Today in class, we watched an advertisement from the Innocent Drinks Chain of Good campaign.
I had mixed signals watching this video.
On Innocent Drinks’ side, this advertisement shows how purchasing their smoothies creates a “Chain of Good”. Mark bought a smoothie that not only is good for his health, but also helps support people in underdeveloped countries. It creates an image where the company is being socially responsible, as 10% of their profits go towards charities.
At first glance, this seems like a wonderful campaign. If consumers were to consider purchasing an Innocent Drinks product or one of their competitors, this 10% donation may be a factor that affects their purchasing decision.
However, on a second thought, there were several thoughts that went through my mind:
- 10% Profits and Their Use
How is 10% of profits? If the profit margin of an Innocent Drinks smoothie is low, I can only wonder how much actually gets donated to the Innocent Foundation. Adding on to that, does donating money to the Innocent Foundation really make the biggest impact? Depending on the cause Innocent Drinks (or any business) is supporting, the money they raise can always go to a well-established organization that could maximize every donated dollar. - Unclear Advertising
The advertisement showed that through Mark’s purchase of one smoothie, he was able to help Janet and Otai get a cow. As I mentioned in Point 1 – how much does 10% of Innocent Drinks’ profit amount to? As a consumer, I would have appreciated a clearer model of how many sales have to be made for the beneficiary to get a cow (or any other resource they need). If Innocent Drinks had explained that the profits from 500 smoothie sales would help purchase a cow, I would have been less-reluctant to critique this advertisement.
Regardless, researching more about Innocent Smoothies has made me hungry for smoothies, so the next time I see a drink from Innocent Smoothies at the grocery store, I’d definitely give it a try!
While this ad did leave me with a positive image of the product, I have to agree with Nicole about the ambiguity of the process of the distribution of the company’s donations. I understand the need to communicate impact of a campaign quickly to the average consumer but as a marketing/sustainability student I was left wondering how the impact of the campaign is measured and how I could find the information. We have often discussed in class the difficulty of universally measuring impact, and I believe a industry based metric would be revolutionary. It would make great strides of progress for the sustainability movement and allow consumers to avoid situations like the one Nicole discusses here.
I totally agree with Nicole. The campaign itself sounds too good to be true. I somehow got this sarcastic feel while watching the Ad. And yes, how could one bottle of juice help so much? Not only the content itself, but the design of the video had a weird touch with the constant “moo” of the cow and the not so cheerful and almost fake “eee” of the people. I find “Innocent” over exaggerating its CSR, which makes me skeptical of buying its products. Is “Innocent” really that innocent and is Mark really a hero for purchasing this one bottle? I don’t think so.
Hi Nicole,
Great work on this blog post, you provided a thorough critique of an interesting campaign.
I have to urge you to keep posting though, we are almost halfway through the term and it will only get busier. Keep including the hyperlinks, and photos. You could also think about including a question for your fellow students, just to get the discussion started.
Looking forward to reading more great posts,
Tess
Hey Nicole,
This advertisement also left me conflicted, Like you, I thought it was a grand gesture to donate 10% of profits, but something about the companies approach seemed puzzling. You made two vital points; profit is usually revenues minus cost. The cost includes salaries and bonuses of executives along other expenses to improve production. I am curious how much profit the company is recording and how much is being donated. Additionally, this is an example of corporate social responsibility; the organization would benefit if they took the value-creating approach and allowed a well-established charity to fundraise. Lastly, I didn’t like the underlying theme of “Africa needs our help” this is more of a social issue, but I didn’t love the framing of the advertisement.