Why is Brand Identity important to a company?

Brand Identity: Why is it okay for Starbucks to partially cut the rounded company logo on its cardboard cup holders and other merchandising items?

• Many brand identity experts insist on keeping the integrity of the logo at all times.

• Answer:

  The advice not to "compromise the integrity of a brand logo" applies primarily to young, not-yet-established brands.  Brands that are well-established can actually broaden their brand identity by distilling it to its most distinguishable, identifiable components and riffing on that in some way.  For Starbucks, this is the well-established head, upper body, and tail of the siren that has graced its logo in some form since their founding.  For Snickers, it's a font and a quartet of colors. I'm sure we all remember their ad campaign a few years ago in which they printed made up words (e.g. "Snackonomics") in the same font and colors as their brand; everyone knew exactly what those ads were promoting without any additional detail.  The Apple logo has been simplified dramatically over the years, as well.  Brand simplification occurs to a great portion of successful business logos, for all sorts of reasons. Obviously, you don't want to do this unless your brand is already a "household name", but that's absolutely not a problem for Starbucks.