From way back in 1999, Innocent Drinks has been leading the charge on quirky brand marketing.
The brains behind Innocent have been building a brand that mixes the informal, witty and subversive into something which when launched was pretty damn unique. The approach has both surprised and attracted customers, whilst simultaneously presenting a package of ethical values (not easy when you’re 90% owned by Coca Cola).
The backbone of this approach is - you guessed it, the company’s distinctive tone of voice. When looked at superficially, the tone of voice for Innocent is direct and intimate, at times appearing to be almost naïve or infantile in its simplicity. You could say innocent, almost.
This simplicity hides a sophisticated framework though. Innocent’s tone of voice is built on an innate understanding of its target audience and a deep awareness of how brand marketing can succeed in the digital world.
So, join us for a deep dive into how the distinctive Innocent tone of voice holds up a mirror to the memetic and pop-cultural obsessions of the internet, and how what they do manifests itself in both the company’s online and offline channels.
What colour is the smoothie?
In April 2019, Innocent launched their Bolt from the Blue smoothie with the this tweet.
You’ll see that the ‘joke’, of course, is that the smoothie is clearly green, well a turquoisey hue, but you get what we mean. The decision to angle the drink like this though seemed unintentional:
“Immediately people started saying our blue drink was green. This was embarrassing. It was meant to be our big new thing, and people were saying we’d got it wrong. What could we do? We thought for a moment, then replied with a simple “It’s blue”.
And from there team Innocent spent the rest of the year spelling out in black and white that the colour of their drink remained blue, not green.
The green/blue question reflected a similar online debate in 2015 about the colour of the dress, a meme so prevalent that it ended up in the news media. It is the reaction of the social team to the responses to the original post that is telling. They doubled-down on the ambiguity, insisting, increasingly vehemently, that the smoothie was blue.
As a result Innocent’s social team won the ‘best in-house client’ award at The Drum social Buzz Awards with their ‘blue’ smoothie campaign highlighted as a success:
“Being paid to tweet about smoothies is a tough gig, but someone has to do it. Innocent's social media team grit their teeth, pull up their socks, and get on with it. This year they've had a four-day long argument with the entire internet, spent half their budget asking for a pay rise, and launched a new drink. It’s blue”
THE SUCCCESS OF THE CAMPAIGN
So why does Innocent’s tone of voice for this campaign work so well? Firstly, their original content is provocative. Smoothies aren’t supposed to be blue. The marketing team’s claim that they made a ‘mistake’ is dubious. Their original tweet appears to be inviting argument and debate.
Secondly, their response to the feedback is playful. By doubling down, Innocent are using the quirks of social platforms like Twitter to comedic effect. The tone of voice adopted by Innocent can effectively be seen as satirising the argumentative and opinionated tone you get on social.
How Innocent’s tone of voice works
This approach goes beyond the blue smoothie campaign. Way beyond. Their satirical, playfully provocative tone of voice has helps shape all their content, from their blog posts to their general engagement on social. Just check out their packaging for another example.
This parody of marketing that plays to nostalgia and sentiment to make the message on this carton about, sticking “to fruit brother, stick to fruit,” is a brilliantly creative way to bring some life to what would be an otherwise boring piece of packing.
Or take their blog posts, a mixture of articles focusing on both abstract subjects and on the people working for the company:
“We use a lot of different fruits in our drinks. Pretty much all of them, actually (if you don’t count the weird ones you sometimes get with posh desserts). To make sure that we’re only ever putting the best tasting ingredients into our drinks, we go out and visit our farmers during the season of each fruit to make sure everything meets our standards and that the farm is ship shape from a technical, safety, quality and sustainability point of view. April means strawberry season in Spain so our Elodie and Lotte went over a couple of weeks back to pay a visit to our sunny Spanish farms.”
The same thing is repeated. In their emails. In their bottle caps. And on those cute knitted hats they add to bottles each year to help Age UK.
Through these, the product is either framed by stories of the individuals who work for the company, or draws attention to the personality of the person writing. The puns, surrealism and personality of this writing humanises the brand, pitching Innocent as a company of committed and inventive individuals rather than a bland and faceless corporation. Again, quite an achievement when Coca Cola owns you.
This is continued in their social media engagement. In one running gag, the Innocent Twitter feed offered their approach to avoiding confusion between the BBC entertainment correspondent and an individual with the same name:
“We talk to loads of people on Twitter. There’s Kyle who seems to really like Grand Theft Auto, there’s Mark who turns into Wayne from Wayne’s World, there’s Heidi who once sent us a load of delicious brownies in a wooden box her boyfriend made, and there’s Not Lizo.
Not Lizo’s twitter account used to be @not_LizoMzimba helping to distinguish them from the ex-host of Newsround, Lizo Mzimba. So, to make sure we didn’t get the two of them confused, we referred to @not_LizoMzimba simply as ‘Not Lizo’. It was a good system. It worked. We didn’t mix them up once.
Not Lizo recently changed their Twitter name to ConfusedSpoons but we carried on calling them Not Lizo, just in case we forgot who they are (and who they aren’t). It’s a good job we did because the other day, when we were talking to Not Lizo, the real Lizo Mzimba somehow came across the conversation.”
Make a note of the fact that there’s nothing about smoothies in this conversation, but rather the Innocent approach seems to be to build (or define) a community around their engagement with a combination of in-jokes and abstract references. Social channels are places that are rife with confusion and ambiguity, and Innocent uses this to their advantage.
SO, WHAT’S INNOCENT’S TONE OF VOICE - DISTILLED INTO A FEW SHORT BULLET POINTS ?
Innocent’s approach appears to be spontaneous, but in reality it is smart and carefully thought through. With their tone of voice, the company is able to build a brand based around key attributes.
The principal attributes of the Innocent tone of voice are:
Personal – conversations and content that highlight the personalities both behind the brand and within their consumer base
Authentic – content that reflects the personality of the author rather than keeping it hidden
Intimate – content that goes beyond talking about the product and engages on a one-to-one level with its customer base
Empathetic – content that reflects the desires of the customer base and demonstrates a shared value system
Informal – content that has simplicity at its heart and know how to use universal comedic devices to create an informal tone
Innocent’s future
Innocent have maintained this fun approach for over a decade, but does this still have a place in 2020?
Whether the heady of days of the early 2010’s where too well, innocent, recent years have seen major brands have their own personality renaissance (KFC being a prime example). All in all it means more dominant competitors in the marketspace vying for people’s attention - alongside a supporting cast of smaller brands trying to copy what Innocent have achieved. All in all is the tone of voice which was once so unique becoming diluted?
Even with all this additional noise though we remain hopeful.
Innocent’s approach builds a brand, not based on current trends but based on the fundamentals of personal communication. Their use of comedy such as satire, parody and the pun is, in essence, timeless, and is, crucially, focused on their target market. Although the tone of voice remains the same, the content it produces is, essentially, future proof.
But remember - you’re not Innocent
That isn’t to to say that Innocent’s tone of voice is suitable for all companies though. (That includes you). The key to their success is in their recognition of what appeals to their customer base. Innocent know that their target market is young, pop-culture savvy, ethical, informed and loyal, so by making their content personal and didactic without being preachy.
While many other company directors point to Innocent demanding marketing teams suddenly make their own brands ‘warm’ and ‘friendly’, the success of Innocent is because they have shaped their tone of voice based on their customers rather than trying to shape their customer base through their tone of voice.
Your business has it’s own voice which may be similar in style but should still be as unique as you are. If you need a helping hand to find what your voice is then see what we can do here.