The Power of OJ

Now don't get me wrong, I appreciate marketing, branding, and packaging, etc, just as much as any marketer, but I just don't get all of the fuss over the Tropicana packaging redesign. Now if you live in the dark, never go grocery shopping, or just pay no attention to all of these marketing related things that infiltrate us practically every minute of every day, take a read with this Brand Week article to get the redesign scoop.

Not that I'm saying that the new packaging, via Arnell Group, is anything mind-blowingly incredible (what is these days?), but when I take a look back at the old packaging, I can't help to think that it's busy and pretty ugly. And the whole jabbing the straw in the orange, isn't that a little tired these days? Those commercials stand out in my mind as ones that seemingly frustrated me to no end as a kid. I knew that if I were to go get an orange out of the fridge, and jab a straw into it, this is all assuming there is a straw sharp enough to pierce through the skin and pith of an orange, the juice would never flow up the straw no matter how hard I tried.

A lot of articles and consumers have bashed the redesign, I however kind of like it. While a lot of consumers called the the cartons generic looking and resembling "store brands" like that's something negative, I can't honestly think of a generic orange juice, or what the carton of one looks like. I found the look of the new Tropicana packaging quite powerful all lined up on the shelf at my local Shaws. The simplicity of design set it apart from the cluttered packages of the other brands. While I can't attest to the design making it difficult to tell what type of orange juice, pulp, no pulp, heavy pulp, etc, was in the carton, this apparently garnered some of the complaining. My suggestion to all of those consumers, is to take a little more time on the oj aisle, we're all moving too fast from one place to the next anyway!

I know it's important to please the consumer, especially your most loyal consumers, since apparently they complain enough to encourage a revert to the old packaging (check out this NY Times article), but isn't it what's inside the packaging that these so called loyal consumers should be most concerned about. The actual product didn't change, it was simply a package redesign, yes it looks different, but sometimes that's a good thing! While PepsiCo decided the feedback was bad enough to revert back to the old style, hey, it got a whole lot of people talking about Tropicana, and a little buzz, even if it's not necessarily the best, is still pretty good, right? (And don't worry, that cut little orange shaped cap is all that will remain to remind loyal Tropicana drinkers of this little flub up.

Now what I'm taking away from this PepsiCo Tropicana redesign flop, is that one, personally I think PepsiCo is throwing in the towel too early, it's been maybe two months, give people some time to adjust. Two, if consumers are really going to switch oj brands just because they find the packaging not as visually pleasing, then were they really loyal to begin with? Three, where was the market research questioning oj drinkers on their attachment, likes/dislikes of the packaging? PepsiCo could have save some major money here. Now the whole deciphering the 'type' of oj in the Tropicana carton, that's a different story, I see how that could be irritating, a no pulper hates having to chew their morning cup of oj, but one that could probably be easily solved with different colored/larger fonts, etc.

The power of the consumer is pretty amazing. Who knew so many people cared so passionately about the looks of their oj carton? Just think of the uprising that would have happened had they tried to improve the actual product and failed.