If there’s one consumer brand that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside it’s Innocent Drinks. Not only do they make exceptional healthy fruit drinks using a variety concoctions, the way in which the company markets itself is nothing less than phenomenal. It’s genuine approach to its customers ensures that I’ll always stick an Innocent carton in my shopping trolley while on the weekly shop.
Innocent obviously doesn’t take itself too seriously. From its vehicles donning quirky signs and animal features to naming its HQ as Fruit Towers to the little notes it leaves on its products like “We promise that we’ll never use…any weird stuff in our drinks. And if we do you can tell our Mums” is simple genius. However, as well as the little quirks, the company obviously has a long term marketing strategy but I still can’t help thinking it’s all done genuinely.
Here’s why:
If you look on the ‘Us’ section of the Innocent website you’ll see that the company started from humble beginnings. The three founders got tired of their regular jobs (in marketing I believe) and were contemplating setting up a smoothie business. Rather than taking what would then have been a huge risk and quitting their jobs without any research, the three founders bought £500 worth of fruit and set up a stall at a music festival in London. Next to the stall they had two bins, one with a YES attached to it and the other with a NO. Alongside this was a large sign saying: “Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” After the smoothies had been sold the YES bin was brimming and the rest, as they say, is history.
It’s a good story no doubt and gives (me at least) a sense of ‘local lads done good’. I never hear stories like this being told in modern business but I don’t understand why? You know how my dad found out JFK had been assassinated? He was at a Beatles concert and John Lennon announced it over the mic. That’s a story. Short, but would I have remembered it if he said he heard about it while watching a darts game in a pub? No.
Story telling captures people’s emotions and makes it memorable for the listener as opposed to telling hard facts. Do you think I’m the first person to tell Innocent’s story? Will I be the last? To steal a Guy Kawaski phrase – Innocent focus on ‘making meaning’ and not ‘making money’.
Innocent Drinks donate 10% of its profits to charity. The company has also created a registered charity called the Innocent Foundation which works in partnerships and NGOs around the world. They don’t fund within the UK but rather to developing countries where their fruit is bought from. Considering Innocent own 60% of the UK smoothie market it would seem that the company isn’t doing CSR for its own reputation’s sake. If CSR was primarily for their repuation’s benefit then maybe they would try to make their ‘good intentions’ more visible within the UK?
Look at the Ethics page of the website (strapline: “We know we aren’t perfect but we’re trying to do the right thing.”) it has a number of different initiatives from recycling to procuring ethically (Innocent pay premium rates for their fruit from farms with the highest ethical accreditation) to ‘doing good things‘.
Combining good community relations with good CSR, Innocent also run Fruitstock, a music festival at Regent’s Park to “say thanks to the people who drink our drinks” which also raises money each year for a designated charity.
I love the Innocent logo. It’s plain, simple but easily recognisable. Along with the brand mantra “little tasty drinks”. Love it.
Taking a leaf out of the Halifax’s book Innocent feature their own employees in their TV ads… well they have once. They also have their own inhouse doctor. Here’s the latest advert. It features the guy that writes the blog.
As well as having the ‘Family‘ section on their website where they send periodic updates of news, invites to events and the odd present, Innocent also have their own blog with unfiltered comments. The use of Flickr for their Mistletoe kissing competition was pretty good too. They sent out 10,000 sprigs and asked people to take photos of themselves kissing to add to the Flickr group. Again, they also used Flickr for their Supergran campaign which was in aid of Age Concern.
Being the new age socially responsible company that it is, it would be great to Innocent empowering its customers similar to what Firefox did with Firefox Flicks. Or like what Firefox did with its advocates names in the New York Times ad. Why spend all that money on huge advertising creatives to come up with an ad concept when they could run a competition among the public to create their next ad. Now that would be something!
To see one of the founders get a slight grilling on the BBC’s Hard Talk click here.
technorati tags: innocent+drinks, innocent+smoothies, csr, customer+empowerment
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
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Piaras Kelly
Have you seen their grass covered vans – really slick.
Stephen
I haven’t actually. You can see a cow van in the backgound in the top picture.
twittering Drew
Nice article Stevo. Totally agree. You read about them in marketing and management mags and they make you think if you were to try to build a company like theirs you’d wish you had the guts to do it in the style they did.
Justin
Good point Stevo – great brand. I’m a particular fan of their Christmas charity drives for Age Concern, small knittied wooly hats for each bottle – it’s the little things that make you smile.
Steve Field
Stephen,
You love Innocent the way I love (and for many of the reasons that I love) Chipotle Mexican Grill — great branding, good story, good deeds, great food.
I’m beginning to wish they had Innocent in the states!
Anthony
Sounds delicious. Now we just need to get some over to New York City, heh.
Becky Carroll
Thanks, Steve, for highlighting Innocent Drinks. You are not the first person to tell the Innocent story, but I am glad you did. I had previously heard about them Gavin Heaton in a comment to my blog CustomersRock! They do truly seem very customer-focused. It is great to get this exposure to companies from all over the globe; thanks, and keep it up!
rachel para
how much are these drinks? i’m interested beacuse in food tec we have to find out about innocent smoothies and about th cost,branding,packing and so on. I’ve found everything i need except from the cost of the innocent smoothies.
Nick
The drinks are around £1.80 – £2 for a small 250ml bottle. The 1 litre cartons are about £3. Hope this helps!
Bill Compton
Hi Jim. Photos i received. Thanks
Dan Titus
Wow these smoothies look killer…
Ah, smoothies, gotta love them. They are good for you and offer great income potential for people wishing to ca$h in on the juice and frozen yogurt craze. You can learn more at our Web site,
Juice Gallery Multimedia:
http://www.juicegallery.com
Healthy regards,
Dan ‘The Smoothieman’ Titus
Ronan
Hi guys
I’m currently in University College Cork, Ireland doing an MBS in Food Marketing. As part of my research project for the summer I am looking at an area called ‘brand communities’. This basically involves looking at communities that form around certain brands/products.
I am very impressed with the layout of the Innocent website. I have developed a questionnaire for Innocent customers to fill out if they have the time. If anyone is interested, please drop me an e-mail at rdhourihan@hotmail.com. Your help would be greatly appreciated!
Please note that this questionnaire is solely for the purpose of my research project.
Thanks a million!
Mark
Are they really so great?
Check this out from yesterday’s Media Guardian:
This Water, part of Innocent Drinks founder Richard Reed’s empire, has had an ad campaign banned after it failed to inform consumers there was up to 42g of sugar in each bottle.
The poster campaign featured images of bottles of the drink with the strapline: “Simple, natural, refreshment”.
Each poster highlights that the drink was made from water and fruit but made no mention of added sugar.
The Advertising Standards Authority received a complaint that the ads were misleading because the This Water range, launched in April last year, contains sugar.
The company admitted that the This Water drinks contained sugar. But the company said it considered they were “simple” because they only contained three types of ingredient unlike other drinks.
The company said the ad campaign did not aim to ignore the sugar but was meant to promote the main ingredients of fruit and water.
Innocent submitted a statement to the ASA explaining that the sugar content could be classed as a natural ingredient.
However, the ASA said that the use of the word “simple” and the statements about just the fruit and water content implied these were the only ingredients. The ASA added that the sugar was “refined, white, granulated”.
In addition the regulator said that a 420ml bottle of This Water would contain between 33.6g and 42g of added sugar, depending on the flavour.
“We considered that most consumers would not expect such a product, when described as ’simple, natural’, to contain added refined sugars,” the ASA said in its ruling banning the ads.
“Because of that, and because we considered the ads implied that the drinks contained fruit and water only, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”
This Water said its This Water website and product labels state all ingredients in each bottle.
This Water and Innocent Drinks are both owned by Fresh Trading.
Ian McKee
There’s that, and Janet Street Porter’s had a bit of a go – http://www.channel4.com/food/on-tv/f-word/pictures/janet-takes-the-rough-from-the-smoothie-08-07-09_p_1.html – well, smoothies in general but that’s 60% Innocent.
I hadn’t heard that story before – a great one. In general though, I end up feeling slightly repulsed by all the jovial branding from Innocent. It’s rare to see such supposed openness from a brand, which is exactly why I have trouble trusting it…
Having said that, I had one at lunch today, and it was gooooood.