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Innocent Drinks
Business Advice from the Founders of Innocent Drinks...
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Business development insights and marketing strategy advice from the founders of one of the UK's most innovative brands, Innocent:
DAN GERMAIN: ... we used to know that phrase, the right kind of customers or the right customers. I think we used to think that we knew who they were. And right at the beginning of it it was us. It was people in there mid-twenties who lived in urban areas who were very unhealthy because they worked long hours and partied a bit too hard and needed repair in health instantly because they were far to lazy to make a smoothy themselves or cook a proper dinner for themselves. So we identified this little need where we could give people stuff to perk them up a bit. Give them a shot of health.
Actually, that was great because we knew that that target audience was quite big. There were lots of people like that because we knew lots of them, all of our friends, people we went to college with, people we worked with. We kind of thought, right, OK so those guys will want to buy what we make. So we identified the right customer we thought. And then suddenly you start getting, because we encourage people to e-mail and call us and stuff, we start getting e-mails and calls from people who weren't 26 living in London or Manchester or Leeds. They weren't, they were people who were older, using it because of concern about specific health problems that the vitamins and minerals in our drinks help them with. Or people who have been ill. People who've had real illnesses, cancer and heart problems, who are recuperating and have found it difficult to eat the right kind of food, and smoothies were a convenient way of getting a shot of health down them. Kids. You start getting e-mails from mums saying my kids never eat fruit, but this is the only way I can convince them to do it. You know, fruit by, health by stealth. And so all these different ways we start discovering that Innocent wasn't about us. It wasn't about the audience that was us. It was about everyone. You know, the products were going to be great for everyone. So probably the last I eight years of business we've just slowly, pretty slowly actually -- we haven't got products out as quickly as we want to sometimes -- but we've identified who those people are. Are they kids? Are they families? Are they older people? And started making products for them. So there's kids smoothies and now there are veg pots for people who want to get more veg, because we've sorted the fruit bit out so what about the veg. You know, different products for kids now, Squeezies. You know, the fruit puree that you get in one hit.
So all those different needs that you start to identify, and in the end what we've worked out is because we're about health and because we're about natural products there isn't a right kind of customer because everyone needs to be healthy. If people don't want to be healthy then there's other guys who make products for you. So we're never going to make cigarettes, I'm guessing, we're never going to make cigarettes. I haven't seen it in any strategy document. So I think that there's always going to be a marker for us, because people quite enjoy living. And people generally, most of the ones I've spoken to, are relatively afraid of death and would quite like to live for a long time. So it's just about finding stuff you can get to people that will make them healthier, hopefully help them live longer, etcetera. Amen.
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