For years, Tropicana Pure Premium was easy to find. In the refrigerated juice aisle, you looked for the carton with a bright orange pierced by a red-and-white straw. In 2009 Tropicana, owned by PepsiCo, decided to change it.
The redesign
The new packaging, created by the Arnell Group, was meant to feel modern and premium. It replaced the orange and straw with a close-up of a glass of orange juice. The cap was redesigned to look like the outside of an orange, and the Tropicana name was rotated to read vertically up the side of the carton.
Tropicana announced the new look and a wider “Squeeze” campaign in January 2009. Its release described print, outdoor and digital advertising alongside the redesigned package. A later research paper describes the redesign as costing $35 million; that figure should not be confused with an independently measured advertising budget.
The reaction
Some shoppers complained that the replacement looked like a generic store brand. Contemporary NPR reporting recorded the complaints and Tropicana’s decision to restore the old carton. The research paper also describes customers who could not find their usual juice on the shelf. That evidence supports a recognition problem, though it does not establish that every shopper reacted the same way.
The numbers
Researchers at the University of Florida and Florida Department of Citrus analyzed Nielsen grocery-store data. They reported that Tropicana Pure Premium sales during the redesign period were about 20% below the same period a year earlier. This is a year-over-year comparison, not a claim that sales fell 20% from January to February.
Their model estimated about $27 million in lost sales over the weeks studied. The paper examined prices and promotions as well as packaging, and its authors said the estimate could understate the loss because a later buy-one-get-one-free promotion was included. It is an estimate from a research model, not an amount reported in Tropicana’s financial statements. The paper also found that other orange-juice brands gained sales while Tropicana’s sales weakened; the total orange-juice category did not show the same decline.
On February 23, 2009, Tropicana announced it would return to its original design. NPR reported at the time that the familiar cartons would come back the following month.
Why it failed
- It removed a familiar visual cue. The orange and straw disappeared from the carton; customers reported trouble identifying it.
- It changed more than one cue. The research paper notes that the new orange-colored caps also made juice varieties harder to tell apart.
- The category held up better than the brand. The study found gains for competing brands during the period when Tropicana lost sales.
Legacy
The 2009 reversal illustrates how packaging can help shoppers recognize a product before they read the label. The documented customer complaints, sales comparison and research estimate explain the episode more precisely than a single headline cost figure.