The part of a rebrand I worry about most is the moment everyone gets excited about what looks new.
A cleaner logo. A different color palette. Packaging that finally feels more current.
I want someone in that conversation asking a less exciting question: what will our customer struggle to recognize after we change this?
Tropicana’s 2009 packaging redesign is the example I keep coming back to. The familiar orange-and-straw image disappeared, and the brand eventually returned to its earlier packaging. A Florida Department of Citrus research paper reported a 20% year-over-year sales decline for Tropicana Pure Premium during January and February that year. [1, 2]
That is a serious outcome. But I think the useful conversation starts well before the sales numbers.
Familiarity deserves a place in the brief
When I look at a redesign, I want to understand what the existing packaging is already doing well. Which details help someone find the product? What tells them they have picked up the version they bought last time? What feels distinctive enough to belong to that brand?
A team can decide it dislikes an old design element. That alone tells us very little about whether customers still use it.
Imagine a shopper looking for a serum they have purchased twice before. They remember the yellow bottle and a particular label layout. They may not remember the full product name. Change the bottle color, type, logo placement and naming hierarchy at the same time, and I would want evidence that they can still find it easily.
That is a hypothetical example, but it is the kind of practical question I would put in a creative brief. Familiarity should be evaluated before it is edited out.
I would test the shopping experience
A beautiful presentation makes it easy to admire a pack. I would also want to see it surrounded by competitors, at the size it appears on a phone, and next to the other products in the range.
Can an existing customer find it? Can someone new understand what it is? Can both tell the products apart?
Those questions help separate personal preference from the job the design needs to do.
For a beauty brand, I would include a product-selection task. Ask someone to find the product for a specific need, then explain their choice. Watch where they hesitate. A cleaner front panel may be an improvement, but I would be cautious if the cleanup removes the information people use to choose.
I would also separate feedback from existing customers and people who have never purchased. They are approaching the packaging with different levels of familiarity. Hearing both gives the team a more useful discussion than a single vote on which version looks better.
Give every change a commercial reason
I am very comfortable with a bold redesign when the business has a clear reason for it.
Perhaps the range is confusing. Perhaps the packaging does not communicate an important product difference. Perhaps the brand is entering a new channel where the current format creates a genuine problem.
Those are useful starting points. Each gives us something to improve and a way to judge the result.
“More modern” leaves too much open to interpretation. I would ask the team to finish the sentence: more modern so that our customer can do what, understand what, or feel what?
Then I would agree on what stays. The brief should name the recognizable elements we intend to protect, as well as the parts we want to change. That gives the creative team a considered starting point rather than asking them to discover every boundary through rounds of feedback.
Plan for the customer who misses the announcement
A launch plan should make room for people who never see the campaign explaining the new look.
I would check the product imagery across retail and marketplaces, the language customer service will use, and whether old and new packaging will coexist. I would want the transition explained wherever confusion is most likely, without assuming a social post reaches everyone.
And I would keep listening after launch. Questions about whether a product has changed, disappeared or been replaced deserve attention. I would treat them as signals to investigate, alongside sales and repeat-purchase performance, rather than dismissing them as resistance to change.
The Tropicana case does not make me less interested in ambitious design. It makes me more interested in the assumptions behind it.
Before approving a rebrand, I want a clear answer to this: what are we making easier for the customer, and what are we asking them to learn again?
That is a conversation worth having while the design is still on the screen.