Starbucks Branding

by danniwilson87

STARBUCKS

From its beginnings as a single coffee shop in Seattle 35 years ago, Starbucks is now a global brand which uses design to aid the delivery of a distinctive service experience to its customers. The Starbucks Global Creative team manages regularly changing design themes while working within a global brand.

Starbucks has developed a strategy that allows it to balance regularly changing design themes with a consistent set of brand values, and it uses design as a way of aiding the delivery of a consistent service experience to its customers.

Starbucks has just unveiled it’s new brand identity that was created in house to celebrate it’s 40th Anniversary. The mermaid has evolved with less detail and a more simple look. The biggest change is the removal of the name, Starbucks, as well as the identifier of it’s purpose, coffee.

In my opinion 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.

Two other examples of Iconic branding changes are:

The new year is usually the time for television broadcasters to launch a new season identities or overhaul the brand identity. The last tv brand that hit the Australian with a bang was Channel 7′s brand change on the first day of a new millenia in 2000.

The new ABC brand has been launched with mixed reviews. A brand like the ABC has a lot of history, however over fifty years it has stayed almost the same, probably because it is a public service, rather than a commercial enterprise. The bigger-better-newer factor to attract high ratings and good advertisers isn’t a major factor influencing the development of the ABC’s marketing and brand.