Tropicana’s CEO Needs To Stop Drinking The Arnell Kool-Aid

Look, I know agency folks love to gripe about clients. It’s a push-pull relationship where both agency and client often work at cross-purposes.
But agencies should strive to express some level of gratitude and dedication to the clients they serve. Particularly in public forums. Clients deserve that. And this Newsweek article about Peter Arnell, who recently redesigned Tropicana’s packaging, demonstrates exactly why many CEOs are clueless about the agencies they hire:

Arnell also can’t understand the kerfuffle over his work for Tropicana. “Can you imagine such mishegoss over a freaking box of juice?” he says. “I can’t believe that for the rest of my life I’m going to be known as Peter ‘Tropicana’ Arnell.” He says Tropicana overreacted to complaints. “I have my own perspective on it. But it’s not my brand. It’s not my company. So what the hell? I got paid a lot of money, and I have 30 other projects. You move on.” (Neil Campbell, president of Tropicana North America, says Tropicana will continue working with Arnell.)

Do you get it, Neil Campbell? Arnell doesn’t give a crap about you or your brand. So much so that he’s willing to trash your brand in Newsweek. But there are hundreds of other ad agencies and design firms who would care about your brand.
Perhaps it’s time to find those firms–or Campbell, and other clients like him, should do what Arnell is doing and move on.