Starbucks Changes its Logo.
Psychoanalytic Thoughts on the Song of the Siren. By Janet Oakes March 2011

This morning something’s different, the tiniest ripple disturbs an ocean of contentment, Starbucks has introduced their new logo (March 7, 2011). It doesn’t say coffee anymore because the company is branching into other products, like alcohol. (Yes, you can see some of their new products at the liquor store. In countries where liquor laws are less stringent, some Starbuctheir coffee shops are beginning to serve alcohol.) 

The old logo’s design uses the circle within a circle, which has been an archetypal symbol for life from time immemorial and across cultures. The primal image of the breast and the nipple underpins other circle symbols from the natural environment, the sun and the moon. They represent life giving power, the mother, wholeness, and completeness associated with the early pleasure and satisfaction of suckling at the breast. Starbucks image goes further in inducing our deepest unconscious longings to return to a happy, blissful state. The siren lures us back to the oceanic state, sings us into our regressive desire to return to the womb. 

Sex sells, the mermaid has two tails which she holds open and apart with her hands, outside the frame of the circle (outside our consciousness) suggesting her welcoming us into her vagina, the passageway back to that primal sea. The symmetrical, curvaceous shape of her body defined by the undulating waves of her hair hypnotizes us into a blissful trance, Freud’s oceanic state. In psychoanalysis the aesthetic experience is understood as what resonates with the pleasurable rhythms of the body: the rhythmic movement of sucking at the breast, being rocked and sung lullabies, the rhythm of sexual intercourse, the song of the mother’s heart beat in the womb - where all needs are provided for, everything is given, there is no frustration or pain.

Starbucks logo elicits all these deep meanings. The face of the mermaid/seductress/mother is smiling, gentle, inviting, accepting. And to merge with her would mean sharing her crown of completeness, complete satisfaction- an omnipotent state of nirvana.

The older logo’s ‘lifesaver’ structure, the circle within the circle, carries multiple over determined associations and meanings, we look through a porthole, a window from within a womb like vessel that carries us along, or find a ‘life preserver ring’ if we feel we a drowning in the troubled seas of life. The life preserver will save us, Starbucks will throw us a life line, a reprieve - the coffee, familiarity and comfort will save us, buoy us up. 
The new logo, without this life ring or porthole (portal back to the womb), doesn’t need the outer circle to cling to; we are already so conditioned to familiar pleasures, we can enter directly into the inner circle of the call back to the womb. The product is moving from coffee, the stimulant effect, extra resource of adrenaline needed to combat danger and face challenges and the breast like comfort foods, pastries and sweets - to the narcotic lulling of alcohol, with it’s even more powerful, primitive addictive pull.