About the New Starbucks Logo…

So it’s all over the Inter­net about the new Star­bucks logo com­ing in March 2011, with an announce­ment in which the com­pany specif­i­cally stated they are not The Gap, refer­ring to The Gap logo fiasco of last year when they unveiled a new logo, which Van­ity Fair called a “sym­bol of cor­po­rate banal­ity”. I take their dis­claimer to mean that, unlike The Gap, Star­bucks won’t have the good sense to can the whole idea based on over­whelm­ing neg­a­tive cus­tomer response. So is it much ado about nothing?

Reading the Signs

I’m sit­ting in a down­town Star­bucks in Win­nipeg, doing some online work, drink­ing a cof­fee. There’s a sign on the door out­side, and another one on the sec­ond door in the entry­way that says “Atten­tion Cus­tomers: Due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties we will ONLY be accept­ing credit, debit, or Star­bucks cards. NO CASH!! Sorry for the incon­ve­nience — Team Broad­way”. I should men­tion that the all-caps words are high­lighted in orange and green, and double-underlined.

Every­one (well, almost) stops to read the first sign, stand­ing out­doors, some­times hold­ing the door open as they read. Those who skip the first sign will usu­ally do the same process at the sec­ond sign. And in case you ignored both of those, there’s one on the cash register.

The Starbucks Screwup Story

As I tweeted this morn­ing, starbucks_logo I was appre­ci­at­ing Star­bucks cus­tomer ser­vice. But it didn’t start that way. I ordered a Venti Pike Place and a low-fat blue­berry muf­fin, and paid with my pre­paid Star­bucks card, but the cof­fee hadn’t quite fin­ished brew­ing. No prob­lem, at least it’d be fresh. The barista was going to bring out my cof­fee when it was ready, so I took a seat in the comfy arm­chair and opened up The Whuffie Fac­tor, which I’m still read­ing and enjoy­ing. I dug into my book, think­ing after a while that my cof­fee must have been ready a while ago. I admit I was a lit­tle annoyed… the last time I had to wait for a cof­fee at Star­bucks, they told me it would be com­pli­men­tary. I was impressed with that — dif­fer­ent loca­tion though.

Think Differently

Keep an open mind. Keep asking why, and be open to change. Get a fresh set of eyes as often as you need them. Failing to do these means failing to solve the problems we face (large or small) and failing to reach our potential. The consequences may range from disastrous to astounding.