Tropicana abandons new packaging; Twitter is the new focus group medium.

Is there no thought given to the sample bias this incurs? Twitter is definitely not a cross-section of nearly anybody's customers...

I actually like the new Tropicana packaging (as shown at the top of the article). It looks more hip and healthy, like something that would be sold at Whole Foods, as opposed to the old packaging, which strikes me as more nostalgic (e.g. "Your Father's Orange Juice").

When I think of Twitter, "focus" isn't the word that comes to mind.

A focus group seems like an artificial channel; you can't possibly hear what 100k people are saying about your product, so you pick 200 and you hope it's a random sample. But you can read what 100k people are writing, with good enough algorithms, so it'll be easier to gauge the Twitter zeitgeist on topics (like the election), if there is a zeitgeist at all. Gave a thousand samples out in a city and no one comments? That might be a interesting result in and of itself.

So yeah this is more interesting to me because I geek out on brand design (and I actually liked the new Tropicana stuff here), but some really good material here about how BigCo's are using the net to react faster to customers.

Definitely agree that they should return to the previous packaging as since it all looks the same, it's easy to get annoyed. However, the most recent carton I bought had a cool little orange shaped cap which I hope they keep.

I have one of the new packages in front of me (bought by a friend), and I have to say that there is not a single thing that I like about it. It's hard to read (text is sideways), vacuous ("Drink in the spirit of the morning"), and the juice pictured looks sickly and pale. The most readable text, and hence the part my eye is drawn to, reads "Some Pulp". At best, it looks like a weak imitation of a high-end store brand.

I'm left with two questions:

First, why would Tropicana choose to change their existing strong brand to this, rather than launching this as a side-brand under a new name and testing the market? To my limited knowledge, there are probably the strongest brand in orange juice in the US. I don't see why they would take this risk.

Second, it sounds like many people here and elsewhere actively like the new look. Others, such as me, do not. I have to presume that I'm in the minority, otherwise the consumer resistance would have turned up during Tropicana's user testing. Any ideas on why what underlies the divide between the presumed majority who like the new design and the curmedgeonly minority such as myself?