Smooth operator

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Years ago, when innocent’s fruit smoothies first hit our shelves, I visited one of the initial incarnations of Fruit Towers – as the company’s head office is named – to interview one of its founders. It was early days; the three college friends who set up the business were running it with a handful of staff, and it was growing fast.

Innocent was the launch story everyone wanted to talk about. Unique, quirky, with an incredibly strong brand voice, it was the new kid on the soft drinks block, taking ready-made smoothies to the UK population.

Much has changed since then. Its founders are multi-millionaires, selling the business to Coca-Cola – first a stake in 2009, then the whole thing in 2013; some products have come and gone, while others have been revamped; and the company has expanded into fresh markets across Europe, with new headquarters in the UK.

When you enter Fruit Towers today, however, the original innocent spirit still emanates. Teeming with achingly young, laid-back staff, with a fridge packed full of its products for staff and visitors alike – Coca-Cola appears to be leaving innocent to its own devices, at least as far as corporate culture is concerned. The innocent view is that they are ‘connected not integrated’.

So it’s not surprising that innocent has also adopted its own distinct approach to market research. Despite now being a company of 450 employees across 11 European countries, its consumer insight team is small, and sits within the group marketing team. It does some brand-tracking work courtesy of Millward Brown, but – with limited resources –  it is selective about where it focuses its attention.

Jessica Vara, innocent’s group consumer insight manager, explains: “We don’t have a tick-box exercise here of how research is used. It is all very ad hoc. We look at which projects and business challenges are our bigger bets and we look at where insight is going to have the most impact. We partner with people – whether it’s our ideation team or our marketing managers – and we are key in the decision-making from the beginning.” For instance, innocent launched a new brand positioning – ‘On the bright side’ – at the start of this year. Customer insight fed into that work, and has been integral to its communication and product development. 

“We’ve a mission here to help people live well and die old,” says Vara, “but when it came to our communications – and particularly as we’re launching into new categories – we needed an overarching brand positioning, and to think about master-brand communications.

“Insight was really at the start and the heart of this, and we need to make sure it is being pulled through in the way we would expect. We’re here to champion the consumer voice as we move forward into a world that is more developed than when we launched 19 years ago.” 

The brand positioning is, in some ways, a response to the increasingly strong competition innocent is facing as it enters markets. From an insight point of view, Vara says, it is crucial to not become complacent and to show that “we are listening to our drinkers”, whether that is through research or by inviting them to contact the company directly, through the ‘banana phone’ – its customer feedback line. “It’s these things that help us stay small as we get big,” she adds.

This is the crux of another interesting business challenge that innocent faces. As a deeply entrepreneurial company, it has grown rapidly, with its success built mostly on gut feel and intuition. That’s all well and good when first starting out and creating a category, but what about when it is an international soft drinks business with a turnover of approximately £300m? How does the brand ethos stay strong and how can insight help in that?

“The first way we do it is with our office culture. We don’t sit within our teams – we sit across the business, with other teams. It’s not hierarchical at all; you could have a new starter sat next to our CEO. 

“Insight is here to help give us the confidence in our gut feel. One of the key sayings around here is that, if you are 70% sure, go for it. There are certain projects where we might not think we need insight because there is enough knowledge in the room.”

Being entrepreneurial is one of innocent’s stated values – along with natural, responsible, commercial and generous – and, to preserve this, it decided to adopt a more rigorous approach to innovation. The aim was to balance insight and intuition, and it called on consultancy Brand Potential to help with the task as it looked to expand beyond its core customer. 

“We knew we needed more structure and a framework – something to help us on that journey as we innovate and move into new categories, to give us the confidence in the decisions we were making. That formed the brief we gave to Brand Potential,” explains Vara.

Chris Molloy, CEO of Brand Potential, says: “Innocent was doing research, but it tended to be further down the line, rather than a more upstream, insight-led approach. It didn’t have a universal insight and innovation framework that everyone bought into and that engaged all the markets. To drive commonality and consistency, we needed a framework across all markets, albeit one that allowed for market nuances. That’s why we focused on needs, because these are human needs that we all have.” 

To take a broad approach to consumer understanding and category dynamic, Molloy says a blend of different insight techniques – including ethnography, market immersion, online use and attitude (U&A) diaries, focus groups and qual – was used. “Even before we spoke to consumers, engaging its stakeholders internally was critical to this project,” he says.

To bring the project to life for innocent staff, Brand Potential held an internal launch event and branded the framework Springboard. “We created an identity around it to foster a sense of engagement and to position it as more than a research exercise. This is something that has longevity in the business. It’s not about compromising the values and entrepreneurial ethos of the business, it’s about giving it the foundations to build on – hence, calling it Springboard,” adds Molloy.

Needs, based on psychological principles, were a vital component of driving innovation and creating a common language across markets. Among those identified were ‘perk me up’, ‘treat myself’, ‘comfort’, ‘replenish’ and ‘nurture’. 

Nurture, for instance, is central to innocent’s mission of helping people to live well and die old, and is being used to move into new categories. This has already been seen with its dairy-free alternative products, such as almond milk. 

“Needs were being used and referred to differently – and we see this quite a lot; some people were referring to needs as we define them, some were talking about occasions as needs, and others saw category drivers as needs,” says Molloy. 

“We had a big debate around health – is it a need, or a driver? In our view, it’s a driver. It helps us shape our choice of soft drinks – we may have the same need in the morning when we get up and leave the house, but how we choose to fulfil that may be very different.”

It was the focus group work and in-home immersions that helped Brand Potential get to the needs. “We also did interviews with people who are on the fringe of the category but can form a point of view on how it will develop in the next few years. They are category commentators – opinion formers; they often have left-field points of view, but can look at how broader consumer and societal trends might impact on the category.”

Molloy adds: “We came out of it with a set of needs, knowing where the brand currently anchors – where its heartland is – and prioritised growth opportunities.”

Growth doesn’t necessarily mean entering new categories; it can also involve growing existing categories, reaching new customers by meeting fresh needs within a category. For example, innocent’s Super Smoothies, while still sitting in the juices and smoothies category, could fit the ‘energy kick’ need, rather than the goodness aspect of ‘nurture’. 

“When we look at our Super Smoothie range, there are a lot of different ways that we can talk about it. We realised, if we’re going to be really single-minded about what that key benefit is, the Springboard framework helped us decide that it’s an energy proposition, and that we’re able to talk about it in a really compelling way that made sense to drinkers,” says Vara.

The Springboard innovation framework is based on Brand Potential’s model Demand Finder methodology – incorporating needs, people segmentation, trends and performance data to identify where innovation opportunities for the business lie. By building this framework, innocent can maintain its nimble and fluid innovation culture, while gaining consistency and structure across markets and categories. 

One thing that stood out for Molloy from this work was that innocent has a right to play across all category needs, because of the strength of the brand and its core equities. 

Vara adds: “By looking into each of these needs, we could see the fundamental reason why people would pick up a drink – we’d be able to explore what that really means to people. What they would expect from this world, and what kind of categories are playing in this space already. If we were to launch something within that space, how would we execute it? What kind of product would that be and what packaging would consumers expect? 

“Now, as we start any kind of innovation or renovation project, we’re really clear about what need we’re meeting, and some of the things we can do within the space that mean it’s answering a consumer need.” 

In France, innocent has just launched a range of gazpacho soups, which is an entirely new category for the business. There are no plans for a UK launch at present. 

Since innocent started, there have been many changes in this sector – from the advent of food bloggers, increasing interest in vegetarianism and veganism, fasting diets, alcohol consumption and greater awareness of food provenance. We have also seen the rise of convenience culture, food poverty, and alarming rates of obesity. Some of these macro trends have a direct impact on innocent and, internally, it has a group of trends champions, of which Vara is one. The company spotted the veganism trend a couple of years ago, and – from that insight – it moved into the dairy alternatives market. 

Within this category, competition can come from all directions. The focus on health can clearly benefit innocent, but – as people look to increase their fresh fruit and vegetable intake – brands such as blender Nutribullet have also thrived as rivals to innocent, as people make their own smoothies at home. 

This does not deter the brand, and Vara concludes: “If our mission is to help people live well and die old, we know that smoothies and all the ingredients that go into them [are beneficial], so the more people drinking smoothies the better. We can offer convenience.” 

The plastic problem

The overuse of plastic packaging, along with a lack of recycling and responsible waste strategies, has been a problem for some time. However, thanks in large part to Sir David Attenborough showing a nation’s TV viewers the stark reality of plastic waste polluting our oceans, it is suddenly a cause célèbre.

Soft drinks businesses are often big users of plastic bottles, and innocent is no exception. Where it is an exception, however, is in how long it has been on the front foot with this issue – sustainability has always been part of its strategy.

• Innocent started using recycled plastic in its bottles 15 years ago, in 2003
• All its packaging is fully recyclable, and it is a member of a plastic initiative led by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) charity, with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation
• Its latest smoothie bottle is 50% recycled, 15% plant plastic
• Innocent’s goal is to have 100% renewable bottles – that is, made from only recycled and plant plastic – by 2022.
  
  

The Big Peel

When Jessica Vara, group consumer insight manager, joined innocent two years ago, one of her first objectives was to bring the consumer to life across the company, including the board. "I’m the champion for that, internally," she says.

Vara worked with market research agency Razor to introduce The Big Peel – breakfasts where innocent’s board team could sit down with consumers in each market, to better understand their behaviours and challenges. 

"It was a sort of innocentised focus group. Sitting people down in a boring room behind glass doesn’t work for us. It’s more important that people can ask the questions that they’ve had in mind. It feels a bit more immersive and who we are," explains Vara.

The second stage was targeted at the marketing teams, who were invited to a consumer pop-up dinner across innocent’s priority markets – the UK, France and Germany. The aim was to ensure they thought about the behaviours and challenges they encountered from a company-wide and brand perspective, rather than just as a localised issue.

"We got them to play little games and then come together in a big workshop with the marketing teams from across the different regions, to discuss the key challenges and implications for the brand," says Vara, who believes this approach has helped innocent with its innovation pipeline and its new product development. 

"I can’t talk too much about what we’re looking into launching, but it validated some thoughts and ideas. Also, it helped us understand where we are in terms of innocent’s life-stage in each of the markets – whether we’re ready to launch into certain new categories or not."