Brands I Love: Innocent Drinks

We’ve all got our favourite brands when it comes to consumerism, it can be a preferred cereal, a trusted skincare regime, a much-loved perfume, or anything else you can imagine buying. For each of these there might be different reasons behind your favourites, you might like the company’s profile and corporate ‘personality’, you might associate a scent with someone you love, or maybe you like to relive your childhood by having Frosties each morning.

I’m no different, and I thought I would turn the spotlight on some of mine; one of many being Innocent Smoothies.

I love the little quirky elements of humour they throw in

First things first: their drinks are YUM. Really, really yum! I will admit they are a bit pricey, but if I’m honest with myself this is part of the appeal they hold for me. As my Dad often likes to tell me, I tend to ‘live beyond my means’ and often opt for the more expensive brands in all areas of life!

A typical newsletter from Innocent

I’m a big fan of their website, facebook page, and generally the online personality they have created for themselves. I signed up to their newsletter a while ago, and in an inbox inundated with newsletters and promos (I love signing up for these things as a marketing geek), theirs is one I actually make a point to open and read.

They are already quite well known for having one of the ‘coolest’ office spaces in London, and I’ll readily admit I’d love to work there (free smoothies – who wouldn’t?!). You very quickly get a real sense of the company culture at ‘fruit towers’, and by referring to each employee regularly and on a first-name basis you feel far more engaged with them, and it humanises what would otherwise be just another faceless corporation; an approach I find really refreshing and appealing.

Of course I have to mention that a huge part of their company mission is to promote environmental responsibility and sustainability, and this is something we can all relate to. They are probably one of the most ethical companies that I can think of, and it’s inspiring to think how different the world could be if other companies aspired to be more like them.

Promoting sustainability

Ethics in Advertising: The Fall and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch

“It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Warren Buffet

A&F have been having a hard time of it lately, even if it is admittedly a little well-deserved. But are they just being made an example of?

It all began last month, when an interview given to Salon magazine in 2006 with their CEO Mike Jeffries resurfaced on the internet. In the space of a couple of sentences, Jeffries managed to create a PR disaster with his comments about who their products are aimed at.

“Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

In this interview, he’s not just publicly acknowledging the hierarchy of beauty in society, but is admitting to actively aiming A&F products at the supposed beauty elite, encouraging the exclusion of anybody who is deemed to be not attractive enough.

What makes this approach so particularly repulsive however, is that they are targeting teenagers. We would all agree from experience that your teen years can already be incredibly awkward and painful, filled with issues about your self-esteem.

It didn’t take long for his comments to go viral, sending the internet into an uproar and kick-starting a stream of reactions, from the hypocrisy of Jeffries’ statement to all-out consumer activism, led by counter-campaigns like #FitchtheHomeless.

Blogger ‘The Militant Baker’ addresses the CEO directly with her own ad campaign

The internet responds to Jeffries’ comments… (image source: buzzfeed)

#FitchtheHomeless (image source: evansville.com)

Despite their mistakes, I don’t believe A&F are any different from their competitor and numerous other retail giants. They’ve simply been caught off-guard and unfortunately for them, have become a scapegoat for what is an ever-present problem in the fashion industry as a whole. Other stores may not come out and say so, but if you think about the brand image associated with similar stores I’d bet you’d find the exact same target audience and exclusionary attitude.

Ethics in Advertising: Twitter

Nope, that’s not intentionally an oxymoron, although it can be easily mistaken for one.

There a number of subjects that can fall under this title, none more so than social media. Marketing and advertising are often at the forefront of boundary-pushing when it comes to challenging what society deems acceptable, and this has only become more common in recent years thanks to the emergence of social media and the power of the hashtag.

#fail: When Twitter Goes Wrong

There are plenty of examples of ‘hashtags fails’, and most of the time they can end up becoming a funny spoof version of the intended response. One example of this is Waitrose, who last year launched the trend #ishopatwaitrosebecause. Instead of comments about their ethical ranges and organic meat, the majority of tweets went along the lines of this…

#ishopatwaitrosebecause nowhere else can I hear the sentence ‘Orlando, put the papaya down!’

#ishopatwaitrosebecause Clarissa’s pony simply refuses to eat ASDA value straw

#ishopatwaitrosebecause buying food amongst the commonfolk tends to ruin one’s appetite

Sometimes however, the backlash can be a little more serious. Twitter has become a very powerful source for breaking news, and incidents such as the shooting of several film-goers in Aurora, Colo., during a Batman screening begin trending within minutes. Fashion retailer CelebBoutique jumped on the bandwagon with a spectacularly inappropriate tweet:

CelebBoutique’s ill-advised tweet following the shootings in the USA

Their PR people quickly removed said tweet after being inundated with angry comments, and claimed that they were totally unaware of the shooting at the time of posting. There have, however, been other cases where hopping onto a trend with a bad taste tweet has been intentional, such as when President’s Choice (a Canadian supermarket) promoted their Halloween range using Hurricane Sandy:

President’s Choice taking advantage of the Hurricane Sandy trend

Another more recent example is the Boston bombings, where this unwise tweeter decided to promote a golf tournament:

If we look at other channels used by companies worldwide to promote their products, we would quickly discover that they have several methods in place to check and double check everything that gets sent out to ensure it stays within the brand’s guidelines. When it comes to Twitter however, and social media in general, there often doesn’t seem to be much, if any, control over what is being sent out. An intern or inexperienced assistant at a huge global company can within minutes gain access to a corporate account and become responsible for that brand’s image on what is arguably the most powerful marketing channel available.

Should there be stricter controls put in place? You wouldn’t see a TV ad that uses a tragedy to their advantage, so why should Twitter be any different?