Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Tropicana owner PepsiCo works to juice up OJ sales
Chalk up orange juice as another casualty of the war on sugary beverages.
Sales of orange juice, a onetime breakfast staple, have declined precipitously as less-sugary drinks have taken a big chunk of its shelf space.
“Americans drank less orange juice in 2015 than in any year since Nielsen began collecting data in 2002,” The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year.
The decline may be due mostly to the fact that it’s packed with sugar, albeit natural sugar.
PepsiCo, owner of Tropicana, has lined up a marketing campaign to boost the 70-year-old brand with millennials.
The beverage giant this month began buying native advertising space with Ashton Kutcher’s “A Plus” digital news site — which espouses positive news — in hopes of making millennials learn to love its OJ. The site has 11.5 million unique monthly visitors, according to a September news release.
The native content series, called “Morning Spark,” includes videos promoting OJ as a feel-good morning beverage and positive way to start the day. Kutcher’s pull is helping with his network of celebrities.
The video has been shared on Facebook by Adam Levine, Robin Thicke and Lil Wayne.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, has no problem with Pepsi trying to make an 8-ounce glass part of millennials’ daily constitutional.
“They are trying to sell orange juice,” Nestle said. “That’s their job.”
Although she recommends a real orange over the processed juice, “an 8-ounce glass of orange juice is just fine,” she said. “When I was growing up, we had 6-ounce juice glasses. It took care of your need for really important vitamins.”