Branding–Tropicana, If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It!

Didn’t Pepsi learn anything from Coca Cola’s New Coke fiasco? Well now, it’s Pepsi’s turn to cry. According to Ad Age, the sales of Tropicana, a Pepsi brand, has dropped (”plummeted”–the right word really does add drama!) by 20% after Tropicana rebranded it’s freshly squeezed orange juice and other packages. This lead to a quick retreat by the mega-brand. 20% doesn’t sound like such a big number till you find out it’s tens of millions of dollars.

Easy for me to glibly say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but how does a business know that it has a good thing and that trying to make it better will in fact make it worse? If sales doubled as a result everyone would be singing a different tune. Wonder if they tested it, but as we learned from Coca Cola’s testing experience years ago, advance consumer testing isn’t always an accurate predictor of results (customers LOVED New Coke in blind taste tests). And as Martin Lindstrom tells us in Buyology (watch for review coming soon), you can’t rely on what people say in focus groups either.
So what’s a brand to do?

On the other hand, maybe they’re not so stupid after all. We’re all talking about them aren’t we? Wonder if there’s a Tropicana Classic in the works…