What’s in a name? Starbucks logo change stirs social media reaction

I haven't written a blog post for a while...*naughty me*... so here's one I wrote earlier this month for the Smith & Smith PR blog. It's not about Manchester, but it is about Starbucks. And there must be like a million Starbucks in Manchester, so it's totes relevant...Enjoy.

So, yet another company has changed its logo, creating a wave of online reactions. Starbucks has dropped its name from the emblem that adorns tens of thousands of spherical paper cups and kept the, um, the… ur… green Rapunzel princess with lobster claws as hands(??).

My Twitter feed has needed a triple espresso just to keep up with the reactions:

@monalis_solis clearly isn’t a fan of change, tweeting: “Oh no! How am I supposed to get used to this?”

While @LogoMotives is equally as perplexed as me as who or what the person in the picture is: “Starbucks logo always looked like woman holding legs in air to me.”

What’s in a name? Well @MikeBellTweets seems to think it’s everything, tweeting: “Starbucks logo has lost its identity.”

To some though, it appears it is a very weird and grotesque thing to have done. @autmurmis tweets: “Starbucks new logo makes me feel uncomfortable. Familiar yet distant. What’s wrong with them?”

Finally, @amylarrick probably thinks we should all grab a frappacino and chill out about it: “Not a huge change really I’m cool with it.”

I can’t help but remember the Gap logo fiasco(see Alex’s blog post “Online reputation – manage it, don’t damage it”). How long do we think it will be until Starbucks hosts an online poll to see whether or not they should change their logo again?