'Innocent' juicy ad banned by ASA for plastic-washing
In February 2022, a TV ad commissioned by Innocent Drinks was banned by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) for their campaign ‘Little Drinks, Big Dreams’ “due to its misleading environmental claims” reported (Ormesher 2022).
The giant drinks brand chose to coordinate a partnership with Mother London, an independent creative agency to help lead on a strategy to deliver a new creative TV advertisement.
The ad in question, was created to show Innocents efforts towards environmental change and how by choosing to purchase their product, would further benefit the planet.
The animated ad follows several singing characters, accompanied by a talking beaver. The ad begins by stating that we a “messing up the planet” which is quickly addressed by the beaver saying that we should be “fixing up the planet” instead (The Independent 2022).
From this ad, 26 complaints were registered with the ASA. One in particular, was submitted by Plastic Rebellion, a sister company of Extinction Rebellion (Extinction Rebellion 2022) stating that “it is misleading to suggest that purchasing single-use plastic (as Innocent drinks use) does not have an adverse effect on the environment.” (Ormesher 2022)
What does an Innocent Drinks PESTLE analysis look like?
Political
Top factors will involve Innocent Drinks adopting governmental guidelines and regulations including new laws on the display of correct ingredients and setting minimum compositional standards (UK Statutory Instruments 2013). Although there are no laws against greenwashing, currently laws can stop the spread of misinformation and advertising falsely through the ASA.
Costs in labour could be increased due to a decrease in accessibility for international workers through a political change to the seasonal agricultural workers’ scheme (SAWS), this could see a hit to British farming of fruits, leading to a supply issue affecting production of Innocent Drinks product.
Political changes such as Brexit could further disrupt distribution throughout European markets and therefore hurting UK trade (The Guardian 2022)
Economic
Economic factors affecting Innocent drinks start with the cost-of-living crisis. Regardless of how ‘green’ Innocent claim their product are, the cost-of-living currently is reported as “impacting the trade-offs between affordability and sustainability” (Barratt 2022).” Innocent are considered as a premium juice brand and with plenty of cheaper alternatives, the competitiveness of the market will increase. With revenues also increasing over £100M access to the European market is an important part of Innocent’s business and growth strategy (Calland 2015).
Socio-Cultural
Changing trends and diverse audiences are some of the factors to provide challenges to Innocent. Innocent pride themselves as a brand who use natural ingredients for all their range which comes at a premium price.
With the public more motivated than ever to make a healthier lifestyle change, Innocent are able to capitalise on this through the quality of their product (Public Health England 2022). The social movement, of living in a ‘green’ world also powers their ‘Little Drinks, Big Dreams’ campaign and adopting a strong Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with the reputation of donating 10% of its profits to charity (UKEssays 2018).
Technological
Factors include production methods of creating Innocents products and packaging which can create issues in making their products, although the brand use 100% recycled plastics, these are still considered as single use plastics. Using the brands social channels allows for them to be able to connect with their customers and deliver their message on products and the environmental impacts. New technological improvements allow Innocent to lower their carbon footprint using alternative transport and now having access to some of “Europe’s very first fully electric juice tankers working at our new factory” (Innocent Drinks 2022).
Legal
Just like other businesses located in the UK, Innocent must comply with health and safety and food hygiene safety laws, taxation, and EU employer laws. Since 2009, Innocent joined in partnership with Coca Cola, a notoriously sugar led beverage brand. Since then, a Soft Drinks Industry levy (SDIL) has been implemented on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB’s) (Adams et al., 2021) which isn’t likely to affect the Innocent brand but more the association with Coca-Cola.
Environmental
Innocent drinks pride themselves on actively seeking to improve their carbon footprint with an aim to be “carbon neutral by 2025 and net zero by 2040” (Innocent 2022). The brands commitment to sustainability also sees them only using natural ingredients. Since the UK have signed the Paris Agreement which is a “legally binding international treaty on climate change” (United Nations 2022), Innocent will have to continue their target to reduce the contribution to Greenhouse Gas emissions.
Critique
Although this case study of Innocent Drinks is regarding their shortfall and being caught out by the ASA, due to their campaign being reported as misleading, it isn’t all bad. The campaign Little Drinks, Big Dreams aims to unite its current target market into collective action towards making a happier and healthy planet, no matter how small the change is, and personally I believe the tv ad created by Mother London cleverly achieved this (Innocent Drinks 2022).
Choosing to deliver a tv advert helped Innocent to provide a visual representation of what is going wrong in society and with our attitude around climate change and thinking ‘green’. Reaching a mass target audience through this medium was thought out well by the brand, as it stays in line with their ethical morals as “advertising can educate us about products and services with a low carbon footprint” (IPA 2021).
So, what went wrong with Innocents campaign? The main problem with their campaign, ‘Little Drinks, Big Dreams’ was creating ads that were misleading, the message did not fully represent how Innocents products were created which weren’t as environmentally friendly as they made it out to be. The regulator said that Innocent drinks “ads implied that purchasing Innocent products was a choice which would have a positive environmental impact when that was not the case, we concluded that the ads were misleading” (PA News Agency 2022).
I believe Innocents intentions were good, however the complaints showed there was enough opposition regarding the messaging of the campaign which did not align with what the brand stood for. Essentially, drinking Innocents juice cannot help with ‘fixing up the planet’.
Yes, the ads intentions aligned with the company’s values, but the bottles in which they package their product still only used a percentage of recyclable plastics and in fact the bottle was considered as a single use plastic. Not only is the single use plastic bad for the environment, but the methods of extracting and processing the raw materials has a negative impact on the environment.
Innocent defended themselves in the matter by saying the “ads did not suggest that buying the products themselves would lead to a positive environmental impact but were rather a statement about its wider environmental goals” (The Independent 2022).
Could Innocent Drinks be fully ethical in their marketing? Personally, I believe so, but the company would have to make sure that all methods used in making their products align with what is being advertised. No advertisement of Innocents will solely be regarding their stance on lowering the effect on the environment, there will always an aspect of selling their product the brands audience, this means backlash is bound to happen unless Innocent can fully become a 100% environmentally friendly company.