Could Starbucks go from catering to ‘familiar strangers’ to becoming ‘strangely familiar’ to its customers?
Organizations have to update their visual identity from time to time.
Yellow Pages had to evolve, as it no longer dropped these thick phone books at your door allowing your fingers to do the walking.
Federal Express went short when it decided to be called what people called it; FedEx. Gaz Métropolitain did the same in Québec; Gaz Métro.
Tim Horton’s dropped the apostrophe when it moved into Québec; Tim Hortons.
Some brands try to look younger by contemporizing their identity with what is essentially minor surgery. Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima had makeovers over the years.
Others end up looking older and perhaps wiser by reclaiming parts of their past with references to their heritage.
Others have no choice but to create something new following a “merger of equals” which it rarely is.
I get that Starbucks wants to align its visual identity with its strategic direction of broadening its core business beyond coffee. But I’m not so sure that this requires the coffee chain to drop both its name and the word coffee from its logo. Academics were quoted yesterday in the extensive press coverage the change is generating (the change's real purpose?) saying that Starbucks is more than coffee, it’s an experience. True. But it’s likely to remain an experience rooted in coffee culture for a long time. Starbucks coined an expression to refer to this experience: the familiar stranger. A reference to regular customers known to baristas only by the way they take their coffee. Let’s hope Starbucks doesn’t become simply strangely familiar to its customers.
By the way, I was interviewed on French CBC radio this morning on this topic. It’s called Radio-Canada despite being in the television and webTV business…
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Here's a very clever take on what we can expect next from Starbucks - by Tim Nudd on Adfreak.com
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