This week Innocent announced that it is to sell a 10 to 20 percent stake in the company to drinks giant Coca-Cola. For a company that strives to do business in a more ”enlightened way” going into business with one of the world’s largest corporate organisations will certainly raise a few eyebrows.

As Innocent join a growing list of companies that started small and developed a brand on the back of a values led approach, only to sell out to a large corporate. It may now have to convince its loyal advocates that its eco-friendly values have not been affected by this move. As a brand which strongly promotes itself as being ethical through policies on fruit sourcing and the environment, it has previously been linked with large multinationals such as McDonald’s to trial some of its beverages at their restaurants.

However, the reality is Coca Cola have only taken a minority stake in the company. And the primary reasons given by Innocent’s founders are to add financial backing and the ability to get their brand into Europe and the wider world. This did work well for other ‘’start small” brands such as Ben & Jerry’s with Unilever and Pret A Manger with McDonald’s.  On both occasions the smaller brands were given the help they needed to further expand across the world.  Perhaps the Innocent/ Coca Cola partnership will court more controversy though due to the ‘purity’ of the Innocent brand.  People still associate the product to its ’stall at a music festival’ routes and now it could be perceived by some to be climbing on the corporate band-wagon.  However this definitely can work for Innocent providing that Coca-Cola leave the brand well alone and don’t try and stamp their own identity on it.  Financial backing – yes, multi-national marketing savvy – yes, but let’s leave everything else as is, please!

Has Innocent lost its innocence?  Or is this a shrewd business move to further grow the brand in areas it would have otherwise struggled to gain a share? Only time will tell, but let’s just hope it keeps its integrity by sticking to the core values, and not ending up losing their halo.

Tags: brand integrity, branding, Coca Cola, Innocent Smoothies

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 8:37 AM and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.