I must confess something I’m not proud of thinking. When I heard that PepsiCo’s sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line had taken a 20% dive after their failed package redesign attempt, a mischievous smirk found its way across my face. Especially within the last few years, I’ve been watching long-established brands take a misguided route to ‘refreshing’ their image. And as we can see in the case of Tropicana, poor planning on a brand redesign project can not only hurt a brand, but it can give their competitors a boost in market share.
For those of you not following the story, Tropicana teamed up with Omnicom’s Arnell Group to update the Tropicana Pure Premium refrigerated orange juice carton. Everything about the carton design changed, including the disappearance of the iconic ‘straw through the orange’ logo. The reconstructed design featured a close-up shot of a glass containing an orange liquid, presumably juice. Big mistake!
In a press conference defending the change, Peter Arnell, CEO of Omnicom’s Arnell Group, hinted at a motivation for doing away with the logo:
…historically, we always show the outside of the orange. What was fascinating, of course, is that we never show the product called the juice.
To me, this is not fascinating at all. Why? Because the focus shouldn’t really be on the product anyway; it should be on how the consumer benefits from using that product. There are many juices on the market. Some are 100% fruit while others are made of water and corn syrup. How does an image of an orange-colored liquid differentiate Tropicana’s juice from all the other juices available in the market?
The point of the ‘straw through the orange’ logo was to express that Tropicana’s orange juice is pure, natural, fresh, healthy, etc. In essence, the logo says — ‘this is the shortest path to pure nature.’ By simply looking at the logo, consumers knew exactly what they were getting. This is not the case with the new logo.
In the end, the consumers reacted by buying less Tropicana and switching to different brands of juice. Sales suffered, and, a bit of the brand image suffered as well.
Rather than hand over control of their marketing message to Omnicom’s Arnell Group , Tropicana should have kept in mind the following:
- Refreshing a brand does not always mean a total overhaul is necessary.
- Consumer focus groups can help steer the direction of a redesign and predict the success of a rebranding campaign.
- Don’t forget to leverage existing brand equity.
- Don’t forget the core concept/purpose of your brand.
Where do you think Tropicana’s rebranding/redesign effort went wrong?
2 Comments
Great post, Cynthia! I too was confused by Tropicana’s seemingly sudden, and in my opinion totally unnecessary, rebranding decision. I was at the store a few days ago and saw the new packaging. At first glance, I thought it was a generic or store brand. The color of the juice pictured in the glass appeared pale and anemic compared to the vibrant orange of their previous packaging. Consequently, it made me think they had watered down or changed the juice somehow as well! Needless to say, there was nothing that compelled me to select Tropicana over any of the competing orange juice products that day. I hope they’ve learned a valuable lesson from this.
I agree with you that it wasn’t a very wise move Tropicana took of their rebranding decision. I had a similar reaction to what Eric had. I was looking for Tropicana and missed it and it took me a few moments to finally notice Tropicana package, only to realize they’ve totally redesigned the whole thing. To me, they’ve lost their iconic branding that customers are so used to remembering for years. I really think they shouldn’t have rid of the orange with straw in it. I still really think it’s a very good supporting image of how they would offer fresh, 100% juice directly from the orange (ideally by straw). Taking small steps than huge steps of a rebranding overhaul would have been wise if they took that path.