Rebranding: What Happens When It Goes Wrong?

Back by popular demand: It's Ken Homa! Prof. Homa was kind enough to share his wisdom with us last week on repackaging, and he's back to tell a tale of rebranding gone wrong. In case you forgot, in his prime, Prof. Homa was one of the world's foremost experts in rebranding, as evidenced by his work with GE and Black & Decker.

You may recall that years ago, back in 2009, Tropicana went through a rebrand:

The goal of a rebrand is to get people to look at the brand again and bring some kind of excitement around the brand. Typically, a rebranding leads to increased marketing expenditures and improved performance of the product. Instead, in Tropicana's case, its profits took a squeeze. After the redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% in less than two months, costing the brand millions and millions. Ultimately Tropicana had to stop the presses and pull the plug on the redesign.