I think I've told you this before, I am completely intrigue by advertising and marketing. Sorry if the following entry has nothing to do with shopping! It's just that I read an article and it gave me the inspiration to give you all a little marketing lesson of the day...
If I had to name one of the most prominent and successful brand in the U.S., it would have to be Coca Cola. Written in a Spencerian script (a dominant font back in the 1880's), the logo was created by Frank Mason Robinson in 1885. The same logo is recognized by billions of people for over a hundred years (how powerful is that?). The equally famous bottle marks the identity of coca-cola. Little did everyone know that this single most powerful brand has actually undergone a disasterous brand failure...
Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been nasty rivals since the beginning of time --- all brand loyalty set aside --- Coca-Cola has always been ahead of this race. However, in the 70's, Pepsi took a strong leap thanks to the Pepsi Challenge; then in the 80's, Pepsi took another huge leap marked by the "Pepsi Generation". So to combat the lead, Coke introduced "New Coke". This product actually replaced our beloved Coca Cola! After the roll out of "New Coke", Coca-Cola's market share dropped dramatically in a matter of days. This literally caused a public backlash. Immediately, the "New Cokes" were pulled off the shelves and were replaced by the original Coca-Cola cans. "New Coke" resulted in one of the the most utmost, disastrous product launch in history!
Here's a take away for us all --- if something works well, keep it!
I read an article about Tropicana's packaging and it reminded me of the above new coke failure. Did anyone know Tropicana changed their packaging!?!? The carton with an image of a straw coming out of an orange (which depicted freshness and evoked the idea of natural) was replaced by a glass of OJ (which is trying to convey...????). Like new coke, the newly designed packaging of Tropicana will be taken off the shelves and will be replaced by our good ol', original Tropicana carton (the one with the straw coming out of the orange...slurp slurp hehe).
Tropicana is owned by Pepsi. It's kind of funny how PepsiCo follows it's competitor's failure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html?ref=media
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