News

Seattle's Best Coffee reinvents brand strategy

May 11, 2010

Seattle's Best Coffee, part of Starbucks Corp., has unveiled a new brand direction as part of its reinvention. The new brand identity, including a new logo, will play a key role in Seattle's Best Coffee's strategy to redefine the traditional conventions of the coffee category.

The brand transformation is being fueled by high-profile retail relationships and expanded franchising efforts that will increase its 3,000 points of distribution to more than 30,000 by the end of Starbucks fiscal year.

The brand has reached an agreement with AMC Theatres (AMC) to serve Seattle's Best Coffee at nearly 300 AMC Theatres nationwide beginning in July. Additionally, and as previously announced, Seattle's Best Coffee will also be offered at all U.S. Burger King restaurants by September.

"We are setting out to turn the traditional coffee model on its head with innovative new approaches in every phase of our business — partnerships, retail and packaged goods — and taking our premium coffee to the places our cus

tomers go in their everyday lives," Michelle Gass, president, Seattle's Best Coffee, said in a news release.

"Our new brand identity was inspired by the history of the Seattle's Best Coffee culture, one of optimism and fun," said Gass. "The new brand direction will bring a simplified approach to the coffee category in all the ways it will touch the customer."

The Seattle's Best Coffee logo's reinterpretation maintains the brand's historic association with its name and the color red while assembling a number of universal coffee symbols, such as a drop and a cup. The new logo was designed by Creature, an independent brand and advertising agency based in Seattle.

"Our ambitions for the new Seattle's Best Coffee brand are as significant as our aspirations to become a multi-billion dollar business, and we designed the new logo to one day become a universally recognized and reassuring symbol for great tasting coffee everywhere," Gass said.