innocent drinks

innocent drinks make quirky smoothies and juices that are sold in supermarkets, coffee shops and various other outlets.

The innocent journey began in 1999, after the 3 founders began selling the smoothies at a music festival; fast-forward to 2019 and the company now sells more than two million smoothies per week.

The Challenge

The innocent team had been exploring product innovation ideas for mid / long-term NPD activity.

Although very much at the ‘sketched out’ ideation phase, the business was nervous about ‘killing’ any idea, even those fairly left-field – prior to some degree of customer/prospect input.

Whilst the primary focus was the smoothie’s category, scope existed to broaden activity across other innovation areas – once proof of concept and true business value had been proven.

Our approach

A ‘pop-up’ community approach was employed to facilitate the customer ideation process.

We developed a digital forum within which all participant activity (written response and rich media uploads – photos, videos, etc), could be instantaneously captured and later examined.

The outcome

This delivered a consumer forum through which initial NPD ideas could be explored, further shaped or rejected – in a lean, agile, fashion – supplying innocent with the necessary insight rigour and richness of customer feedback.

Ultimately, the research provided direction on which propositions were most likely to succeed – as well as identifying those that may need some revising. It ensured limited NPD resource could be efficiently invested in the areas most likely to deliver success.