Tropicana redesigned its orange juice carton and lost $30 million

On the flipside, there is also brand disloyalty, as in brands that I absolutely positively will not buy under any circumstances, even if their products are cheaper and better. Those are a lot more common these days, I’m afraid.

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The cap is a pretty cool detail once you see it up-close.

They’ve got the brand name at the top fold, so it stands out if it’s behind other cartons in your fridge (or if it’s misstocked at the store). A quick survey of my current fridge (no OJs, though) shows nothing but plain top folds.

The glass wrapping around the side looks pretty cool, I guess, and the carton is recognizable whether you’re seeing it from the front or the side.

The most prominent thing on the front is the 100% naturalness or whatever, which was probably in response to consumer research.

When did “Simply Orange” brand become a thing? Maybe they were trying to out-simple Simple brand.

Maybe the sideways brand name was so you see it when you pour? I don’t know, I’m making all this stuff up.

Clearly they were some problems, real or imagined, with the previous design they were trying to address here. And it seems like at time same time, someone made a bet that clean, understated design might help it stand out against the rest of the clutter.* And clearly it didn’t, but that doesn’t necessarily make the exercise wrongheaded.

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Don’t blame software designers. Blame UX designers and program managers chasing trends and trying to justify their existence by reinventing the wheel every couple of years.

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FYI this is the current UK packaging. Whatever legal shenanigans ensued, we only get half an orange compared to the whole orange in the original packaging pic shown in the post.

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I blame them ALL! They are all inveterate wheel-reinventors trying to justify their existence. 90% of them
belong in the same Ark as the telephone sanitisers et al.

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Why does “with bits” sound so unappetizing to me?

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Because they’re implying “bits of orange”, but they don’t actually say so…

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That’s not what I feel when I shop. I don’t analyze all the options because I’ve done some comparison before and have a product that I like. The difference between products is usually small, and most times I just don’t care what I’m buying. So if a package changes and I can’t immediately locate the product that I’m “loyal” to, I’ll grab whatever looks best and use it as an opportunity to try something new for once.

Try this:

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I guess their fuckwit marketing dept could not think of a better way to say it’s proper orange juice, once they identified a market segment (intentional pun) that preferred their juice filtered - i.e. with all solids removed. They could hardly say “original with solids” or “rough orange juice” (as the opposite of smooth) :wink:
I guess they could have said “whole orange juice” but there’s probably a trades description issue in there somewhere.

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How about “with pulp” ?

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I like the idea of “whole orange juice” because then you could have “skim orange juice.” But “2% orange juice” would give the wrong impression…

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Holistic orange juice?

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A podcast that I follow, this one covering various packaging successes and disasters. Spin to 18:00 for Tide pods and Tropicana.

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I doubt most people would characterize it that way. It’s not like buying a box of laundry detergent is akin to watching your child take their first steps. But that doesn’t mean emotion doesn’t unconsciously drive a lot of our decision making.

I remember hearing a case study (maybe on Radiolab?) about a man who had some kind of neurological condition that affected the emotional centers of his brain, basically changing him from a neurotypical person into a being of pure “logic.” While one might expect that such a person would be better at making decisions without the distraction of emotion, in reality it meant that the endless selection of options at a supermarket paralyzed him with indecision for exactly the reasons discussed above.

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Gap found that out the hard way in 2010

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I’m not usually swayed by package design one way or the other but yeah, this screams store brand generic when you glance at it.

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The surest example of this is to move to another country. You expect adjustment for language and dress and such, but nobody tells you about the culture shock of the grocery store. Even between US and Canada, grocery stores look completely different. You don’t recognize any of the branding and you feel totally lost as to what to buy. You can’t find the butter that you like and milk is in different containers, etc. All the cookies and chips are different brands, or if they are the same, the packaging is different so you don’t recognize it. Basic things like this that really make you feel like an alien.

What’s curious to me about rebranding debacles like this one is that companies don’t go into this sort of thing lightly. They focus test and market research the hell out of a change like this. That mistakes on this scale still happen is really interesting. Sometimes all the focus groups tell you something is better, but then the public rejects it. Rather like the polls and pundits being wrong about an election outcome.

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Ah, okay, that I can agree with. For me (personally, ymmv) the emotional content is more with avoiding discomfort and dissatisfaction from a novel selection than with the joy or reward I anticipate from the “chosen” product. I may just be relentlessly negative, though.

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but they’re pro-smitts, right (that’s a little something for the Blankies out there…)

awkward pulp fiction GIF

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