I love product packaging; I’m actually obsessed with it.

In late February of this year I noticed a change in my favorite orange juice, it looked different, and not in a good way. So I did what any curious package design junkie would do, I Googled it. Low and behold the New York Times and about billion other people noticed this too.

The New York Times article titled “Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging” sparked a conversion that spread like fire in the Advertising world as well as in the Foodie world. Package design junkies and consumers alike were taking their complaints to the web and posting their displeasure on blogs and other social media outlets like twitter and Facebook. They felt that the packaging was “ stupid”, “ugly”, “resembles a generic brand” and countless other unfavorable comments.

Normally, like any other large corporation (Tropicana is owned by PepsiCo) they would ignore such complaints, as they do not add up to even the smallest percentage of their consumers, but this time it was different. Neil Campbell, the President of Tropicana North America, said the following in an interview about the new packaging:

“We underestimated the deep emotional bond” they (consumers) had with the original packaging. “Those consumers are very important to us, so we responded.”

“The straw and orange have been there for a long time, but people have not necessarily had a huge connection to them.”

“What we didn’t get was the passion this very loyal small group of consumers have. That wasn’t something that came out in the research.”

After reading this article and peering through some of the numerous blogs I tried to think about what this means to Morpheus Media and its clients. Several important points came to mind.

- Social media will tell you things that standard focus groups and research will not, plus the feedback is boundless and instantaneous

- Consumer feedback or lack there of will help gauge where your brand is on the social scale

- Social media gives brands the opportunities to respond to consumer complaints and strengthen brand loyalty

Tropicana took the comments seriously and started to pull the new design and roll out the old one. Starting March 1^st the old packaging was back in stores along with new campaign ads.