Retaining Brand Equity: Change for Design’s Sake?

I was just about to write about the art of knowing when to retain equity in a rebranding job and lo and behold I read this interesting article in Newsweek about Peter Arnell and his Tropicana Juice carton blunder. His firm, the Arnell Group, is the same firm that rebranded Pepsi. (Pepsico is Tropicana’s parent company also.)

Tropicana removed their new cartons after three months on the shelves due to consumer protest. The new carton design was heavily criticized for looking too much like a generic store brand. The distinctive logo is gone and a certain comfortable familiarity was removed. I, myself, realized I had pulled it off the shelf without realizing what brand it was.

There is something to be said for retaining equity. Change for design’s sake is not good for the product. Why would you destroy your brand equity that way?
Why fight convention? If you have trained the consumer, why re-train them? Knowing when to retain equity and how much to retain is an art. Keeping your focus on the consumer is key.

Losing brand equity with radical package changes is more about ego than playing to the appropriate audience. I am not saying it is bad design, I just think Arnell missed the mark by throwing the equity out the window. A little too much ego mixed with too much design? Maybe. Your thoughts?

Comments

[Casey]

I buy Tropicana regularly and was surprised to walk into my grocery store one day and not find any at all. In it's place was store-brand orange juice. Oh wait... That's Tropicana...

I was amused (and glad) to see the old boxes back on the shelves not too long after that. I normally love simple, streamlined design, but I agree completely that they lost all equity with the redesign. It was an excellent lesson in how important packaging is; before that I didn't realize how much I relied on the design to find the product.