Comments on Can I change your mind?: Why I hate Innocent

Dan is being disingenuous, but this is typical of ...

2008-03-02T00:37:00.000Z

Dan is being disingenuous, but this is typical of the brand, proposition, product and their choice of partners. Innocent is entirely the product of brand-literate advertising people including planners, who are the people who draw up the floor-plans for bands. it's a nice enough brand, and i'm prepared to believe that they are not "evil" in the way that they approach their business, their staff, their brand and their consumers. however, at the end of the day they thrive on the sort of ex-yuppie 1st-kid endlessly-concerned-but-unchanging unthinking liberalism that is a major part of the problem. Driving a Rover to the bottle-bank and all that.
It's pointless inaction and they're just adding to the general noise with their damp bobble-hat and loveable grin approach to life.
Notwithstanding all that, their recent TV add is just clumsy and being dressed up in down on the farm whimsy just makes it that much more irritating. There's a fundamental flaw in what they're trying to communicate: For adults, "bits in" is meant to be a "good thing" but the kids version is "without bits". For Christ sake guys, credit us with at least a modicum of intelligence.

Thanks very much for the comments, Mike and Richar...

2007-10-07T18:06:00.000+01:00

Thanks very much for the comments, Mike and Richard.

Mike, thanks for the link to your blog - almost spookily sentiments to my own. Interesting that we reacted so similarly to This Water.

And Richard, very good to have my suspicions confirmed that there are lots of people out there aspiring to the Innocent TOV without having a clue what they really mean by that. Let's have that coffee soon.

Hi Lindsay, hope you're well and not fighting over...

2007-10-05T17:08:00.000+01:00

Hi Lindsay, hope you're well and not fighting over parking spaces. I was going to tell you what Dan Germain said at a very good presentation I saw him give, but he's written in and told you himself.

Anyway, we're still getting upwards of one brief a month asking for Innocent ToV. The latest for an Executive Search Consultancy can you believe? (We'll get you a really good job and if we don't you can tell our mums!)

Of course, none of them has been successful because once a client sees their company in Innocent ToV they blanch, and say that's not what they meant. Or that it's not in Innocent ToV. Perhaps I should simply forward the briefs to Dan and take a cut? And let the client tell him he's not very good at copying the Innocent ToV.

Keep in touch, Richard Owsley

Hi LindsayI'm with you on This Water. (And Barclay...

2007-10-05T16:40:00.000+01:00

Hi Lindsay

I'm with you on This Water. (And Barclays.)

In fact, I wrote about it on my own site recently, if you're interested: http://tinyurl.com/27ar9a

Poor old Innocent are damned every which way now. If they stick with their tone they'll be accused of getting stuck in a rut, and if they change they'll be accused of selling out, etc.

Clearly, they need to stay true to themselves and ride out any snipey criticism. Given that their tone really is theirs, and not a brand consultancy's creation, I'm sure that's what they'll do.

Keep up the good work, anyway...

Mike

PS: I only deleted this before because of a typo. Can't be doing with typos.

Thanks very much for the comments, Dan and Tom. I ...

2007-10-03T07:45:00.000+01:00

Thanks very much for the comments, Dan and Tom. I absolutely agree with the very persuasive points you both make.

You're right, Dan, that it's harder to love a hugely successful brand. I remember the thrill of discovering Innocent in the late 90s, and yes, it was very like stumbling upon a fantastic band that none of my friends had never heard of. (In fact, I think the first time I came across Innocent was judging the D&AD Writing for Design category in its first year, 1999; and, bizarrely, my rather hazy recollection is that I had to make an impassioned speech to persuade my fellow judges that this was work worthy of recognition.)

And, Tom, I couldn't agree more with your "taking a product to market" point. That, I suppose, is what I was trying to say about companies like Barclays, which seem to think that shoving a few chirpily phrased posters in the windows of their branches will somehow compensate for the fact that they treat their customers like total crap.

Just to add as well that I think the reason Innoce...

2007-10-02T12:59:00.000+01:00

Just to add as well that I think the reason Innocent have been so phenomenally successful is not just because they've got a distinctive tone of voice and visual appeal - but that what lies behind it all (apart from Dan's unpleasant beard) is the fact that they have a great product - which innovated by being sellable in the chiller for a much longer period than was previously possible with smoothie - type drinks, that captured a nascent market just before it went massive, and had the solid business (pricing, operations / logistics as well as marketing) brains to make it work.

In fact it is a great example of how marketing works when 'marketing' means more than just tone of voice and advertising. It means 'taking a product to market' in all its facets.

Hello Lindsay.My name's Dan and I write most of th...

2007-10-01T15:57:00.000+01:00

Hello Lindsay.

My name's Dan and I write most of the copy at innocent. I liked your post - it's pretty much spot on. We didn't set out to invent a tone - it comes from the fact that we're friends and that's how we talk. We never had a weird session where we formulated a tone. We just wrote stuff.

As for people getting fed up with us, I guess it comes with the territory. The bigger our company gets and the more popular our drinks become, the more chance there is of people not liking what we do or say. Tall poppy syndrome, or perhaps that slightly British thing of not being into pop groups once they get popular.

Or maybe we just got worse. It's pretty hard for me to tell - I'm just writing like I've always written. I guess it's for others to judge if we've gone off the boil.