New Starbucks Logo: A Bad Idea?

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Yes. The new Starbucks logo, which drops the company name is a bad idea.

Dropping the "Starbucks" and the "Coffee" from their logo, and turning their symbolic mermaid into their well-known green coloring is not a strong enough change to create a usable "symbol only" corporate identity.

Chief executive Howard Schultz has the right idea about evolving the logo. His solution however shows some of the hubris that got the company into trouble a few years ago. If they want to evolve the name so the company can broaden its product line, they could have done so by dropping the word "coffee" from the Starbucks name.

Dropping the Starbucks name from their logo will only serve to confuse consumers who are not as familiar with the company and thus the target of a company trying to broaden its product line.

A corporate identity should follow a brand strategy, which should follow a business strategy. In this regard, Starbucks approached the identity change appropriately. Unfortunately, as many generals learn, the best strategy can go to hell quickly in battle. I think that is what happened here. Those who created the new corporate identity internally live and breathe the female siren symbol on a daily basis. So, in my opinion, there was no objectivity, no outside perspective on the decision to drop the name.

This symbol is not the Apple logo, which is an apple. It is not the golden arches of McDonalds. It is not the Nike, swoosh. All of these are very simple and clean symbols that evolved over time. The mermaid is a complex design and while most loyal customers will recognize this symbol as the coffee formerly known as Starbucks, it bucks the very strategy of why they needed to evolve the logo in the first place.

The only good thing coming out of this for Starbucks is the huge number of blogs and articles on the subject.

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What's Gone from the Starbucks Logo?

This article explains a few things about , and if you're interested, then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you don't know.



Truthfully, the only difference between you and experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to .

SEATTLE -- Starbucks (SBUX in stock market lingo) unveiled a new logo Wednesday that no longer includes the company’s name.

Starbucks' streamlined logo removes the outer green circle that bears the Starbucks Coffee name, enlarging the inner siren, sometimes referred to as a sea nymph, in the company's signature green hue.

In a video posted on the Starbucks Web site, CEO Howard Schultz talked about the decision to update its emblematic logo on the 40th anniversary of the company in March.

"This new evolution of the logo does two things that are very important," Schultz said. "It embraces and respects our heritage and at the same time evolves us to a point where we feel it's more suitable to the future."

The CEO pointed out that the original Starbucks logo was brown, but was changed to green in 1987. It has gone through two other small changes since then. But now "the world has changed and Starbucks has changed," he said.

"We've allowed her to come out of the circle in a way that I think gives us the freedom and flexibility to think beyond coffee," he said. "But make no mistake. We have been, we will continue to be, and we always will be the world's leading purveyor of the highest-quality coffee."

Starbucks said its brand is so ubiquitous it no longer needs to display its name around the logo in order for customers to recognize it. A logo without words also reflects Starbucks' expansion plans in China and other international markets.

The new logo is expected to be rolled out in stores in March.

Investors seemed unfazed by the news. Shortly before the market close, Starbucks shares edged 0.6% lower to $32.30 on Wednesday amid light trading. Not all corporate redesigns have come about so smoothly.

Just a week after a clandestine unveiling of a new logo on its Web site, Gap (GPS) announced in October it was backing off its new design.

"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," said Marka Hansen, the president of Gap Brand North America, in a statement posted on the company's Web site.

Within a day, the design community had pounced, with vitriol and mockery exploding on blogs and on Twitter. As Bobby Solomon on art and design blog Kitesunenoir.com put it, "This is some shabby work. . . . There was a lot of brand equity in that big blue square and they didn't move far away enough from the source for this logo to even begin to feel new or exciting."

Then, with the backlash building, Gap bactracked. The company took to its Facebook page and Twitter and declared that it was "thrilled to see passionate debates (about the logo) unfolding! . . . So much so, we're asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we'd like to see other ideas."

PepsiCo (PEP) had a similar blunder when it redesigned the packaging of its Tropicana Pure Premium orange-juice cartons. The lackluster redesign elicited private-label or generic supermarket-brand juice containers, not the iconic and well-loved Tropicana most consumers knew.

In February 2009, Pepsi executives admitted defeat and said they would bring back the look consumers really wanted -- the classic orange with a red-and-white-striped straw poking out.

Pepsi's SunChips brand even had to abandon its progressive, fully compostable bag, released last year, because consumers complained the bags were too noisy.

Clorox (CLX) unveiled its new logo in 2010 in what it called "the most dramatic change in its visual identity since 1957."

"Using an updated version of the company's iconic diamond mark, a brighter blue color and new accents of green, the logo better reflects the corporate brand today as it heads toward its centennial anniversary in 2013," the company said in a statement.

Customers didn't care too much. The bleach maker blamed sluggish demand when it said it would earn less than analysts had forecast in its fiscal second quarter.

Is there really any information about that is nonessential? We all see things from different angles, so something relatively insignificant to one may be crucial to another.