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March 02, 2009
"The Tropicana Effect"
Tropicana spent $35 million learning that their customer evangelists matter.
The orange juice brand was in the midst of launching redesigned packaging when a loud bus of vocal fans who liked the old packaging, thank you very much, raised hell. They liked the iconic picture of a large orange with a straw, making the juice easy to find in the crowded OJ aisle. After their protests drew a flurry of unexpected calls, letters and email complaints, Tropicana announced it would revert to the original packaging.
In an apologia, Tropicana president Neil Campbell said the disconnect was research: “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.”
When traditional marketing research doesn't include input from passionate fans who love the brand and tell others about it, it risks creating a Tropicana effect.
Tropicana's research may have expertly divided its customers into demographics and "heavy users" vs. "light users," but it probably did not account for vocal, connected and passionate customers who know how to create a Facebook protest group in less than a minute or spread buzz via Twitter hashtags. Had Tropicana had a way to reach out to evangelists, this might not have been a story.
So what does Tropicana have now? Actually, it's pretty good: a second chance. A gift to convert that passion into something tangible. But Tropicana has work to do. There's no blog on their website, which still touts the "fresh new package." There's no official Facebook page. There's no Twitter account. (No, a brief Twitter campaign shirt-tailed to the old presidential campaign doesn't count.) It's a great opportunity to start a network or community for that busload of fans.
Of course, customer evangelists needn't decide everything (that's always the straw-man argument), but you can't ask for their opinion and improve the odds of a $35 million bet if you don't know who they are.
UPDATE: Fortune just named the redesign one of the "Dumbest Moments in Business 2009."
Other blogs that reference "The Tropicana Effect":
Tropicana's signature packaging was the little tropical toy woman with the fruit in her hair. made me feel like a mighty man that just conquered the new world. the conquistador of CAPITALISM says bring back my little submissive misses and tell the twitter whores that I do it for me. damn those #MotrinMoms. No history.
How anyone at Tropicana thought the "fresh new package" was actually an improvement is beyond me. It looks like a slightly upmarket store brand to me. The bright orange with the straw has a much stronger impact on the store shelves.
The old Tropicana logo is a lot better than the new one... more style, personality, and inviting. I do like the new cap though, it actually looks like an orange. They could have added that new element to the old packaging to get a small lift.
Kudos to Tropicana for eventually getting it right but this is a load of BS: “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.”
By "small" do they mean "all customers"? Are they really trying to get us to believe that it never came up in research that the new packaging sucked?
I disagree almost completely with Tropicana going back to its original label. For a company to invest 35M to reinvent the brand and only cave to a small minority of shoppers is ill-advised. You are serving the minority despite the majority. I think the best thing Tropicana could have done is to re-brand yet again with a combination of the new and old. There is a reason why they decided to do this - probably to attract up-scale customers, improve market share with a new face to the customer -- and to forsake all of that because of no twitter campaigns or face book groups is just plain dumb. Hopefully they'll re-design and create a combination of the two because serving the loud, vocal minority will ostracize the majority.
JS
I was kidding about the Motrin Moms (they were right)... but you miss my point. Tropicana changes it's look every year... (not to mention it's parent company). It is in no danger of losing it's image. The original look of little miss slave labor was abandoned years ago and since that point they have never re-branded consistently. That is actually a huge weakness in their product, and their competition has recently taken advantage of this. The carton is really the red herring. I think the real win here was the nifty cap. The carton design we are used to see changing. Tropicana is not Coke.
Wow. I'd love to know what kind of research they did. I can't imagine the new package tested better than the old one in a focus group environment... The design work on that new carton is actually weaker than what you see on many "generic" brands these days.
Maybe it was a terrible case of design by committee, where the Tropicana people couldn't get on the same page. If not, they ought to get their money back from the design firm on that one.
Here's another possible scenario... Maybe someone was just looking for an excuse to reject the new design after they were too far into it to turn back. (Like the creative director who knew good and well that it sucked.) And then Twitter thing conveniently came up. Hmmmm. Maybe it was all a big Tropicana conspiracy:-)
