Don’t Mess with My Brand!

Want more proof that the company doesn’t own your brand … its customers do?

This month, Pepsico will be scrapping some expensive changes to the packaging of one of its flagship products, Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. The longtime Tropicana brand symbol, an orange impaled by a straw, had been replaced by the image of a glass of fresh orange juice.

Tropicana’s customers were furious about the brand makeover, describing it in letters, e-mail messages and telephone calls as “ugly” and “stupid,” and saying that it resembled “a generic bargain brand,” according to The New York Times.

Bowing to popular pressure, the original version of the packaging will be brought back next month. According to Tropicana president Neil Campbell, it wasn’t the sheer volume of the outcries that led to the corporate change of heart, it was the fact that the criticism came from some of the Tropicana’s most loyal consumers.

As my colleague Tim Kane has written, “People don’t buy brands. They join them.” You interfere with that relationship at your own risk!