Caribou Coffee customers in all stores nationwide will notice a new coffee-centric logo on their cups beginning March 1. As part of the company's strategy to enhance its brand position and engage customers, the 17-year-old concept has undergone a makeover that will roll out during 2010 and into early 2011.
"We saw an opportunity to better express who we are and what we believe in as a company across all interactions with our customers," said Alfredo Martel, senior vice president of marketing. "The new elements of our brand give us an opportunity to do that and to ask our customers to explore and share what ‘staying awake' means in their lives."
The new look features a new logo, color palette and design elements that bring fresh energy and broader context to the existing tagline: Life is short. Stay awake for it. The change reflects other transformations the company initiated in late 2009. In November, it announced a reformulation of its mochas and chocolate beverages to utilize real, all-natural chocolate, and in January introduced handcrafted oatmeal. The company also has been testing in-store baked pastry items at 25 Minneapolis locations.
Matt Spanjers, Caribou's senior director of retail marketing, said the company has been working on improving the guest experience for nearly a year, and the improvements are part of an overall brand reinvigoration.
"I really don't think of this as a change in direction, but rather it's about a more modern representation of what the brand has been about for a long time," he said. "A lot of other transformations are still in the pipeline."
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Shifting gears
Since Caribou Coffee CEO Mike Tattersfield's arrival in August 2008, Caribou has shifted focus away from expansion. Instead, the company's new strategy is based on elevating the brand experience.
Central to this new rebranding, the company's logo has been adapted to a simpler but playful representation of the brand's key identification: the caribou. The leaping caribou is now a coffee–brown color and in the brand's playful nature, is assembled out of graphic elements, including a coffee bean at the heart of the animal and "C" shaped antlers. The caribou also now leaps to the right, signifying the company's vision and movement toward the future.
The shield element in the original logo has been updated to a rich blue color with a new shape that echoes the shape of national park system signage, a nod to the Caribou founders' hike in Alaska's Denali National Park where they were inspired to begin the company.
"As we explored new versions of the central elements of the brand, we made sure to stay true to the heart of our company and the vision in which it was founded. We are a brand that embraces living life to the fullest, regardless of what it is that you are passionate about," Martel said. "In Caribou's case, it's passion to deliver the highest quality coffee and the best customer experience."
Brand overhauls
Caribou is one of several brands launching new logos and/or store designs to improve the customer experience.
Fazoli's recently introduced a new prototype and menu while Tijuana Flats also has rolled out several new menu items.
"Smart operators are using the downtime with slower sales/traffic to tweak their communications with guests, and they realize that if they do create an emotional connection it will be the brand consumers choose when they finally go out to eat," said Linda Duke, founder and principal of Duke Marketing.
For Fazoli's, the launch of the new menu has paid off. In November 2009, the company marked the first time in 35 months that its brand was guest-count positive over the previous year.
"The new menu launch was just the beginning of our revitalization process, as we are continuing with aggressive modifications to our menu offerings," Howard said. "We have several new innovative food product lines in market test that will be introduced later this year. In addition to our culinary improvements, we are exploring changes to our service and plateware."
