I went off to the D&AD awards dinner at the Roundhouse last week. Some weeks before I’d been foreman of the Writing for Design jury and we’d voted secretly on what work – if any – deserved the top award, a Yellow Pencil. The awards ceremony confirmed that the Yellow Pencil should go to Innocent for the words and design on their 1-litre smoothie packs. I was relieved and pleased that Innocent had won, and won for the first time.
During the judging day I’d been impressed by my fellow jurors’ analysis of Innocent’s contribution to our world of communication and writing. As foreman of the jury I’d tried to stand back a little from the debate but listened as others gave Innocent their due. This means that I can now say that the award was richly deserved. Innocent have changed the landscape for all of us who are writers for design, writers for business.
So, credit is due to Richard Reed, as one of the founders, Dan Germain (pictured) who made the brand live and loved through its words, and Ceri Tallett who is taking it on again to another level. I’d first met Richard about ten years ago when Innocent was a tiny, young company. I’d interviewed him for one of my books because I wanted to write about Innocent’s use of stories on packaging. Now he’s become every politician’s favourite business heartthrob. Dan must have changed since I met him eight years ago on a D&AD jury – but I haven’t noticed how. He seems the most laid-back creative head you could ever come across, but he’s a real craftsman. Ceri, relative newcomer, has earnt her place in this Innocent pantheon – perhaps, I like to think, helped a little by coming on Dark Angels courses. And they’re all supported by an energetic creative team.
This morning I popped into Sainsbury’s and bought a 1-litre smoothie. It’s lemon, honey and ginger, not one of those submitted to the awards (it’s new). It seems to me to express so much of what makes Innocent successful. It needs a long essay but I’m not going to write it here, so let’s just take one line, in yellow type on a black silhouette of a bee hive: “Buy one get one bee”. The line made me smile, as Innocent often do, but behind every smile there is always the single-minded purpose that I’d express as: “This is about giving you a fruit drink that’s as natural as we can make it.”
It’s a worthy message but delivered in a completely disarming way. They acknowledge their place in the commercial world by subverting the wording of the ‘buy one get one free’ message you see on every high street. But what really matters is that it’s not done for the sake of the joke but to focus our attention harder than ever on the cause. Bees are disappearing. If they do, it will be a natural catastrophe. So let’s do something about it. It’s this ability to concentrate on their own narrative theme, never deviating, that drives all their language and storytelling. That is increasingly hard to do, and even harder to sustain, and Innocent have been doing it now for a dozen years.
I have always liked their meta-messaging. Millions of kids everywhere have learned to think of recycling as something fun that makes something cool out of trash by reading the smoothie cartons as they slurp.