WSJ: “Tide Turns ‘Basic’ for P&G in Slump“:
In a subsequent meeting with Tide marketers, the packaging discussion focused on whether to abandon Tide’s trademark orange. Shoppers on average spend 45 to 60 seconds in the laundry aisle, devoting just seven seconds to choosing a product, making color a crucial guide for finding the right product, P&G research found.
The group considered yellow and blue, the other colors of Tide’s famous bull’s eye. A handful of other laundry brands used blue but few had yellow. “People kept insisting, ‘Tide isn’t yellow,'” says Mr. Tosolini. “But then we thought maybe it could discourage current Tide users, which is what we wanted.”