I’ll Take a Tall, Skinny Nameless Latte

So by eliminating its name and leaving its telltale green mermaid in its logo, is Starbucks trying to be like one of those cool, signless speakeasy-type bars that you have to know about? Could be. Modern companies seem to prefer simplicity, with the Nike swoosh and Apple’s bitten-into apple, speaking for themselves, for example.

“The mark is simpler, and simpler is better today. It’s bolder, and bolder is better today,” said Allen Adamson, managing director for the brand consulting services firm Landor Associates in New York. As Starbucks moves further into other products, it might be better that it not be associated strictly with coffee.

Logo changes are not new to Starbucks. Since it opened 40 years ago in Seattle, Starbucks has made four minor alterations to its logo.

But, the previous alterations took place in 1987 and 1992, long before java fans like Alice Bernik could take to Twitter or Facebook, where she wrote, “I hate the idea of changing the logo...NOOOOOOO.”

But there was some support too.

“Well I like the new logo—free the siren!” Colin Frolich wrote.

Welcome to marketing in the age of social networking.

“It’s a much more challenging environment for any company to make identity changes,” Adamson said. “In the world we’re living in today, you’re going to have some backseat drivers and Monday morning quarterbacks. Any change is going to offend some group of people and all of a sudden, all the people who don’t like change, have a microphone in front of them.”

This doesn’t mean companies should turn to the public for approval before they make changes. But it does mean that they should make sure that when they do make changes, they do so with “a fair degree of confidence” that they are the right changes to make, Adamson said.

And remember, he said. The naysayers are always the loudest.

With 16,000 stores in 50 countries, Starbucks' logo change doesn’t appear to be the disaster that it was for Gap, which ended up changing its logo back to the original.

Bottom line: You’re probably still going to have to wait on a long line at the airport for that latte with the siren on the cup.

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Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com