Starbucks’ New Logo – Boredom Strikes

 

What Changes?
As depicted in the pictures, Starbucks has decided to crop-out the green outer ring and the ‘starbucks coffee’ wording. It also loose the black background behind the Siren (the mermaid) and pull her out instead in one clear clean white background while maintaining the circular form. This has been their fourth official new logo in the successful forty years of journey. Now let’s get down to business and answer the fundamental question everyone’s is pondering.

Why?
The official Starbucks statement answers:

“Our new evolution liberates the Siren from the outer ring, making her the true, welcoming face of Starbucks. For people all over the globe, she is a signal of the world’s finest coffee – and much more. She stands unbound, sharing our stories, inviting all of us in to explore, to find something new and to connect with each other. And as always, she is urging all of us forward to the next thing. After all, who can resist her?”

Now, that is the official mumbo-jumbo, here’s the true reason behind, comes forward from the CEO itself, Howard Schultz in a short video, and it comes out at the last second of it:

“What I think we’ve done is we allowed her to come out and gives us the freedom and flexibility to think beyond coffee.”

Boredom Strikes
As with anything new, there’s always pros and cons. Just as Facebook changes its page every once in a while and there’s always people hating it, but give it time to get used to it, they’ll enjoy themselves already. Therefore, this discussion of yes and no is off limit for me. What I see is beyond that.

The new Starbucks logo comes together in part of their 40th anniversary in March. Not a coffee aficionado myself, but I’m kinda have enough of Starbucks and its hype over the years. Face it, they’ve become the largest coffee franchise. At this stage, the only growth they can make is add some more Starbucks shop every couple blocks away in untouched cities all over the world, shut ‘em off if its not profitable and move location until deemed profitable. Or, innovate new drinks every once in a while.

How boring is that?

Therefore the change, it is natural. The curiously similar case proven successful before is Nike. Started out with the NIKE word and the check mark in 1971, they eventually lose the wording out and simply use the swoosh design in 1995. It has made the brand stronger than it ever been.

What Good Is Has Brought (So Far)?
First and foremost, publicity. This is perfect timing. Twenty-eleven with social media users growing rapidly. Facebook and its 600 million user. Twitter with 200 million. Just imagine the amount of buzz it has created over one week and they don’t have to pay any cent for that. Invite a mass of media for a press conference. And there you go free advertising for Starbucks.

Second. Being ahead of the competition. Starbucks claimed that the new expanded version of its business will roll out eventually sometime in spring. While others are still sitting on a quiet afternoon, sipping their cup of tea and coffee, Starbucks has given them a shock-therapy. Yes, the competitors just jumped out of their chairs, spill the coffee on themselves, and caught lazying.

Third. One atomic wipeout of cheap copycats. We’ve seen coffeeshop around the world, tweaking Starbucks previous logo a little bit and made it their own. Change the color, change the word, make the line thinner, the circle bigger, endless line of possible imitation. But now, they all meant nothing, since the leader that they follow has changed it all once and for all. There’s no possible way to re-create the mermaid. Now everybody knows, if its the mermaid, its Starbucks, other than that, its just another bad coffee.

All in All
And so they decided to step into a different world. Beyond their little kitchen. Will it be successful? I don’t know. I personally think any brand should focus on one keyword. For Starbucks it’s ‘coffee experience’. To reach other business, I suggest new brand but I’m just gonna leave it at that. Don’t overthink it, they have another 40 years to proof.

Smile on, Shine on
Fellexandro Ruby
Snack on my tweets @captainruby

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