Smooth operator: drinks manufacturer promotes social marketing scheme

RICHARD REED goes by the title “chief squeezer” at Innocent, but right now he is looking for some “chief knitters” to help the smoothie company with a spot of “social marketing”.

As part of the Innocent “big knit”, it is hoped that 80,000 smoothie bottles hitting Irish shops this autumn will sport mini woolly hats to be knitted by volunteers.

Some 25 cent from each €2.69 bottle will go to Age Action’s campaign to highlight winter mortality.

The behatted bottles are typical of Innocent’s cute, non-corporate approach, which Reed says will continue despite the fact that the largest soft drinks corporation in the world, Coca-Cola, has since April owned a 58 per cent majority share in the company.

The initial £30 million received for an 18 per cent stake in 2009 is now being spent on a European expansion.

“We never had the funds to do it in other than a hand-to-mouth way before,” says Reed, who co-founded Innocent in 1999 with his fellow “chief squeezers” Jon Wright and Adam Balon.

The high-minded Innocent was criticised by some for selling out to Coke, but practically the deal has meant “meeting with them for two hours every three months”, he says.

Unusually, the three friends retain operational control.

For now, Reed can’t envisage a time when he’s not working at Innocent, which after a recession-related dip in sales, price cuts and some redundancies, aims to return to profit in Ireland this year.

Innocent, which has 80 per cent of the smoothie market here, is “only at base camp”, he says. And besides: “I think I’d last about three days on the beach.”