With great fanfare, Starbucks just launched a logo redesign and lauded themselves for doing it: “I’ve never been more excited about the future of the company,” exulted CEO Howard Schultz.
On the left is what he’s seeing. But over here on the right is what I’m seeing.
Deja Vu? Or as George Carlin once chortled in a joke, “Vuja De, which means I wish we’d never been here before!”
What see you?
Bowmanifesto 
Hmmm… The Gap?
Believe me, I’m the first one to decry frivolous intrusions on valuable, hard-won brand equity (the GAP logo change/unchanged? Complete and utter fiasco). But with this change there is clearly some smart marketing strategy at work. The change to the Starbucks logo essentially involves removing the brand name and the word “coffee.” The wisdom in removing the brand name is debatable, I suppose, but others have pointed out it doesn’t seem to hinder Nike or McDonalds. Further including “coffee” in the logo is a bit constricting, no? Imagine the Nike logo including “shoes” or McDonalds featuring “hamburgers.” Clearly those brands are about so much more than those one dimensional offerings. I’d argue that Starbucks is no different. So, while the GAP logo shenanigans were clearly change for change sake, this, I think is much more a step forward.
Interesting debate here. I’m not questioning that Starbucks can’t seek a bigger potential for their brand. I just see their redesign and hoopla taking place in a larger context of two underlying cultural tectonics. Two major questions:
1) Who really controls brands now — People or Producers?
2) In this Decade of The Tens, what do we crave — Change or Continuity?