innocentdrinks.co.uk

Manufacturers are constantly trying to wow us with wonderful, quirky, new and outrageous packaging and marketing ideas, so it is not very often that one truly stands out and makes me actually visit their website just because I want to see more, but innocent drinks made me do that.

Innocent drinks produce wonderful all natural fruit smoothies, thickies, juices and flavoured water. You can recognise them in the shops by their simple packaging of a white label with the word innocent on it and a strange logo of a couple of red circles, sort of like a kid’s drawing. What is different about these drinks (apart from being delicious) is the quirky details on the label. Each one is really friendly and makes you want to work for the company (or maybe that’s just me). The smoothie I recently bought explained that life gets a bit samey making drinks all day so they would love you to come and visit them at Fruit Towers. If you are bored too, you can call the ‘banana phone’ on 020 8600 3939, but I haven’t dared to this yet (tell me what happens if you do). The label told me to ‘Shake it up baby!” and explained that it contained “free range fruit”. They also give you the website to visit, www.innocentdrinks.co.uk, and I was so intrigued by what I read on the label, that I did.

The home page is as simple as the labels themselves, with a white background, the innocent drinks logo with the words “little tasty drinks” and some cute animations inviting you to explore further. Oh and there is an additional link inviting you to look at some photos from fruitstock – more later. When you get into the linked pages, navigation is simple, with the home page links permanently displayed at the top and the other links for the area you are visiting displayed along the bottom. The pages load very quickly (but I do have broadband).

Clicking on the animation of Fruit Towers (with a banana and apple whizzing around on the roof) takes you to a page with further links, and I will give you a small sample of each to see if the type of content/humour appeals to you.

• This is the news – ‘weekly new digest from Fruit Towers’. “Fashion-trainered, tongue-pierced prime ministers of the future, constructing strange things out of 2 litre plastic bottles and spent biro casings - students, we salute you.” This introduces a competition for students to send the best pictures of their drinks in ludicrously stereotypical student settings. It also details recent news from innocent drinks, told in their wonderful way.

• Our story – ‘we used to have good jobs before we started making innocent drinks. Why did we change?’ “Work hard, play hard. Sure. These days it's more like work hard, go home and eat potato salad.” This page goes on to explain how they are trying to make it easier for us to be healthy. They developed their first smoothie recipes in 1998, but were nervous about giving up their jobs, so they “put up a big sign saying 'Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?' and put out a bin saying 'YES' and a bin saying 'NO' and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the 'YES' bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned. “ As someone who would love to completely change careers, I thought this story was great. They also invite you to visit them at Fruit Towers, which is at Shepherds Bush.

• Press – ‘it is not for us to blow our own trumpet but….parp parp’. This details recent press articles about innocent drinks.

• Consumers – ‘our sweethearts whisper sweet nothings to us’. This gives some feedback from customers. Here are a couple of examples “Just wanted to say how yummy your drinks are and your website is THE most funny one I have ever seen!! People at Innocent- I salute you!! “ and “When are you going to grow up and get a proper job? Dan's mum, Bucks, most days”.

• Your questions – ‘all your innocent questions answered in full’. As you can probably imagine by now, this is a mixture of sensible and not so sensible questions. Here are a couple: