Is the Innocent brand a lie?

Last week Google was revealed to have not told the truth about their collection of personal customer data which places an enormous question mark about their truthfulness and the authenticity of their organisation’s well publicised values. Can Google be trusted?

Innocent drinks have had an interesting few years struggling with similar issues. In 2007 they were censured by the Advertising standards authority in 2007 in a story covered by the Guardian, about the health properties of their smoothies which led them to withdraw their claims. Two years later, this was reversed by the ASA who then concluded that their drinks did constitute 2 of one’s 5 -a-day requirement. But in-between times they launched their “This Water” brand which also ran foul of the ASA due to its sugar content. The ASA deemed its marketing to be “misleading”.

As a parent, I am concerned about the way the food industry markets products, especially ones that children buy so I welcome an active and robust regulator in the ASA. Innocent on the other hand does not seem to be very smart about making sure it doesn’t run up against them and twice in two years did just that.

In both cases you could argue the problem was one of interpretation but it seems incredible that a brand trading on the values it does, does not pay a lot more attention to ensuring the claims it makes will not run into such opposition.

For me it still calls into question the authenticity of their brand promise, especially “This Water” which was found to contain 30-42g of added sugar in a 400ml bottle. But even if they genuinely care about their purpose and are fighting interpretations, they are certainly not acting Innocent but more Naive. That’s not a recipe to sustain long-term brand success.

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