Wow. The guys at the Arnell Group, a design and advertising firm, are really messing up. They can't seem to get any campaign right. Their latest blunder was in redesigning the packaging for Pepsi's Tropicana brand orange juice to look like a generic carton of orange milk. Nothing about it screams OJ, except for the little half orange cap--incidently the only part of the packaging Pepsi will keep for its lower calorie juice. The rest will revert to old. See the links below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html?ref=media
What makes this case relevant to our class discussions, is that Pepsi got wind of its fatal packaging error, not just through a decline in sales, but through blogs. The consumer spoke via his/her keyboard, and Pepsi had to listen. There are ever-increasing examples of corporations having to react publicly to the negative press they receive online (see Facebook, Johnson & Johnson), and it really seems as though the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Somehow one little blogger can get very loud via the links or hits he/she gets when his/her complaint resonates with the larger public. Mainstream media is forced to take notice, and Joe the Plumber from Nowhere, Middle-America all of sudden has a platform and a public forum through which to kvetch. This is, perhaps, another fine example of the democratization of America.
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