Five years after its disastrous rebrand

Playful type, childhood nostalgia, and orange caps return.

Juicy orange with red-and-white-striped straw. Typefaces from the past. Visually appealing colors. Tropicana’s new look is everything the company’s last rebrand failed to be, with nostalgic childhood breakfast images.

After working with Tropicana Europe products for years, Sunhouse, a U.K. brand and packaging design agency, created the new design. One might call it a “refresh” rather than a “rebrand.” Sunhouse modernized Tropicana, a 1947 brand, by repurposing its assets using archive inspiration. Only European markets will be rebranded to match the U.S. version.

“The juice category was viewed as a commodity and in decline, with many consumers choosing own-label over branded options,” says Sunhouse partner and executive creative strategy director Sally Knapton. Tropicana was competing on functional benefits rather than brand affinity and long-term growth because the juice landscape was so similar.

Tropicana, one of the first packaged juice brands in the U.S., is regaining its position as a childhood staple. Tropicana wants to be the orange juice It girl in Gen Z with its new campaign, “THAT juice”.

Tropicana’s tasteful 2024 refresh shows that it learned from its 2009 rebrand, which removed the orange pierced by a straw, simplified the logo, and flipped it vertically. Tropicana, with its tail between its legs, pulled the new packaging from shelves due to customer outrage. One part of that rebrand—changing the cap to look like a tiny orange—was fun.

Consumers initially criticized the new look as cheap, simplistic, and unrecognizable. The then-president of Tropicana North America said they “underestimated the deep emotional bond [consumers] had with the original packaging.” The mishap cost Tropicana over $50 million and has become a marketing case study.

“It’s always difficult to build on a brand with such iconic and established equities, and I’m sure there were good reasons for the 2009 redesign,” says Knapton. “But based on press reports, it felt like brand sacrilege.” The brand marque, green and straight-from-the-source story with straw going into orange were gone. “The brand felt utterly unrecognizable,” she says, “with all the craft and detail replaced by a glass of juice—a category generic.”

Tropicana’s refresh won’t be as controversial. Sunhouse once again uses the pierced orange and a juice drop sliding off the straw as its packaging icon. James Giles, Sunhouse partner and executive creative director, says the visual “highlights the pure, natural goodness of the product, which is something Tropicana is known for and imitators can’t replicate.”

Sunhouse slightly arched the Tropicana wordmark and added an orange dot above the “i.” The agency chose Brother 1816 as its main font because its rough handmade finish conveys authenticity. For a retro look, Tropicana’s logo includes “The original since 1947” in a roundel. The orange cap returns to top it off.

“That detail from the 2009 rebrand felt like the smile in the mind that was missing from the identity anywhere else on the packaging,” Giles says. It played up the fruit story’s purity, and we wanted to use it again to emphasize the ‘straight from source’ real fruit promise.

Five years after its disastrous rebrand

By nr39r

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