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

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

#211

Post by noisy_boy »

treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

I went through a phase where I was buying oranges and preparing fresh juice everyday at home. About a month or so into it, I bought packaged juice - it tasted like crap. My brain had gotten used to the real stuff and the difference was night and day. Eventually my laziness got better of me and I got tired of buying and carrying loads of oranges but that experience completely turned me off from packaged juice.

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

#212

Post by mikkergp »

ineedasername wrote: post #199
treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

I would be suspicious of any orange juice where the company feels the need to stipulate "real orange juice". What the heck else would it be made of? Reminds me of "ice cream" which, in a lot of cases, is not. Mixed in the ice cream section next to identical looking cartons of different flavors Breuer's is a big culprit) are things that say "whipped dairy dessert" in the place that others say "ice cream".

I imagine this was in response to a mid to late 20th century processed foods culture where things like tang and sunny d were widespread. Lots of “Orange Drink” I remember in the wire Frank sobotka talked about all the Tang he drank because it’s “what the astronauts drank”.

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

#213

Post by nkurz »

treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

> I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore.

Don't be silly --- it means you are buying juice from oranges that has been stripped of all flavor, stored in tankers for a year or two, and then reconstituted by adding "flavor packs" built by recombining the chemicals found in different oranges. Pretending this isn't clear to consumers is just anti-progress.

Along those lines, the book "Squeezed" is pretty good, and details the argument of the Tropicana lawyers who actually make this argument. Here's a New Yorker article about it: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/ask-an-academic-....

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

#214

Post by Cthulhu_ »

treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

I don't know the product at all, but given the phrase "no pulp" on the packaging I'm sure it's from concentrate; mass produced orange juice, reduced and put into these 1000 liter pallet containers and shipped from who knows where, then rehydrated and packaged.

I mean we have our apple juice like that; it's cheap and a crowd pleaser, but it's not the same as fresh juice.

Economies of scale though. I wouldn't be surprised if concentrate is 100x as efficient in transport than the equivalent in juice oranges would be.

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

#215

Post by michaelt »

ineedasername wrote: post #199
treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

I would be suspicious of any orange juice where the company feels the need to stipulate "real orange juice". What the heck else would it be made of? Reminds me of "ice cream" which, in a lot of cases, is not. Mixed in the ice cream section next to identical looking cartons of different flavors Breuer's is a big culprit) are things that say "whipped dairy dessert" in the place that others say "ice cream".

> What the heck else would it be made of?

In my country, there are also concentrated 'orange squash' drinks which have some real fruit, and also some flavouring and sweeteners.

They taste different to pure orange juice, they're substantially cheaper and they have very low sugar/calorie content.

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

#216

Post by Cthulhu_ »

ineedasername wrote: post #199
treyfitty wrote: post #197

Carton design, or not, I don't buy orange juice anymore because I don't know what "Made from Real Oranges*" means anymore. Over time, I came to learn that straightforward claims like these are engineered to deceive. Tropicana could use 100% real oranges, and I still wouldn't believe them. I could inspect the ingredients, and even then, it's dubious- companies have found ways to circumvent the rules there too. Instead…

I would be suspicious of any orange juice where the company feels the need to stipulate "real orange juice". What the heck else would it be made of? Reminds me of "ice cream" which, in a lot of cases, is not. Mixed in the ice cream section next to identical looking cartons of different flavors Breuer's is a big culprit) are things that say "whipped dairy dessert" in the place that others say "ice cream".

At least some products can not legally be called something they're not, like "sandwich slices" or "singles" instead of "cheese".

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

#217

Post by donatj »

Recently my wife found some Bubble Tape in the store. We were kind of taken aback by how horrible the modern packaging was.

- https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61pGZX8pXLL._SX679_PIbun...

The entire "Bubble Tape" text is in an illegible font under a giant Hubba Bubba logo, as if kids have some sort of Hubba Bubba brand loyalty they're trying to play on. I assure you they don't.

- https://www.mashed.com/img/gallery/the-untold-truth-of-bubbl...

Compare to the old packaging. It was clean, fun, and to the point of the fun that waited inside for the kid.

It's as if the modern redesigners didn't realize they're marketing to children.

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

#218

Post by Cthulhu_ »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #134
numair wrote: post #133

I looked at the title, opened the link, searched for “Peter Arnell,” got zero results, and knew the article was total garbage. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arnells-explanation-of-failed-t... I had a close friend who worked on a project where they brought this guy in. Charged $1m a month and invoiced his jet fuel to the company, if I remember correctly. Now you know where the $30M actually went. The article is an exam…

But Indont think this is about "some guy came up with a crap design". It strikes me a number of things went badly 1. I think C-level execs at major corporations should have built up immunity against such bullshit. 2. The heatmap (plus the associated idea of lots of consumer testing) should have spotted something 3. the rollout seems to have been global and immediate, instead of for example testing the new packaging o…

> the rollout seems to have been global and immediate

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropicana_Products#:~:text=tre..., it was "only" in the US (it was in 2009 btw); weird, I wouldn't have been surprised if the $30 million was already spent before they actually went into store shelves. It wouldn't have been "just" a packaging redesign, they would have to do a big marketing campaign (billboards, TV ads, etc) as well to make people aware the packaging had changed.

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

#219

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jonplackett wrote: post #181
numair wrote: post #133

I looked at the title, opened the link, searched for “Peter Arnell,” got zero results, and knew the article was total garbage. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arnells-explanation-of-failed-t... I had a close friend who worked on a project where they brought this guy in. Charged $1m a month and invoiced his jet fuel to the company, if I remember correctly. Now you know where the $30M actually went. The article is an exam…

This article is massively over thinking it. The problem is the lack of a the word TROPICANA written really big on the carton. I doubt people ‘stopped relating to it’ because of the lack of straw. They just didn’t know it was Tropicana at a glance, figured it was sold out and bought something else.

That's it, I mean it would already have less impact if they put "tropicana" horizontal and the biggest font size on it. Instead it was "100% juice", which is what you expect on a brandless, generic product.

People don't buy orange juice, they buy Tropicana. Likewise, they don't buy lemon & lime soda, they buy Sprite; they don't buy beer, they buy Budweiser or Heineken because you can't call those products "beer", and oh also the brands are well known I guess. We don't use search engines, we use Google; conversely, this is why Facebook's corporate rebranded to Meta, because they wanted to distance themselves from the social network.

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

#220

Post by yuters »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #56
b112 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I have lost, literally lost things I liked to buy at the grocery, due to changed packaging. One time I had to Google images for a 20 minutes to find old images, then write down the brand/ type. Another, the package changed, and the new package stated some strange "new" ingredient, which left me struggling to know if the flavour changed. I honestly would just prefer a package never changes for my entire life. Edi…

If you're not aware, "New and improved" generally means the product was changed to reduce ingredient costs. So hopefully I've ruined the "meaning" for you.

What I feel like can happen with these changes is they'd probably push this as "See how much money we've saved by using these ingredients instead and the change in taste is barely noticeable!". Then they'll go through this process 10 times in the span of years and you'd end up with something that taste completely different than the original.
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