Re-imagining a hero for a new age
Re-positioning the market pioneer in a shifting category.
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Client: Innocent
The challenge
A quarter of a century ago, Innocent blazed a trail in the healthy and natural drinks space. For example, the fact that we now have a large and vibrant smoothie category is largely down to the emergence of innocent’s small bottles of joy! innocent’s friendly and quirky disruption of the drinks market is legendary – the world of healthy drinking would never be the same again. However, the category has finally caught up, with a plethora of copycat brands stealing share by claiming to be the next innocent. How can innocent defend its market leading positioning?
The approach
The innocent team were looking for an insight-driven strategy to put the brand ‘back on the map’ – a big challenge in a world of driven and creative competitors! Truth had to be both smart and creative to find the right way back to hero status; not least because ‘health’ can be a messy concept, with lots of interpretation and sometimes a strained relationship with reality!
It was clear that we needed to get underneath the skin of consumer life in order to find truths that could be relied upon and be used to inspire meaningful change. Self-ethnography, via an online platform, was a chosen as a core approach because it empowered people to think independently and record their own thoughts and behaviours in real time.
Running in parallel was a deep-dive brand audit. Our aim was to build an holistic overview that would complement the in-depth work with our target audience. This was also our way into exploring the category drivers that define drinks purchase and uncovering the pain points that were at the heart of why innocent was losing relevance. Co-creation with real humans (always a joy!) was the final piece in the method puzzle. Working with our target audience, we reconfigured innocent’s future-facing emotional and functional role.
The solution
Working closely with the innocent team, we created a new pioneering vision which will enrich and invigorate the brand. There is now a ‘North Star’ for comms, innovation and portfolio planning, powering the brand into a much more heroic space, one that bodes well for the future vitality of innocent going forward. Truth also worked closely with innocent's communications agency to create a new Masterbrand platform which we have gone on to validate ahead of its launch in 2025.
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