Innocent Drinks rock

Posted Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 7:30pm in Blogging, Business, Media, PR General  | 

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

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