Bob Rinderle / Business & Beyond

Tropicana Sales Drop With Design Change

Sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line dropped 19% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22 (resulting in a loss of $33 million) following the disastrous introduction of new packaging that some consumers called "generic" (see picture on the right).

The packaging was pulled after less than two months.

Design matters.  And while Massimo d'Amore, CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, tried to downplay the severity of the situation back in February - "People do not buy design. They buy products. We have not changed the product" - the reality is that Tropicana's misstep cost them dearly.

Unit sales declined 20% while Minute Maid, Florida's Natural, and Tree Ripe all realized double-digit gains during the same time period in a flat category where share stealing is critical.

When brands know what they stand for and understand the brand essence that resonates with consumers, there is flexibility and permission to experiment with marketing inputs.  But when brands make guesses about their core equities they put on economic handcuffs - most often by being too conservative but also, as demonstrated by Tropicana, by being too presumptive.

 

Intelligent Design?

An addendum to my Tropicana packaging post (below):

"The new design confused our core consumers and that's why we went back," said Massimo d'Amore, CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, but "people do not buy design. They buy products. We have not changed the product."

If people buy products and not design, why scrap the new look?   

Because design is an intrinsic part of any product.  d'Amore knows this, otherwise he would not have initiated design changes across a number of PepsiCo brands.  One could argue, in the case of Pepsi, that design is the most important thing to a product that is essentially syrup and water.  Too bad d'Amore doesn't use the recent controversies surrounding Tropicana and Pepsi to defend and champion the value of design, rather than quickly dismissing design's role in the purchasing process.

(Quotes from Holly Sanders' article, "Pepsi Squeezes Arnell" in The New York Post.)

Tropicana Thunder

After mere weeks in the market, Tropicana is discontinuing packaging introduced in January, and reverting to its previous design (see below). 

The  reversal comes on the heels of consumer complaints that disparaged the new design and clamored for a return of the original look.

According to an article in The New York Times, people described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.”  Others described the redesign as making it more difficult to distinguish among the varieties of Tropicana juices.

Tropicana is yielding to public opinion not because of the volume of compaints (they are supposedly limited overall) but because they came from loyal consumers according to Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America.

“We underestimated the deep emotional bond” they had with the original packaging, Campbell stated. “Those consumers are very important to us, so we responded.”

“What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research,” said Campbell.

“I’m incredibly surprised by the reaction,” said Peter Arnell, chairman of Arnell Group, the firm that conceived Tropicana's new packaging.

Since Campbell and Arnell were blind to core brand equities and consumers' emotional attachments to them, the push for the package redesign must have started someplace artificial, someplace other than the marketplace.  Research is often used to validate pre-existing hypotheses and that seems to be the case here.  Otherwise these experienced, well-paid people would not have so grossly misread Tropicana's brand franchise.