the mob on Twitter and Facebook forced the management of a big company into defeat. This victory of democracy over autocracy was scored over something people feel strongly about: whether three letters belong inside or outside a box.
不久前，Twitter和Facebook的网民有史以来首次迫使一家大公司的管理层举起了白旗。这一民主对专制的胜利，源自人们对一件事的强烈关注：三个字母到底应该出现在方块里面还是外面。
For the past 20 years, the letters G-A-P have resided in a dark blue square, but two weeks ago the management of the clothing company announced that the letters had escaped and that a smaller blue square would henceforth sit above the P. All hell then broke loose. Thousands of people protested online and, a week later, Gap backed down. The big box was going to stay.
二十年来，在服装公司Gap的标识中，“G-a-p”三个字母一直放在一个深蓝色的方块里面。但4周前，该公司管理层宣布，三个字母将跳出方块，改为在字母“p”的上方压上一个小的蓝色方块。这一声明掀起了轩然大波，成千上万人在网上抗议。一周后，Gap打了退堂鼓，表示将沿用旧标识。
The new Gap logo was not obviously an improvement on the old one. And the sight of management listening to customers and accepting humiliation in order to satisfy them seemed like a good thing.
Gap的新标识较旧标识没有明显改进。而且让人看到管理层听取消费者意见、为迎合消费者喜好而妥协让步，似乎是件好事情。
Yet what happened was not really good at all. It isn’t progress when a company panics and surrenders when faced by an armchair army of protesters. It is feeble.
但所发生的事情根本算不上什么好事。面对只知空谈的抗议大军，一家公司惊慌失措地举手投降，这不是进步，而是软弱。
Compare Gap’s experience to that of PwC, which changed its logo two weeks earlier. The new PwC look is an even uglier version of the new Gap effort, with the letters in italicised lower case, and not one, but a whole jumble, of little boxes scattered over the C. This logo was launched old-style, with corporate fanfare and a statement of customary idiocy from senior management, followed by customary sniping from journalists and from a couple of tweeters (people don’t care as much about accountants as about jeans) and that was that.
我们把Gap这件事与普华永道(PwC)做个比较，后者近期也更换了标识。普华永道的新标识与Gap形似，只是更丑陋：三个斜体小写字母，一大堆（而不是一个）小方块散布在字母c上方。新标识的推出过程还是老一套：公司大张旗鼓地展示，高级管理层像往常一样发表蠢话连篇的声明，而后新闻记者和几个Twitter网民（对会计师的关心远远比不上对牛仔裤的关心）像往常一样冷嘲热讽。没什么新鲜的。
“We think our new brand expression visually distinguishes PwC in the same way that the quality and expertise of our people differentiates the experience of working with PwC,” said the firm’s chairman. Which is, of course, absolute, total tosh. Three little letters and some squares cannot say anything about quality or expertise at all.
普华永道董事长表示：“我们认为，新标识从视觉上突出了PwC，就像我们员工的素质和专业技能突显出他们在普华永道的工作经历一样。”当然，这绝对是胡扯。三个小小的字母和几个方块丝毫体现不了素质或专业技能。
But then logos are a fluffy subject; I have never heard anyone say anything that wasn’t daft about the thinking behind any change. This is because there never is any thinking, save the idea that it’s time to do something different.
相反，标识并不蕴含实际意义；所有人跟我谈过的关于更换标识背后的想法都是愚蠢的。这是因为，这背后根本就没有什么想法，只不过是有人觉得该换点花样了。
PwC’s management evidently judged that time had come, and knows that any fuss will quickly die down. One day people may even become fond of the nasty new look – to the extent to which it is possible to be fond of the logo of an accountancy firm, that is.
普华永道的管理层显然认为换花样的时机已到，并且知道，任何乱子都会很快消停下来。有朝一日，人们甚至可能会喜欢上恶心的新标识——这里的“喜欢”，是就会计师事务所标识可能的受欢迎度而言。
Now back to Gap.
现在回到Gap这件事上来。
Once Marka Hansen, the company’s president for North America, got wind of the scale of the protest, she wrote a piece on The Huffington Post defending the “contemporary and current” new logo. Her post is a marvel for students of corporate language, with its “living and breathing”, its “alignings”, and its “journeys”. But mainly it is remarkable for its disingenuousness. Ms Hansen was surely feeling shock and awe at how badly her new logo had gone down, but claimed to be delighted that everyone felt so “passionate” about it.
Gap北美区总裁马尔卡•汉森(Marka Hansen)风闻抗议的规模后，很快在《赫芬顿邮报》(The Huffington Post)上发表了一篇文章，为“具备当代色彩和潮流性”的新标识辩护。她的文章堪称企业语言学习者的难得教材，它“生动活泼”、“行文工整”、“意思通畅”。然而，该文最醒目的特色是言不由衷。汉森肯定对她公司的新标识如此不受欢迎感到惊恐，但却表示乐见人们如此“热烈”地关注此事。
The chummy message that she simultaneously posted on the company’s Facebook page was even more frightening for its attempt to get down with the kidz and talk the right chirpy language through gritted teeth: “Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”
汉森同时发布在公司Facebook页面上表示友好的帖子，则更加令人恐怖，因为它试图“咬牙切齿”地说出欢乐的话语：“感谢大家对新标识提的意见！我们知道新标识引发了许多争议，我们很高兴看到人们就此展开热烈的争论！我们喜欢我们的版本，但我们愿意考虑其它想法。请在未来几天里继续关注这一群策群力项目的详细进展。”
But even this didn’t work. The mob continued to show its passion by saying it hated the new design and, last Monday, she gave up.
但即使采取如此友好的姿态也不管用。网民们继续表达强烈不满，称自己憎恶新标识的设计。10月11日，汉森终于妥协了。
This time the tone was more like when Princess Diana had died. Ms Hansen spoke of the “outpouring of passion from customers” on the company’s old logo and solemnly announced that the letters would stay in the box after all.
这次的语气更像是黛安娜王妃(Princess Diana)辞世。汉森表示，“消费者（对公司旧标识）倾注了强烈的情感”，并郑重宣布，三个字母最终仍将留在深蓝色方块内。
She should not have capitulated. By letting tweeters see the whites of her eyes, she has done other companies a disservice. Now that the mob has got its way on this, it is going to be harder for other companies to insist on their management’s right to manage.
她不应该举手投降。她让网民看到了自己的胆怯，给其它公司帮了倒忙。由于网民们在这件事上得了逞，其它公司要坚持管理层的管理权，就会变得更加困难。
Listening to customers is one thing, when they are voting with their wallets. But company logos should not be designed democratically on Twitter. If managers allow themselves to be frightened of the tweeting mob, they will become emasculated, change will be even harder than it ever was, and the status quo will always prevail.
在消费者用对自己手中的钞票投票时，要听取他们的意见。但公司标识是另一回事，它的设计不应该在Twitter上以民主方式完成。如果公司管理层听任自己被Tweeter上的网民吓倒，他们将失去战斗力，变革将比以往更加艰难，现状将永远维持下去。
 
译者/汪洋