• Brand Republic, Fast Company, Wednesday, November 18, 2009 10:45 AM

One commenter to the Brand Republic story points out that the new packaging for Minute Maid -- the first of all of Coke's juice brands to get a packaging overhaul -- looks an awful lot like market leader Tropicana. Them's definitely fightin' words after all that Coke apparently went through to get it right.

Fast Company's Linda Tischler provides a look behind the scenes of the redesign in interviews with David Butler, Coke's vp of global design, and with Joe Duffy of Duffy & Partners, Minneapolis, who created "key parts of the brand language."

Tischler writes that Coke officials closely watched "the food fight Peter Arnell triggered with his short-lived Tropicana packaging redesign for Pepsi," as they worked on their own solution to a broader problem: the more than 100 brands in its portfolio.

"We've created a scalable identity system that we can use across retail, equipment, trucks, POP, everything," Butler tells Tischler. "It's easy to look simple. It's hard to be simple.

A four-and-a-half minute video of the packaging plus interviews with Coke branding executives accompanies Tischler's piece.

Read the whole story at Brand Republic, Fast Company »