Orange you glad you spent all that money?

It's been a rough couple months for the Arnell Group—the creative agency responsible for the highly criticized new identities of Pepsi and Tropicana.

Today it reached a new low. Apparently Tropicana is going to pull a "New York Islander" and revert back to the classic, and very eye-catching and effective, packaging anchored by a straw puncturing into an orange. I call it a "New York Islander" because of the hockey team's decision a few years back to put the Gordon fisherman on their sweaters after winning four Stanley Cups in their original uniforms. After much uproar, they went back to the Long Island logo. (MY RULE #1 in sports marketing: never change a uniform you've won a title in)

You could say that Tropicana had won many championships with its popular packaging. Many asked why they would change to such a generic looking package that carried no brand equity. After all the talk, I guess Tropicana wondered the same thing.

So how does this happen? How does a major brand like Tropicana and a successful branding company like Arnell make such a huge mistake? Didn't they talk to their customers? Didn't they spend time understanding what a new identity and approach was intended to accomplish? Clearly, it doesn't look like it.

Now they're going to scrap all the designs and packaging and, as Armin Vit said so perfectly on his blog this morning, hit Control Z?

Peter Arnell, chairman and chief creative officer at Arnell, said in the New York Times, “Tropicana is doing exactly what they should be doing.”

Really? I guess in many respects, he's right. But it's more like someone forgot to do a few things before doing what they did and that should have happened long before the cartons were printed and the commercials were created. The only objective of re-packaging a product would be to build marketshare, not lose it or break even.

Shouldn't a large agency be able to give peace of mind that a creative direction will be embraced by the audience? I don't necessarily believe that branding is a science, but I also don't believe it's just some sort of shot in the dark.

So what do you think?