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How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

bootcamp.uxdesign.cc

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Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#101

Post by Agentlien »

nkozyra wrote: post #84
irrational wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on a website that was completely redesigned every few years. We, the developers, didn’t understand why until one of the business people, who was leaving for a new job, admitted to us that they (the business management team) mainly did it because it was fun, because it let them expense meetings/travel/food doing “research” and meeting with design consultants, because it gave them something to do other than th…

Preface: I think a lot of us - particularly developers - have a tendency to mock/devalue what people in design and UI/UX do. I think there's incredible value in what they do and part of that is keeping sites from going stale. I believe that in general people get fatigue from seeing the same design day-in, day-out. There's a cost to not changing. Or at least a trade-off. The risk is when redesign is carte blanche for…

For a lot of websites I visit frequently what I want is ease of use and familiarity. Redesigns are often a bother since I need to learn to navigate the new site.

For sites I don't visit as often I likely won't really notice a redesign.

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#102

Post by karaterobot »

toss1 wrote: post #76
makecheck wrote: post #35

What seems to be lost in these “redesigns” is the why : why are you doing it? If there isn’t a list of benefits long enough to justify the cost and possible risk, well, that’s a problem. There’s also a tendency for companies to be super proud of what they’ve done so they neglect methods like A/B testing and instead just bet the farm on their great new design. After all, it cost a lot of money and looks cool to the de…

Yup. The "Why?" question gets lost among the impulse to be 'clean and modern'. >>Tropicana’s original packaging had rich colours and a strong visual hierarchy. On the other hand, the new packaging failed to impress the consumers, with clean lines, a lack of visuals, transforming the once indistinguishable orange juice into a “generic store brand” product. This same thing happens in everything else too, such as automo…

> The damn "designers" are so infatuated with their "principles" of design and aesthetics that they completely ignore the fact that DESIGN IS SECONDARY TO FUNCTION — if you make it stop working, your design sucks, no matter how good you think it looks.

The original package was created by designers too. It worked, and then, many years later, a second group of designers responded to a new set of requirements with another design, which did not. This is how it goes. Failure is a possibility when you try something new. It's not like there's a foolproof system that works every time, and if you experience a setback it's because you forgot to apply the foolproof system.

On the engineering side, applications and services break all the time. I don't generally a consider it a failure of engineering as a discipline when that happens. Failures can even be caused by mistakes, but that doesn't mean the people involved are stupid or lazy or careless. It's the risk of moving quickly in a complicated world with many overlapping systems. Design and marketing are not spared from this unfortunate truth.

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#103

Post by toast0 »

tejohnso wrote: post #14

More questions than answers. How is this being so certainly attributed to packaging change? And why was the packaging changed? As it stands, this seems like a major change to a successful brand for no apparent reason. And why would you move away from such a strong and heavily advertised image of the straw in the orange? I remember those commercials and as soon as I saw that straw directly extracting juice from an ora…

> How is this being so certainly attributed to packaging change?

Consumers complained about the packaging.

Sales fell 20% in the two months following the packaging rollout

Sales presumably rose after the packaging was reverted (although I don't see a specific calling out of this).

Presumably the product didn't change (it takes a while for people to notice and respond to a product change anyway). Advertising changed, obviously, but I'd guess the spending stayed the same, or even went up.

You could probably run user studies too, but those weren't reported. Maybe pay for the product to go on the Price Is Right with different branding and see how it affects price guesses, etc.

> And why would you move away from such a strong and heavily advertised image of the straw in the orange?

Yeah I dunno. The cap shaped like an orange was cute, but practically invisible. The glass of orange juice wasn't very distinctive at all.

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#104

Post by bee_rider »

interestica wrote: post #91
bee_rider wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. The article has all this stuff about emotional attachment, blah blah blah. Really, orange juice is kinda hit and miss, so I prefer to stick with a particular brand (Tropicana). The redesign is 1) totally unrecognizable 2) pretty generic looking It is literally just hard to spot next to the other juices.

I think most importantly it's that sideways text is harder to process at a glance than what we're used to. So, it ends up becoming a design element rather than text. And the orange/straw icon is also, in some ways, a pictograph for recognition.

The orange with the straw was pretty good branding, pretty unique while being straight to the point.

They also had that ad in the 90's.

https://youtu.be/wUVp3zyqo3s

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#105

Post by Spivak »

userbinator wrote: post #40
makecheck wrote: post #35

What seems to be lost in these “redesigns” is the why : why are you doing it? If there isn’t a list of benefits long enough to justify the cost and possible risk, well, that’s a problem. There’s also a tendency for companies to be super proud of what they’ve done so they neglect methods like A/B testing and instead just bet the farm on their great new design. After all, it cost a lot of money and looks cool to the de…

I suspect the "why" is most simply explained by "because designers had to justify their salaries."

This is always used as an excuse but it ignores that rebrands like this rarely come from in-house designers. Execs will contact an outside design firm and ask for a rebrand, spend obscene amounts of money (relative to the size of the company) and then hand the design to the in-house designers to execute on it and turn the mock ups into actual usable assets.

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#106

Post by ertian »

tomcam wrote: post #2

It is my theory, backed up by nothing but instinct and my own very fallible personal experience, that many customers simply did not “see“ the new design. That is, they would have preferred to buy Tropicana but assumed it had disappeared from the shelves.

Yeah, honestly, I think there are several brands I buy in grocery stores for which I don't know, or at least don't remember, the brand name. I just recognize the packaging and think "oh yeah, that's the one I like".

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#107

Post by tomcam »

Cpoll wrote: post #7
tomcam wrote: post #2

It is my theory, backed up by nothing but instinct and my own very fallible personal experience, that many customers simply did not “see“ the new design. That is, they would have preferred to buy Tropicana but assumed it had disappeared from the shelves.

I'm inclined to agree. The article's talk about "resonating" with the audience is wishy-washy, and seems far-fetched for accounting for a 20% decrease in sales. On the other hand, a UX design tenet is to test, not assume. Just because it sounds right doesn't mean it's the correct explanation (that goes for both TFA and alternative theories).

Well, they did. It’s just that the test cost $30 million!

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#108

Post by BbzzbB »

tomcam wrote: post #2

It is my theory, backed up by nothing but instinct and my own very fallible personal experience, that many customers simply did not “see“ the new design. That is, they would have preferred to buy Tropicana but assumed it had disappeared from the shelves.

I'm relieved this is the second-to-the-top parent comment.

They literally did an eye gaze study showing that just about no one saw the logo (and even fewer read it), yet their conclusion is some emotional fugazi.

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#109

Post by yes_really »

A big problem is a lot of companies make changes for changes' sake instead of a real business reason. It might be due to internal incentives too: it's easier for designers and managers to justify their existence by launching new designs than by saying "all looks good, no need to change."

Re: How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?

#110

Post by AlexandrB »

tomcam wrote: post #2

It is my theory, backed up by nothing but instinct and my own very fallible personal experience, that many customers simply did not “see“ the new design. That is, they would have preferred to buy Tropicana but assumed it had disappeared from the shelves.

Yup. The redesign looks like any number of grocery store "house" brands, which are typically awful.
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