How did Tropicana lose $30M in a packaging redesign?
What seems to be lost in these “redesigns” is the <i>why</i>: <i>why</i> are you doing it?  If there isn’t a list of benefits long enough to justify the cost and possible risk, well, that’s a problem.<p>There’s also a tendency for companies to be super proud of what they’ve done so they neglect methods like A/B testing and instead just bet the farm on their great new design.  After all, it cost a lot of money and looks cool to the decision-makers so what could go wrong?  Um, maybe before you throw out all of your packaging <i>everywhere</i> and double-down, you could tone it down a little and try it out in a few small markets first?  Then watch and see if sales are going up or down?  Then think about going further?<p>And at this point there is also a tendency to ignore <i>history</i>.  This is <i>far</i> from the first big failed redesign; what is going on that no one is looking at past failures (plenty of which have had high costs to other brands too), and imagining that there might be a downside?