Who's juiced now?

You know, I noticed the redesign immediately (I drink about 2 gallons of Tropicana-Calcium C-No pulp a week) and didn't make up my mind right away. I can tell you I didn't buy another brand just because of this redesign. The OJ on the inside is still the same.
Oj is homely, when I think of Oj I think biscuits and gravy, farm fresh eggs, sitting down at a big table with family and starting the day. The old design definitely conveyed that sense. When I see the new design, I feel like I should be punching C3, placing a paper cup under the spout, and waiting for the fully automatic juice machine to pour me a cup.
It all comes down to what Tropicana wanted to communicate with their brand. Their classic, farm-fresh, straight from the citrus image is classic, American wholesomeness. Their new, sleek, clean, "modern" image is cold, machine-like, and derives thoughts of hotels' automatic drink machines.
If those are the messages Tropicana wanted to communicate with their brand, I would say the designs are a success. By that token, the failure was with the strategy. Tropicana is a wonderful brand, great juice, good enough for me to buy it even though they completely threw away their brand image as a wholesome product.

Everyone knows oranges are round! The shape on the box doesn't really give us the "orange" appeal (no pun intended). I love the new screw off cap - that says orange! What confuses me about the design is that one of the first elements of design that I learned was that placing text vertically made it more difficult to read and was not as appealing. Now, this may not hold true for ALL products but this is a staple product. The focus seems to rest on that obscure orange shape. That said, the sleek, modern, clean look is appealing. It just doesn't seem that well planned.

Maybe Tropicana is looking for that new image. I don't know, I'm not on the marketing board at Pepsi/Tropicana.

I would agree with Craig in respect to the re-brand being influenced from it's owner Pepsi.

I also would agree with the other comments that talk about the product inside. That's what counts, and hundreds of thousands of people already know that Tropicana makes superb OJ.

I bet that the average consumer would notice the re-brand, ingrain it in memory (from advertising), and not think anything of it again. Consumers know good product, and will buy what keeps them happy.

I was shocked and utterly happy at the same time to see it posted here that the new design was pulled. Tropicana is/has been my favorite brand of orange juice. But I must admit the re-designed packaging has deterred me, and since that point I have not purchased it.

As mentioned above, what bothered me is that it conveys nothing about Tropicana as a brand. My first reaction when I saw it in the store shelves was what were they thinking to ruin a good brand. My guess is that the design was perhaps trying to convey a cleaner look, perhaps to show the growing environmentally conscious-nism. However, there is nothing on that packaging to lead one to think why they would do that, when there is no mention of any change from the company.

I had a discussion with a coworker (who just became aware this new design) and she agreed with an earlier posting that the name on the side diminishes the brand.

Very good question from 'boston' on whether this is bad design or was not introduced properly. I am still going with bad design since I am not sure what they would introduce if there is no change to the product.

I am still just floored that the new design made it all the way to market with Tropicana being a household brand. I will start purchasing it again when it goes back to the old design.

Primary impression: I think that right off the placement of the glass of orange juice causes frustration in visually processing what's going on. Is this shape part of an orange? Is it a glass? Oh, yeah - it is a glass. (I've brilliantly recreated my experience with looking at this package.) The viewer doesn't like to pause and navigate a design.

The bottom of the glass is weak/ambiguous. The top of the glass is off the page, if you will. Were they trying to make the glass a double image (glass + orange navel = more)? I bet the focus on design must have been muddied by trying to solve divergent problems set out by committee-driven agendas.

I agree with some of what Craig talks about (above) regarding honesty and social responsibility issues, but I think the emotional connection to the consumer is still dominant in package design. People want to feel that homey feeling about a product that they think tastes pure and delicious. In reality, locally farmed juice has a whole different appeal, but this product represents the closest thing most of us will have to it, and after a fashion it has that feeling by default because of it's daily presence in our lives.

I think this design fell victim to trying to modernize the look, while missing the emotional connection. Because they didn't accurately define the problem, how could they successfully solve it? Does it need to have an up-to-date look? I think the whole effort looks confused.

Personally I think it's a strategy failure. I agree with Tom that consumers are emotionally attached to a brand, and they enjoy familiarity and dislike change. They were emotionally attached to the old 1980's "let's stick an image of an orange on the package and call it a day" look. People dislike change, and the package should perhaps have gone through a few alternate, less obvious re-designs to get the consumers used to it, before the final design was thrust upon them.

That being said, I in now way think an effective orange juice package needs to have an image of an orange stuck on it, or an over-obvious in your face round everything. Unlike Joyce, I do not believe round = orange. I actually really liked the re-design, and I'll tell you why: it was cleaner, crisper, and more internationally appealing than the previously over-done packaging. It conveyed the simplicity of Tropicana's use of only orange juice and updated the look to fit the newer modern, iPod toting consumer. It looks much more like the majority of packaging I've seen in both Europe and Japan and was a nice change from all the "stick an orange on it and call it a day" packaging everyone else has.

I'm disappointed that Pepsi is pulling this packaging. Consumers would eventually have gotten used to the new design, and perhaps, like Apple Computer, other companies would have follow suit and adjusted their own packaging eventually. Had Pepsi Co. launched this a little more gently, we might have actually seen a change in the design paradigm of grocery packaging.

I was talking with a friend about the redesign and she pointed out how 'generic' the packaging looks. Someone mentioned above that it looks like a store brand- well, considering the current economy, wouldn't folks be looking to buy more store brands? What if Tropicana's intent was to subconsciously 'genericize' their product to appeal to those looking to save money? Perhaps far-fetched but I thought it was interesting...

That's just sad. I was feeling positive that this kind of change would create a wave and more brands would re-design their overly decorated, banner wrapped, fake illustrated packaging towards smart and clean solutions.

Add me to the list of people who think it was bad strategy that ended up being the downfall of Tropicana's new packaging. My mom buys Tropicana and also thought the new packaging looked like a store brand. That analysis utterly confuses me. Have you seen typical store brand packaging? Aside from maybe Publix, it's universally awful. Of course, grocery stores are increasingly accepting modern updates on their store brand packaging, but the overwhelming majority of such packages are so bad.

Like others have said, I believe this is purely an emotionally-based failure. I don't even think it goes to the "homey-ness" of a brand, I think it's more at a basic visual level. Consumers were simply visually immune to Tropicana's simple straw-in-orange packaging, and such a drastic change would cause anyone to look twice before picking a carton up.

I liked the simplicity of the new packaging, but I agree with others that mentioned the readability of the vertical type. Its also harder to identify the different types of orange juice they offer.

I guess it comes down to the fact that re-aligning is better than a complete redesign.

I was shocked and utterly happy at the same time to see it posted here that the new design was pulled. Tropicana is/has been my favorite brand of orange juice. But I must admit the re-designed packaging has deterred me, and since that point I have not purchased it.