Why it failed (a lesson in advertising)

[thesilversiren]

Tropicana’s recent rebrand failed. Clearly it failed- when I saw the story I thought, “Tropicana rebranded?” (Note: a rebrand is when a company changes their logo, packaging, ad concepts to try to reinvent themselves)

In short, all of Tropicana’s competitors saw huge gains following the rebrand- which is completely against typical statistics. Usually the product will see a boost (even if it’s just temporary), not a loss.

But, not all brands are Tropicana. First of all, they felt that they needed to promote the health benefits of drinking orange juice. Because, of course, people don’t know that OJ is loaded with vitamin C. (Yes, that was sarcasm) So they decided to slick up the package, make it a little sexier… (Again, what orange juice has totally been missing: sex appeal.)

Their main problem is the redesign made them invisible. The Tropicana logo and orange with the straw are basically iconic. The new design, since it contains nothing from the old design… doesn’t bring any recognition. To explain what I mean, it’d be like Coca-Cola suddenly redesigning to a black can with two green C’s on it. Without the red can or the familiar white swoosh, there’s nothing to tell you that it’s linked to the product you’re familiar with.

Not only that, the new logo is boring. There’s nothing to distinguish it from a nicely designed store brand carton. There’s nothing that stands out about it, it’s just too generic.

I could also point out that I watch a lot of TV and saw very few ads. Without a major media push, a drastic change just can’t be effective.

Originally published at Whitney Drake. You can comment here or there.