Sunday, November 4, 2007

Starbucks Logo


Does it seem like Starbucks is everywhere? I feel like I see their logo everywhere I turn, from store fronts to ice cream cartons in the grocery store.

Have you ever wondered where the Starbucks logo came from? Take a look at it. What do you see?

I first saw a girl wearing a crown inside a green circle with Starbucks Coffee branded on it. Then I began to wonder what exactly was the point of their logo because this face did not seem to convey coffee in anyway. So I Google’d "Starbucks Logo" to find out exactly what this image meant (Google is my favorite online tool...I way overuse it!!).

Turns out this is not the first version of the Starbucks logo. Let me take you back to 1987, when the original owners of Starbucks decided to sell their coffee shop and Howard Schultz jumped at the opportunity to buy it. He currently owned an espresso café in Seattle named Il Giornarle. The original Starbucks Logo which was a UPS brown and originally named Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spices and featured a two-tailed mermaid, also known as a siren. The siren is a mythical creature whose stories tell of luring fisherman through song. Starbucks is using the lure of female sexuality to draw customers to the coffee (Brand Autopsy). This is not where hidden meaning behind the Starbucks logo ends.

Originally the owners wanted to name the coffee company "Moby's Coffee" but coffee drinkers did not positively associate coffee with a whale. However the Starbucks name still has a strong relation to Moby Dick because Starbucks was the name of the coffee drinking first mate in the novel. The name also brings up the idea of stardom and big bucks- two very appealing points to consumers. Still digging deeper into the full meaning of Starbucks, you can find a character named Mary Coffin Starbuck (in a novel named In the Heart of the Sea: the Epic True Story which inspired Moby Dick). When dissecting her name, associations to Mary Magdalene, death (coffin), and even sounds like "coffee" are present. This may seem like a stretch to explain Starbucks' success, but isn't a company with a market value of $20.9 billion worth analyzing? I think so.

"The mermaid/siren may be a vestige of ancient myth and folklore, but its lure is as pervasive and as powerful as ever," and can be seen through Starbucks success. However, some people believed the logo was too lurid and sexually suggestive so when Howard Schultz was combining the logos he used the waves of the siren hair to hide her breast and later cropped the image so now you can only see part of the siren's tails and no navel. Even through the progression of change, the meaning behind this symbol still seems to attract coffee drinkers everywhere. (The Mermaid)

19 comments:

Thulfiqar said...

thank you for these useful information. I need them to do my assignment. Thulfiqar

Alejandra Cardona said...

Hi believe it or not... it goes deeper than that...... there is buddu involved in that logo.

Unknown said...

buddu?

Unknown said...

i love you

Unknown said...

i love you

Dapoppins said...

Hey, Starbucks has become such a tradition for us for Christmas...now I have to have an ornament every year. Any way, when I googled it this post came up. Just wanted to let you know, I was going to link it so my 7 readers could read. LOL.

Unknown said...

Starbucks in Christmas? You silly sheep. Its owned by a JEW. The logo goes way deeper into the rabbit hole than Moby Dick. Nearly all of Starbucks profits goes to Israel. Keep supporting Zionism by drinking this crap.

Unknown said...

Starbucks in Christmas? You silly sheep. Its owned by a JEW. The logo goes way deeper into the rabbit hole than Moby Dick. Nearly all of Starbucks profits goes to Israel. Keep supporting Zionism by drinking this crap.

Unknown said...

Starbucks in Christmas? You silly sheep. Its owned by a JEW. The logo goes way deeper into the rabbit hole than Moby Dick. Nearly all of Starbucks profits goes to Israel. Keep supporting Zionism by drinking this crap.

Unknown said...

I want to link it to this Coffee Beans Blog for Starbucks coffee drinkers. http://www.gobeans.com

funattherun said...

You mean voodoo dumb ass

Unknown said...

very interesting! :) thanks

Sara Cristine said...

What's the end of the story? I've always felt a little uneasy about the logo. After seeing this article and the entire logo picture - I just came to a dilemma. I love my frap but what to do? I hate these 'weird' meanings about stuff... I can't decide if I should keep having my Starbucks Frap or not.

Yszah P. said...

The girl in the Starbucks logo is Queen Esther. Do you know who Queen Esther was and what the crown on her head means? This is the crown of the Persian kingdom. This queen is the queen of the Jews. She is mentioned in the Torah, in the Book of Esther. The girl you see is Esther, the queen of the Jews in Persia."

Aaron said...

I don't know about the name Starbucks, but the logo is a geometric sigil with proportions to the golden mean ratio similar to the designs on money ect. Thats why you get so crazy about Starbucks the same way you do about money.

blu_eyez05 said...

Starbucks and McDonalds are the biggest supporters of Israel in the world. Everytime you purchase a stupidly-named-coffee-that-tastes-exacly-the-same-as-a-cheap-brand-coffee, just remember you are feeding into the capitalist, zionist-supporting system... ''Have a nice day now''.

Kenia Beena said...

you are a wealth of knowledge--I'm sure there's more to the story; however, you covered what I needed to know.

yasmeeeenah said...

today i bought a starbucks tumbler... and after all these comments.. i feel guilty about it

Varon Cook said...

Knowing that Starbucks supports Zionism just makes me want to support it more. I'm not a jew, but I love the nation of Israel. It's their nation, stop giving in to these belly aching palestinian muslims.