The about-face comes after consumers complained about the makeover in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls and clamored for a return of the original look. Some of those commenting described the new packaging as “ugly” or “stupid,” and resembling “a generic bargain brand” or a “store brand.”
“Do any of these package-design people actually shop for orange juice?” the writer of one e-mail message asked rhetorically. “Because I do, and the new cartons stink.”
Others described the redesign as making it more difficult to distinguish among the varieties of Tropicana or differentiate Tropicana from other orange juices.
-Advertising - Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging - NYTimes.com
What kind of a freakshow cares this much about what their orange juice package looks like?
And why do you talk about shopping for orange juice as if it were, you know a profession? We’ve all shopped for orange juice. It’s orange juice.
And if you care enough to, essentially, write Congress about this, aren’t you able to take an extra half-beat to find the new container in the store. (Hint, from an admittedly amateur orange juice shopper: it is probably in the exact same space as the old packages were.)
And once you have found your orange juice, why do you care so much about the packaging? Do you somehow need to be affirmed by packaging?
I’m writing this because the agency that created the packaging can’t. As professionals, they must treat your tantrums as insights.
I know that these branding exercises can be mockable. People who get paid $35 million to do anything can afford all the therapy and massages they need to recover from a few slings and arrows.
But maybe we can cut the people who created this a little slack. This is a business where subjective solutions are measured by objective results. I don’t have much experience in the kind of large consumer branding where millions hang on a fraction of share, but if I were the creative director, I would probably have approved this: the photography is good and follows the tested wisdom that you show prepared food in its most ready-to-consume state; the photograph emphasizes the purity of the product; the sideways logo is appropriate for a well-known brand; the layout is clean and light. (Deep in the outrage are some good points about the failure of the design to differentiate between products and brands.)
And I have yet to see a single metric saying that this design failed. A couple of Dostoevskyean outliers have managed to force Tropicana to spend a lot of money and its agency to accept a ton of public mockery.
