Myntra was extremely stupid to bow down to a hyperfeminist’s demands. Because every logo can offend us if we look a little closely

After a complaint by a hyperfeminist, E-Commerce portal, Myntra has decided to change its logo nearly 14 years after its inception. By surrendering its logo, Myntra has set a wrong example for other brands as now every logo can offend if we were to look closely.

Naaz Patel, who runs an NGO called Avesta Foundation, in December last year, filed a complaint with the Maharashtra Cyber Police where she alleged that Myntra’s signage was “insulting and offensive” towards women. In her complaint, she demanded the removal of the logo of the Flipkart owned company as she claimed that the old logo resembled a naked woman.

After being informed about the complaint, Myntra was quick to comply and subtly change its logo – which had earned a tremendous brand recall since its inception in 2007.

Any student of marketing will tell you about the importance of logos in the process of brand-building and it is safe to say that Myntra would have spent crores in developing and subsequently marketing its logos to its consumers to earn top of the mind recall. However, all the hard work of its employees, time and money have been wasted thanks to Patel’s overactive imagination.

Myntra perhaps wanted to avoid any controversy or a long drawn court battle and hence quickly drew a line right in the middle of their logo and hence, revamp its old logo. However, this was a naive thing to do, as if brands start catering to the whims and fancy of every individual, they can kiss goodbye to their hopes of running a successful business.

While brands like Myntra would certainly have the resources to fight it legally, had the brand chosen to do it, the country’s startups can be the next victim of such activism. Only a select few of the country’s startups would have the means to fight a court battle while the rest would be caught in a virtuous cycle of changing their logo thanks to Myntra, as if one looks closely, every logo can offend somebody in a country of over a billion people.

Patel’s overactive imagination shouldn’t have been entertained by Myntra and unfortunately, is a big disservice to the cause of women empowerment as real issues are now taking a back seat with arms chair feminism taking precedence.

If one were to think like Patel, it would not be far fetched to say that the Amazon logo is insulting to men?

Patel’s hyper feminism can open the floodgates as with their tagline various brands can be in serious danger. Even brands like Kurkure use a tagline along the same lines.

Some other examples include:

“Keep Playing”: Red FM
“Just Do It”: Nike
“Do More Intent”: Max Life Insurance
“Overnight Dhishum Dhishum”: Pepsodent

While people like Patel are adept at making merry out of absolute non-issues they usually look the other way where misogyny and explicit content is freely promoted in Bollywood with case in point being songs like “Gandi Baat”, “Chikni Chameli”, and almost all the item songs made in the previous decade. The objectification of women in Bollywood is particularly glaring yet no one has attempted to make the industry course-correct its way. The less said about some of the Punjabi songs, the better.

At this rate, hyperfeminist activists like Patel can make a career for themselves by targeting brands, their logos and taglines. It can well prove to be a money-spinning profession with firms deploying such tactics to dissuade their competition and trapping them in needless controversy. Such activists should instead focus on real issues of anti-feminism prevalent in the country like Triple Talaq, Halala, and Love Jihad.

For Myntra to bow down to such activists will give help them continue creating futile controversies, ignoring the real issues which await attention of the masses. The E-Commerce portal thus sets a bad precedence for other brands and will give a free hand to such NGOs which would continue taking on big corporates to gain attention and create similar controversies in the future.