In early 2009, Tropicana swapped the orange-with-a-straw on its Pure Premium carton for a plain glass of juice. Between January 1 and February 22, unit sales fell 20% and dollar sales fell 19%, roughly $33 million, according to IRI data cited by Ad Age. Within weeks, PepsiCo announced the old carton was coming back.
Seventeen years later, brands are still running versions of that experiment. This month, three of them did it at once, and the results show a pattern that matters to any business owner thinking about a new logo, package or app icon. Customers rarely object to change itself. They object to losing something they relied on.
Three Logos, One Week
The first case is Apple. Its Apple Music icon, red for years, shows up in an iOS beta as a black-and-white version, with a white-on-black variant for dark mode. Inside the app, the pink-red tint has turned blue. The reaction on X was swift. "This is the worst logo change of all time," one commenter wrote. Others threatened to switch to Spotify, which is an extreme response to a 1-inch square.
The second is Coca-Cola. Its global identity system, launched July 20 across more than 200 markets, set out to make every can look "more Coca-Cola." Three months later, people are still confusing the cans. An Australian flight attendant said on TikTok that she'd "lost count" of wrong orders because classic Coke and Coke Zero Sugar now look so alike.
The third is Disney, which did something that sounds riskier than either. In Canada, it cut its own logo in half and joined it to half of Hulu's for billboards that asked "Hu Dis?" Designers loved it. "Never thought I'd see Disney play with their logo," copywriter Vikki Ross wrote.
Disney changed the most sacred mark and got applause, while Apple and Coke made smaller changes and got backlash. The amount of change doesn't explain the difference. What each brand took away does.
Losses Weigh More, and Visual Ones Count
Behavioral economics named this decades ago. In their 1979 paper on prospect theory, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that the value function is "generally steeper for losses than for gains". Put simply, losing something hurts more than gaining something of equal size feels good.
A redesign sets up that trade in plain view. The brand presents a gain, such as a fresher look or more consistency. The customer counts the loss first: the color they spot on a crowded shelf, the cue that tells them which drink is theirs, the icon their thumb finds without looking.
Inc.'s Temilola Agbede made the same point about this month's cases. She argued that the size of a redesign is a poor predictor of how customers react. Customers read a logo as a preview of the brand and react to what they think they're about to lose.
What Coke and Apple Took Away
Coca-Cola's goal was reasonable. "With one seamless visual identity, we can deliver one recognizable brand experience to consumers," said Rapha Abreu, the company's global VP of design. The company kept specific cues for Zero Sugar, including larger "Zero Sugar" text, a black ribbon and a black cap.
For many customers, though, the can was never mainly about brand experience. It told them at a glance which drink was which. Making the cans more alike strengthened the brand and weakened that signal. Commenters quickly pointed out that this matters to people managing diabetes, which turned an aesthetic choice into a practical complaint.
Apple's red icon did a similar job for many users. It was a way to find the app in a grid of colorful tiles. A monochrome icon may look more refined, but it takes that shortcut away. Apple hasn't commented, and the design is still in beta, so it may change before release.
Why Disney Got Away With Cutting Its Own Logo
The "Hu Dis?" campaign announced that Hulu's shows now stream inside the Disney+ app. Nothing was taken away. Disney Canada's VP of marketing, Quincy Kelman, said the campaign was "not trying to change what people already know and love about Disney+", only to add to it.
The playful treatment worked because the offer was clearly a gain, and a playful logo signals that the brand is confident. Gap learned the opposite in 2010, when it replaced its blue box with a generic wordmark and dropped it after about a week. "All roads were leading us back to the blue box," Gap North America president Marka Hansen said at the time.
Run a Loss Audit Before You Redesign
The practical lesson works for a corner bakery as well as for Coca-Cola. Before you change a logo, package or interface, list what customers currently use it for, beyond what it says about you.
That list usually has three parts. Customers use the design to find you, whether by shelf color, app-grid shape or storefront sign. They use it to choose correctly between flavors, tiers or sizes. And some of them use it to say something about themselves. For each item, decide whether the redesign keeps it, improves it or removes it.
Anything you remove needs to be replaced or explained before launch, not afterward. Then follow Disney's lead and say what stays the same as clearly as you say what's new. For example: "Same recipe, new box." "Your plan doesn't change." "The red is still how you'll find us."
What This Means
Brand design is increasingly pulled toward simplification: flatter icons, unified systems and monochrome palettes that work in dark mode. Those choices make sense inside a brand team and often feel like losses to customers.
The companies that handle this well will treat a redesign as a change to an informal agreement with customers, not just a style update. Tropicana's sales drop, Gap's quick reversal and this week's complaints about Coke cans all point the same way. Customers don't mind what you add. They notice what you take away.
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