Tropicana’s "The Juice That Starts It All" campaign doesn’t reinvent the wheel, yet people’s emotional response is incredibly positive throughout the entire ad.
Couple this tactic with great branding and messaging, and your beverage campaign’s effectiveness will skyrocket!
Emotion
Today, viewers’ attention drops off almost immediately, and by 13 seconds, most have already tuned out. Creating a strong emotional impact in your ads is the factor that can capture and hold attention against the odds.
Tropicana's ad is an excellent example of how to elicit a powerful emotional response from your campaigns. The iconic orange juice brand effectively made use of cheerful music, bright colors, and engaging visuals to create positive feelings among viewers, outperforming over 97% of ads tested by Behavio.
Why is this important? When people enjoy your ad and emotions run high, they are more likely to continue watching, and they will also remember better what they saw.
Emotional responses particularly peaked during scenes that showcased features like the hand-picking of oranges and the absence of added sugar in the beverage. And, not-so-shockingly, viewers also enjoyed the lovely shot of mimosas being served during brunch.
Respondents in Behavio’s ad test commented that the ad “makes you feel good watching it” and appreciated the use of orange and yellow as background colors, noting that it "adds warmth and positivity".
To sum it up, this beverage ad was successful in capturing attention by creating good vibes all around.
Need
In Behavio’s ad testing methodology, the Need metric measures how effectively viewers recognize your product category (or a more specific need) within the ad.
To increase the likelihood of buyers choosing your brand, it’s essential to create quick memory links between your brand and relevant occasions. For Tropicana, this meant clearly conveying their product category (orange juice) or even a specific buying or usage occasion (like brunch).
Tropicana’s campaign performed well in this area, with 68% of the audience identifying the product category during the ad, surpassing the average recognition rate of 59%.
Messaging
In terms of messaging, we tested how well viewers were able to identify the three key messages in the campaign:
- "From Hand-Picked Oranges"
- "The Juice That Starts It All"
- "On Every Occasion"
The audience recognized the “From Hand-Picked Oranges” message exceptionally well, and recall of this message is best in the first half of the video.
The “On Every Occasion” message, however, was somewhat overshadowed. If this was intended as the central message of the ad, it would benefit to reinforce it via both visual and audio formats throughout the ad.
Branding
Branding was one area where Tropicana’s commercial could have been stronger, with only half of the target audience recognizing the brand in the ad.
While there were some recognition peaks, the brand should be noticeable throughout the entire video, especially during key emotional moments. To enhance impact, we recommend making the branding stand out more in scenes where emotion is high.
On a positive note, Tropicana avoided one of the most common pitfalls in TV advertising: late branding.
The most effective ads introduce their brand within the first five seconds to avoid wasting ad spend. In Tropicana’s case, 77% of viewers recognized the brand within the first five seconds—well above the average of 44%!
Final thoughts
Tropicana’s “The Juice That Starts It All” campaign is a great reminder that effective beverage advertising doesn’t always require groundbreaking ideas.
Instead, you should focus on tapping into emotions, establishing clear links between your product and your category, and keeping your brand at the forefront of your creatives.
You can explore the full analysis of this creative and more in Behavio's ad testing dashboard.
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