One of the major challenges for any new business is deciding where best to direct often limited financial resources for maximum return on investment. Design and brand development is a vital part of launching into the consumer marketplace.
Much of the initial development of Innocent Drinks was an instinctive process for its founders. The three young professionals drew on their own experiences and those of their families and friends to develop a product that was right for the young, urban professionals market that they wished to target. ‘We didn’t have more design knowledge than any group of city dwellers exposed to design in their everyday lives,’ says Dan Germain. ‘Our user testing was done on people we knew and we’d email our friends with packaging designs.’
The design brief (such as it was) aimed to emphasise the purity and naturalness of the Innocent drinks. ‘We didn’t have any sophisticated marketing plan,’ explains Germain. ‘We just wanted to like the way it looked and tasted and for it to stand out on café shelves.’
Innocent has always believed in keeping things simple and straightforward, a strategy which suited the team’s initial lack of experience and knowledge about the design process and developing a brand. For example, the now instantly recognisable ‘apple with halo’ logo was first sketched on a napkin in felt tip pen.
Although the Innocent team had no professional design experience, they didn’t underestimate its importance for the success of the company. ‘Design helped immensely,’ says Germain. ‘The brand was totally unknown so we had to rely on people being intrigued enough to buy the product. It’s not cheap, so it has to look like something you’d want to pick up.’
The team’s own talents enabled them to develop the Innocent brand up to a point, but designing the first bottles finally led them to seek outside help from packaging specialists, Turner Duckworth. Since then, Innocent has outsourced design for some specific projects, but clearly still prefers to keep its creativity in-house wherever possible.
‘Our design philosophy is to keep things simple,’ says Germain. ‘No tricks, just natural, honest and engaging work. We sometimes work with agencies, usually on a project-by-project basis, but we’re probably not the easiest people to work with, mainly because we’ve done most of the work so far ourselves. We have strong ideas about what does and doesn’t work. Having said that, we’ve had some of our best ideas when working with external people.’
Meet the founders...
Adam Balon's CV
D.O.B. 16/02/1972, Hammersmith
Education: St Johns College Cambridge, MA Economics
Employment: McKinsey, Business Analyst: London and Johannesburg, Virgin Cola, Marketing Manager
Hobbies: Snowboarding, International cuisine, Watching ‘The West Wing’
Jon Wright's CV
D.O.B. 20/07/1972, Guildford
Education: Winchester College, Hants, St John's College Cambridge -Masters in Manufacturing Engineering
Employment: Bain & Company, London & San Fransisco 1995-98
Hobbies: Skiing, Sailing, Flying, Travel, Photography & Technology
Richard Reed's CV
D.O.B. 13/02/1973, Yorkshire
Education: St John's College Cambridge - Masters in Geography
Employment: DDB London, 1995-98
Hobbies: Snowboarding, cycling and eating broccoli