If Gap’s recent logo problems have taught us anything—it’s that whenever we create or refresh a brand, we must stop doing so on a superficial level (static logos, corporate boilerplates, websites, and static graphics) and start doing it at a social-impact level.

Steve McCallion, Executive Creative Director at Ziba Design—and who’s redefined and worked with clients like Sirius Satellite Radio, Xerox, Black & Decker, Whirlpool, FedEx, McDonald’s and Kenwood—is a guy who knows how to redefine brands in meaningful ways. And when it comes to Gap’s recent logo flop, he points to companies like Tropicana, Pepsi, AOL, and even Apple, in this Fast Company article, who have been raked over the coals for the same logo faux pas. “Unfortunately, these pundits are almost all talking about the wrong thing,” says McCallion, “especially in the recent Gap debacle…The ongoing debate indicates, more than anything [that] no one really cares about the logo anymore. Today, people are more interested in what a brand can do for them.”

He points to great brands like Nike, Etsy and Facebook that know their brand goes far beyond logos or advertisements. That’s why these companies put their efforts into creating brands with social relevance—meaning they invite participation and create value in unique and relevant ways. “The real reason the Gap logo failed,” says McCallion, “was that it wasn’t backed by any of this.”

According to McCallion, social brand platforms require these five key characteristics to succeed:

1. Useful – for example, Facebook helps people stay connected to friends and family.

2. Social – Nike+ lets individuals and friends compete and lets people track their mileage.

3. Living – Apple depends on their users to contribute and improve their app stores.

4. Layered – YouTube is a brand that offers three layers of involvement—creation (user-generated content), commenting (offering opinions) and consuming (reading).

5. Curated – Etsy aggregates and makes user-generated content easier to find for shoppers by offering various ways to search for hand-made products—by color, location, time, and editors’ picks.

So what do you think? Can you see how Gap would have saved a ton of dollars and time if they’d just used these 5 key characteristics to build social brand—rather than a superficial, new logo?