I don’t think so. I think its PR gurus headed off to a retreat to work out how to generate free publicity with the minimum of effort, downed a few double-strength lattés and gazed at the blue sky. And someone came up with a quite ingenious solution.

“Hey Lazarus,” said Destiny (she’s bound to be called Destiny), “why don’t we create a fake logo.”

“But, dear heart, for why?” (He’s bound to talk like a fool. I mean, just look at his name.)

“Everyone on the internet will hate it, beg that we go back to the old one, and we can then release a deeply apologetic press release with words like ‘iconic’ to describe the old logo.”

“Yeah, and ‘passionate’. I think I love you Destiny.”

Step 1: Gap quietly puts up new logo on its website, prompting the Huffington Post to quickly post a poll asking  its readers if it’s “awesome” or “terrible” (roughly 8 out of 9 say terrible).

Step 2: Comments abound on Gap’s Facebook page.

Step 3: Twitter account appears to protest against new logo.

Step 4: “Viral” site launched so people can create their own logo.

Step 5: Marka Hansen, president of Gap in North America, uses The Huffington Post to write a fluffy blog about the new logo in response to the criticism.

And so to today’s press release:

“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,” reads a statement from Hansen.

“Last week, we moved to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. 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.”

You want more? Sure you can take it? All right then:

“At Gap brand, our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.”

And, great news, they’re going to turn the icon red over the holiday season! It’s almost – almost – as if all this was pre-planned.

Just in case you think I’m being overly cynical, allow me to point out one further thing. Whilst this is going on, Gap is literally courting controversy by suing Gapnote for its shocking decision to include the word “gap” in its name.

Of course it could be coincidence; it could really be that Gap thought a logo in a basic font with a floating blue box behind it was the right image for the new millennium; and, equally, Liverpool could win the Premiership this season.

Of course, it’s all about the brand. Somewhere in a high-level board meeting, someone’s decided that the Windows brand is more important than the Microsoft brand, which is after all creaking at the seams now. There was a time when it was cutting edge to be SomethingSoft, but those were the days of the 80s when Rick Astley was an up-and-coming young hipster.

Take a look at the Microsoft ad - sorry, Windows ad – tomorrow night and I can guarantee you won’t see the word Microsoft once. All the email addresses that appear in trendy 50% transparency at the bottom-right of the screen when a new face appears will be xxx@windows.com, and the logo will be that familiar blue, green, red and yellow swirl.

Likewise, when I interviewed John Curran about the new ad, he mentioned the word Microsoft just once (”…with all the new innovations that Microsoft is driving out, we want to make sure folks are able to fully enjoy and take advantage of the technology…”), compared to mentioning Windows about 30 times.

This all makes sense, but Microsoft still has  issues with its branding. No-one out there on the street is talking about Live as a brand, yet Microsoft’s search offering is to be found at www.live.com. And what sits beside its search box? None other than the Windows logo. 

Unfortunately, Microsoft still hasn’t achieved great success when rebranding its other products. Hotmail is still Hotmail, not the Windows Live Hotmail Microsoft would like us to call it. People are still more likely to talk about MSN Messenger than Windows Live Messenger.

Compare that to Google – you don’t need to think twice about what URL to use for its search engine. All its services are preceded with the word “Google”. It’s all very obvious.

Microsoft is making the right moves, but it’s many years before it will match Google’s simplicity when it comes to branding. The only question is whether, in terms of the strength of the Windows brand among consumers, it has that much time.