Starbucks New Logo

Today saw the announcement that Starbucks are to change their logo by removing the words Starbucks and Coffee. The change will come into effect in March of this year. The change is not because their business model is not working, quite the contrary. Their Q4 results in 2010 showed growth in consolidated operating margin to 14.1% of sales, significantly ahead of the 8.2% we reported in Q4 of the prior year. Total revenues reported were $10.7bn. 

The centre piece of their logo is a siren, who has changed over the near 40 years that Starbucks has been in existence. According to popular mythology, sirens lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Will their siren alone still lure punters to their outlets, or will it turn off loyal Starbucks customers?

A changing logo is nothing new for Starbucks. Their siren has been stylised over time, her breasts covered by her hair and her tail and her navel removed. Some variations have also been used over time with the full siren being reintroduced on some cups in 2008 and conversely only her crown remained when introduced in Saudi Arabia in 2000.

The logo has been changed to allow Starbucks to further develop their product offering and extend this well beyond coffee. Starbucks Chief Executive, Howard Schultz, is reported to have said, Even though we have been and always will be a coffee company and retailer, it's possible we'll have other products with our name on it and no coffee in it.

Accepting that the new logo leaves the brand open to a wider audience with a wide range of written languages and digital media., how will it make people feel?

We all purchase products from time to time after making a decision on how the brand makes us feel, rather than how the product itself will make us feel. Consumers are today faced with considerable choice in the coffee market place and less and less product differentiation and in a lot of cases very similar price and service levels.

People will not always agree all of the time and changes like these will be raved about by some and lambasted by others.

Questions that are prompted by the change include:

1.) Does losing the lettering make the brand and offering less recognisable?
2.) Does the light and unframed imagery make the brand feel less robust?
3.) Does the change break the heritage of the brand?
4.) And most importantly, will the brand be valued less by customers?

Some companies have dropped their name from their logo successfully. Look at Shell, Vodafone and Apple for example. But do you think the Starbucks change will work for them? Time will tell and ultimately 2011 financial results. We prefer their old logo.