A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

I knew others would be onto this, so I’ll link to them.

I was ready to give Pepsi a chance when I saw their redesigned soda packaging. Maybe there was some forward-thinking advertising guy who thought that a clean, back-to-basics aesthetic is the next wave in brand and marketing, especially in a world where products tend to yell at you at every opportunity — from the TV to the shelf. I wasn’t sold, but I was willing to give it a shot.

But when the rebranding extended to Tropicana, yes, it crashed and burned. My biggest complaint was that it looked exactly like I would expect a store generic to be. (I’m not the only one who thinks so.) Aside from what other people have been saying about usability and information design — those pieces of the packaging were lost too — the Tropicana name itself was lost in the design!

The information hierarchy on the packaging is now:

100%
orange
pure & natural
not from concentrate

I’d expect a store generic, an unrecognized brand, to use this design and push the product instead of their name. “This is orange juice,” it says. The store generic is appealing to shoppers who care more about saving money than about a particular brand.

But Tropicana is a recognized brand. According to Ries, Tropicana is the brand leader in fresh orange juice. You can’t ignore the brand trust built up over so many years. And anyone who has ever dealt with clients or customers should know: never shock them. Small steps, easy does it.

. . . I’m curious if any part of the redesign came from their Design Our Pepsi Can tool.

P.S. I also now think that Pepsi shouldn’t have messed with the red, white & blue globe/wave. The made the white part different widths on different varieties of Pepsi. Hello, it’s part of your brand, why are you varying it? You want it to stick, right? Be consistant! (Although some people are having great fun with the new Pepsi logo.)

P.P.S. They are dropping the new Tropicana design, by the way.