

Tropicana abandons new packaging; Twitter is the new focus group medium. - tptacek
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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

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old-gregg
How does it work? People actually _choose_ to follow Tropicana? Or, more
generally, how's Twitter valuable for marketers if in order to deliver your
messaging you've got to persuade your customers to "follow" you first?

Why would I want to follow Nike or even BMW?

P.S. Perhaps I'm just an 'untwittery type' - I find it hard to believe people
actually use Twitter, period. I've tried and my response to 99% of tweets has
always been _"why would I care?"_ \- if you're into assembling random facts
about lives of strangers, just watching them in a cafe or on a busy town
square is way more fun.

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paulgb
It looks like @tropicana isn't even owned by the brand. Most likely, they
searched twitter for "tropicana", as many brands seem to do. If the company
replies to the user from another account, it should show up even if that user
is not following @pepsico or whatever (depending on the user's options).

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pchivers
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").

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iamwil
I'd have to agree with you there. It reminded me of some freshness and they
did some good for the packaging, in my opinion. I might just go out and get a
carton myself, for posterity, since they're discontinuing it.

It kinda reminds me of how when facebook changes its interface, people bitch
and moan, for about a month, and then, they kinda just forget what it was like
before.

This thing with tropicana just sounds like people resisting change, for
tradition's sake, rather than evaluating the new thing on its own merits.

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lsb
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.

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tptacek
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.

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apgwoz
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.

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nkurz
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?

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mhb
I agree, except that I think the orange-shaped cap is very appealing - in the
same spirit as the arrow in the Fedex logo. If they had changed only the cap,
that would have been clever.

