The London-based food and beverage company, Innocent, puts a big premium on authenticity. "You've really got to be prepared to bare your soul and show people what it's really like at your place," one of the founders tells Stengel. "You can't just say, `Hey, look! We did something crazy on purpose, so we could talk about it on the back of the package.'"
But Innocent's antics are part of its brand identity. The goal is to be entertaining enough to add value to the product. It doesn't always work exactly as planned, however. Ingredient labels occasionally include things like "a lawnmower" or "a ten-gallon cowboy hat" alongside real items like apples and oranges. The company drew criticism when it claimed "two plump nuns" went into one smoothie, prompting a cease and desist letter from the British government. The snafu wasn't enough to scare off Coca-Cola, which became a majority shareholder last year.
How its products went from nowhere to everywhere in the blink of an eye.
