When is it a good time to change your campaign?

The question of the ages, right? You spend months developing a new campaign - advertising, online, packaging... And then you spend another few months and another round of $$ testing it with your customers. You work and tweak and re-write and finally it's ready and you launch. Ta-da!
Your new campaign comes out in the magazines, shows up on the tele, the new package arrives on the shelf. It's new, it's gorgeous, it's so 'of the times', steeped in customer insights, filling an unmet need in their lives, providing a solution to a problem that they didn't even know that they had. It's gorgeous and you love it.

Until, perhaps, you don't love it anymore, or a new product manager has climbed on board, or sales have started to lag, or a new competitor has entered into the market, or customers are changing their habits. So what do you do? How do you know when to change the campaign? Is there ever a right time? A metric?

Unfortunately, the answer is never crystal clear about when the time is right and testing is only going to get you so far. There are two cases that have gotten a lot of press lately - Tropicana and their new package design and the Motrin ads that Moms shunned. For Tropicana, the last year has been a bit crazy.

According to Tropicana president, Neil Campbell, "the entire orange juice category was in decline". Over the last several years, people have been swapping out their juice in favor of Starbucks lattes, new flavored waters, even sodas (remember the Coke in the Morning campaign?). And, unlike what the California Milk Processor board did with the Got Milk campaign, not too much is being done on a National level (by say the Orange Grower's Association) to re-invigorate the category.

So, Tropicana took it into their own hands to try and re-create orange juice as a breakfast hero full of natural goodness to help you start your day with a squeeze.

The launch of the new packaging designs caused quite a stir with everyone and their brother writing in on the subject.
BrandWeek: Tropicana Squeezes Out Fresh Design with a Peel

Church of Customer: The Tropicana Effect

Food Navigator: Twitter could leave bitter taste in Pepsi's mouth

Noah Brier posts: Why Did Tropicana Redesign?

New York Times: Tropicana Discovers Some Buyers Are Passionate About Packaging

Loyal Tropicanistas were furious over the new packaging saying that it was "ugly" and "generic". Those loyal users took to writing, calling and emailing in their complaints. And, fortunately for Pepsi, Neil listened. And, not only did he listen, but for those of us quickly passing through the dairy aisle, we won't need to search for the Tropicana much longer. We can pick it out easily again, grabbing that familiar orange with the straw just piercing the thick skin.

Go ahead and give that a squeeze.