Snapple Brand Management: Snapple

Background
In 1972, three partners Hyman Golden, Arnold Greenberg, and Leonard Marsh founded Snapple, an all natural apple juice. They managed to create a near-cult brand “fashion” brand which they ended up selling for $1.7 to Quacker in 1994.

1994-1997: Quaker Takes Command
Quacker bought Snapple for $1.7 billion in 1994. The company had been very successful with Gatorade and was keen to apply its proven approach to another beverage brand. Quacker felt that Gatorade and Snapple would complement each other and make the company a big beverage company. They also thought changing Snapple from a fashion brand to a lifestyle brand would increase sales. But all Quacker made was a series of changes that reduced Snapple’s market share and tarnished the brand image.
Snapple started as an all natural bottled apple drink and then later extended into carbonated drinks, fruit-flavored iced teas, diet juices, sports drink and vitamin supreme. The brand had many flavors which managed to satisfy a good number of their customers. But when Quacker took over, they changed the distribution to mass distribution and removed the middlemen which resulted in the loss of some customer-favored flavors.
Snapple had an independent distribution system with a network of 300 small family-owned distributors. It was primarily concentrated on

But Quacker’s attempt to change it into a lifestyle brand resulted in the loss of those customers. Quacker had done an excellent promotion job with Gatorade by associating the sports drink with prominent sportsmen like Michael Jordan and increasing visibility in the National Football League’s televised games. However, they failed to do the same with Snapple. Instead, they fired Wendy. Wendy Kaufman had served as an essential promotional figure. When Quacker fired her, the customers felt betrayed and did not have anyone to associate with the