Tropicana (and Pepsi), Please Stop the Madness
Saturday, February 21, 2009 at 9:14AM Since Tropicana redesigned all of their packaging, I have been waging a personal boycott against them. About a month ago, I went to the cold aisle at my office's cafeteria and my typically split-second reach for 100% Vitamin C goodness was slowed down by about five seconds.
Why the slow reaction?
Because I didn't know what the hell I was looking at. Where was the orange with the straw through the middle? Why were all the cartons looking exactly the same? Why was this happening to me?
And then, it hit me. The internet.
The internet's dominance over our daily lives has convinced some brand managers that the formula for recession success is sans serif lowercase fonts and lots of white space. This is a trend that we have seen in the recent redesigns of Time and BusinessWeek magazines. I actually don't have that strong of a beef with print publications reinventing themselves, as they must do all that they can to stave off extinction. But when it comes to products that I have been consuming for many years, I have a stronger emotional connection with them, and my reaction to change is much more impulsive and over-dramatic (I'll be the first to admit that). So I'm a Florida's Natural guy now. They had me at the sliced orange.
And if I needed one more reason to to poo-poo Tropicana, I discovered it when I did a quick search to see if others on the interwebs were feeling the same way:
(via EyeGossip)
!!!!!!!!
PepsiCo just won't quit. See their "explanation" of their jackery below:
For shame.
Reader Comments (10)
so i read your article and the possibly related post and started thinking about why tropicana changed it's packaging aesthetics from great to cheap. and then i realized, tropicana now looks like a generic brand! it's hard to find if you're looking for the orange with the the really thick, striped straw in it (an image that you know is associated with $4 a carton) but if you're in a rush and you want to pick up the stop&shop/shaw's/jewel-osco version you might just pick up tropicana by accident (at least, i think that's what the marketing team is hoping). everything looks the same, everything looks like 50% less effort was put into it, everything looks inexpensive. the fact that all the boxes look the same and cheap is proof that it's generic!
10pts to Tropicana for figuring out how to trick ppl into spending exorbitant amounts of money on juice.
as for pepsi, 1. frank cooper is a professional liar and should consider a career as the next senator for Illinois. 2. how anyone could mistake the pepsi "smile" for the obama fields and sunrise, is beyond me. F.
@nikita - that is actually brilliant. sometimes i kick myself for not having gone into branding consultancy full-time and raking in untold millions for coming up with sentences like, "BREATHTAKING is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design."
@alana - i admire your strength in converting, but i have to admit that switching to Coke will be tough for me
@spence - i also read the related link and a link that it contained. one of the commenters there pointed out that he/she was colorblind and was frustrated by the prospect of deciphering the tiny colored strips that now distinguish the Tropicana flavors. so Tropicana gets -10 points for pretty much hating colorblind people.
hmm, not sure if that warrants a docking of all the points. if he/she is willing to read in order to buy the the correct pulp-level (at $4 a carton during a recession) instead of easily switching to a more color-blind friendly package, he/she is not a customer that is considered during the repackaging design meeting. he/she is a solid fan. tropicana is worried about people like my dad who has switched to generic because he think tropicana is crazy.
my dad is the type of consumer who doesn't really read. he has, on many occasion, gone to the store and returned home with the wrong product simply because it looks similar to the product we asked him to buy. when asked what went wrong he often responds, "What? it's not the right brand/flavor of ice cream/type of bread? well, they're all next to each other and the type is so small that I just assumed it was right."
I think tropicana has been trailing my dad in order to inform their marketing design tactics. i know the spence household will be full of generic tropicana boxes.
tropicana: 1pt for knowing what weakness to exploit.
[...] Tropicana (and Pepsi), Please Stop the Madness Since Tropicana redesigned all of their packaging, I have been waging a personal boycott against them. About a month [...] [...]
I'm really feeling this jay!. I cosign with the POOP SHOOT symbol.
Unless the packaging change indicates something has changed inside, I don't see a reason why I should change my buying habits. Once I've poured my oj in a glass the carton is out of sight and out of mind. As for the cola debate, I got imprinted so long ago that I will stick to my brand of choice, but will substitute when the situation forces my hand, eg limited choice in the fridge, only one branded vending machine or stuck on a flight where all the offerings are from one company.
The logo isn't going to get me to switch.
This is hilarious that people are talking about this. I picked up a carton from my local drug store and was thinking, hmm is this some new low quality tropicana they're selling to convenience stores? It's funny that a packaging redesign can get the exact same response out of everyone yet the marketing guys had 'no idea?' I'm personally a "simply orange' guy if i can't afford the trader joes or costco naked juice jugs, but tropicana is pretty good.
I love the juice but the new design is not good. They all looked the same to me also when I went to the supermarket.
I always buy the low acid one. The way I find it is because the store has it usually in the same location all the time.
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wow, what a pathetic "explanation". hehe.