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Marketing Society Awards For ExcellenceCause related marketing

Marketing Society Awards For ExcellenceCause-related marketing

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This is the story of how cause related marketing is no longer a feel-good

nice to have, but is becoming a growth opportunity.

Innocent. The ultimate entrepreneurial brand. The paradigm of marketing

cool in the 90s and 00s won the hearts of Generation X with grass-covered

vans, festivals & the bananaphone…

But Gen X grew up and had kids, and innocent became a mummy brand.

How could we attract the new generation of hipster Millennials?

While Gen X wanted to have a good time, Millennials were more attracted

to brands with purpose. Luckily for innocent its founders had been partying

entrepreneurs with a conscience. Innocent was one of the first brands to

have a cause baked into its business model.

A brand with a mission to ‘Leave the world better than we found it’, that has

given 10% of its profits to charity since the year it was born.

Weirdly, not many people knew this. But luckily it was exactly the right

message for Millennials.

So innocent was repositioned as the brand that not only tastes good, but

does good, to you, your body, and the world beyond you.

Every time you twist the cap, a chain of good starts.

We partnered up with some of the charities that innocent has helped over

the years to tell the story of ‘The Chain of Good’.

Already market share is up 1.2% and we have reversed a long-term decline in

brand measures, connecting with a new audience, and deepening the love of

our current drinkers.

This was more than a cause related campaign, it was the re-launch of a

cause driven brand. Good all round.

Innocent: the story of the chain of good

Word count: 274


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1. THINGS WERE AMAZING

One day in 1998, three blokes turned up to a music festival

with £500 of fruit and a sign saying “should we give up

our jobs to make smoothies?” They put out a “yes” bin and

a “no” bin and at the end of the day, the “yes” bin was full.

Innocent, Britain’s favourite little drinks company, is a

brand famed for its entrepreneurial energy and for making

people smile. A company with innovation at its core that

single-handedly formed the smoothie category in the UK

and created a tone of voice that’s now mimicked by many.

Its approach to communications also broke with

convention (at that point, not many brands considered

packaging to be as important as a press ad), and the

brand’s quirky personality – with its grass-covered vans,

festivals and bananaphone – was infectious. In short,

everybody adored innocent.

But 17 years later, the picture had started to look less sunny...


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2. BUT TROUBLE LAY AHEAD

The business landscape looked bleak, and sales had started to slide.

In a more competitive drinks landscape, crowded with a range of new options often at a lower price point, it became harder for innocent to compete.

They had also suffered in the sugar debate, despite the fact their little drinks were made with nothing but fruit.

People just weren’t drinking as many smoothies, and the market began to shrink.

Innocent’s amazing brand image lost some of its shine.

Despite its quirky personality, and innovative marketing history, innocent had become reliant on rational product advertising, focussing on ‘2 of your 5 a day’. Unsurprisingly, people had started to find the brand less engaging.

“We were building a category, justifying the fact that there was now this bit in the chilled aisle of supermarkets marked ‘smoothies’. We had to somehow keep people coming back there, so we kept telling them why, with umpteen product-led messages. I’m very proud of those ads, but we rarely deviated from the bottle/fruit/park format.” Dan Germain, Group Head of Brand and Creative at innocent

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is a brand I trust

Source: Millward Brown Tracking. Shifts measured from Mar 2011 – Dec 2013 pre-campaign

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3. THEY’D LOST THE YOUTH

The target audience had changed.

In the 90s and 00s, innocent was considered to be a pretty

cool brand: fun-loving 20-somethings knew they could

party hard and still feel good with innocent. But as our

drinkers grew up, innocent became a brand for the yummy

mummy and failed to connect with the next set of

20-somethings: Millennials.

While Gen X wanted to just party and have a good time,

Millennials are drawn more to brands with a sense of purpose

and authenticity. Innocent, with its history of rational,

product-led comms, wasn’t capturing their imagination

in the same way. We needed to find a way to recruit the

next generation of Millennials.

innocent Fruitstock, 2006


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4. WE NEEDED TO GO BACK TO THE STARTIn order to do this, we knew we needed to go back to the

very beginning of innocent and soak up all we could about

the brand. Innocent knew there was much more to say to

people; there were so many unsung stories to share and

celebrate. So they invited us to spend time at Fruit Towers.

After days of smoothie-drinking, toast-eating and white

coat-wearing, we left Fruit Towers with notebooks packed

with wonderful stories and a deep affection for the brand.


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5. WHO ARE INNOCENT?Innocent’s founders wanted to create a product that would

make life easier and better for people. And from this

intention sprang their two brand mantras:

Inside Fruit Towers

1. Help people to live well and die old

2. Always leave things better than you found them.

This told us that innocent is a mission before profit brand,

guided by a sense of purpose that dictates everything in

their business. For innocent, going to extreme lengths to

source the best fruit, creating strong, long-term relationships

with their suppliers and being committed to finding the most

sustainable packaging are not CSR afterthoughts, they’re

baked into the business model.

What’s particularly special about innocent is that ever

since they began, 10% of their profits have gone to charity.

In 2004, they set up the innocent foundation, which funds

projects in the UK and all over the world,.

Behind all the bunting was a genuine cause-related business,

something it had been from the day its doors opened. But as

much as innocent wanted to talk about it in comms, research

had previously suggested that this wouldn’t be a motivating

enough message to drive sales.


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6. GETTING TO A PLATFORMThese deep-rooted ethical credentials along with the

irreverent personality of the brand made for a unique yin and

yang. We wanted to get these cause related stories across

whilst continuing to let people know that innocent make

tasty little drinks that are good for you. So we needed a

platform that would allow all three messages - taste, health

and ethics – to shine.

Just as when God created the world he felt good (Genesis

1:31) everything innocent create is about good. Good for the

tastebuds, good for your body and good for others too.

Goodness is the thing that touches every part of their

business, everything from the company culture to the Big

Knit. It was no longer about emotional vs rational advertising,

it just had to communicate goodness.

So we positioned innocent as the brand that ‘Tastes Good,

Does Good’. Every time someone twists the cap, good

things happen. It’s a platform that accommodated both the

personality and the purpose; something that would empower

our drinkers to feel good. A platform that would also help to

solve the price perception problem. With innocent you get

way more than you do with any other drink.

We wanted to bring this platform to life and champion

innocent’s cause related nature by telling real stories of real

people, and we realised that this was the perfect opportunity

to hero the amazing work of the innocent foundation’s

charity partners.


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7. WHAT IS THE INNOCENT FOUNDATION?The innocent foundation was set up in 2004 to give grants to new

entrepreneurial charities working all over the world to help the world’s

hungry. All of the innocent foundations charity partners share the same

core principles of sustainable progress - and work to help put communities

on a sustainable path to a better life. Overall, the foundation has given

over £1.9m to 47 projects around the world 1.

In developing our campaign, we came across so many inspiring stories

but were only able to choose two. Eventually, we decided to tell the

stories of Ravelina and Practical Action in Peru and Janet & Otai and

Send a Cow in Uganda.

Practical Action, Peru

Practical Action use technology to help poor communities make

practical and sustainable improvements to their lives.

For our film, we travelled to Peru to meet Ravelina. Practical Action

provided her with a solar panel, which gave her home electricity and

enabled her to power her electric spinner. This allowed her to make

more wool to sell at the market, which in turn helped her to support

her family.

“The innocent foundation has supported Practical Action’s work in Peru since 2007 when they funded our project providing water, sanitation and energy to communities in the high Andes, 5,000m above sea level. Who would have thought that drinking an innocent strawberry and banana smoothie could make such a difference?” Liz Frost, Trust Officer at Practical Action.

1 Innocent foundation website Feb 2015.


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Send a Cow, Uganda

Send a Cow provide poor families in Africa with the knowledge and

skills to secure their own sustainable futures from the land.

For our film, we chose to tell the story of Joseph. Joseph’s parents,

Janet and Otai were struggling farmers from Kumel village in Ngora.

After joining Send A Cow in 2008, Janet & Otai started making money

from selling milk and crops and found themselves able to afford school

fees. Their increased earnings even afforded them the opportunity to

buy Joseph a bike so that he could travel to the best school 10km away

where he would get the kind of education that would set him up to

become an engineer.

“We are delighted for the support we have received from the innocent foundation over the years and it is great to see the results of this support on film. Every penny we receive makes a vital difference to families like Joseph’s and we are delighted to see children get a much needed education which will break the cycle of poverty for good.”

Martin Geake, Chief Executive, Send a Cow.

The campaign put both charities on a global stage by being mentioned

in not only all of innocent’s social media channels but also Max Joseph’s

(our famous director) and MTV’s.


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8. THE CAMPAIGN IDEA – THE CHAIN OF GOODThe Chain of Good simply illustrates how one good thing can lead to

another when you choose an innocent smoothie. The film shows a

regular bloke, Mark, doing ‘the lunchtime dance of indecision’ when

deciding what to drink with his lunch. But this simple act of choosing an

innocent smoothie triggers a chain of good that, unknowingly to Mark,

reaches the other side of the globe.

The Chain of Good ran as a through-the-line campaign, with outdoor,

digital and experiential activity. The outdoor visually brought to life the

chain of good concept with a number of posters that linked various

innocent messages together.

We knew we couldn’t just talk about The Chain of Good, we had to

actually do it. So we helped people feel good by pumping up their

bicycle tyres and cheering them up with Mariachi bands on their way

to work. We also gave away two smoothies to each passer-by so they

could continue The Chain of Good by giving a smoothie to a friend.


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9. RESULTSTastes Good Does Good is a long-term brand investment only at the

beginning of its journey, but already there are green shoots of recovery.

Not only did we manage to engage Millennials, but attitudes to the

brand improved across the board.

‘Is a brand I trust’ + 5%

‘Has a premium quality’ +5%

We had also made them feel good.

‘Makes me feel good about myself’ +4%. In particular the younger

Millenial audience were more likely to agree with this statement (Under

35s +5% index 150 vs over 35s)

Critically we had also managed to turn around value perceptions.

‘Worth what it costs +4%

All these shifts were statistically significant 2.

And we shifted more than just attitudes…

In the 12 weeks following the campaign, market share increased from

54% to 55.2%3, despite the category as a whole seeing a decline.

We’ve created a new cause related platform to future proof the brand.

A new consumer-facing brand promise that takes pride of place on the bottle.

2 Millward Brown Tracking 2014. Shifts measured from December 2013 pre campaign to April 2014 post campaign.3 Nielson: Smoothies only

Source: www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/the-innocent-promise


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10. A WORD ON THE GOOD PEOPLE OF FRUIT TOWERS The campaign also had a notable impact to the people inside Fruit

Towers. One of innocent’s Creative Directors said: “In 81/2 years, this campaign was the first time an agency had come in and made everyone excited about something. Universally excited.”

“I’m as proud as can be of the work we’ve done with 101. We’re telling the best true stories about our business, and about the positive impact it can have on people who really need support and help. It’s been truly collaborative, between us, 101, Max Joseph (our esteemed director), and the NGOs and charities that we work with. A proper ‘Chain of Good’.”

Dan Germain, Group Head of Brand and Creative, innocent.

11. WHAT WE CAN LEARNToday, communicating ethical credentials is more than being seen to do

the right thing. It’s a brand behaviour that is core to the belief system of

the Millennial generation. Brands that Taste Good and Do Good, Feel Good.

Building an authentic brand with purpose can be commercially viable.

Being cause related is no longer an ethical exercise, it is a business

necessity, a growth opportunity and can have a significant impact on

the bottom line.

Word count: 2,013

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