In 2019, Innocent Drinks, known for their tongue in cheek ads, made a mistake with one of their campaigns.
Thanks to a team that thinks quickly on their feet, they were able to turn this around to their advantage. In fact, they make deprecating references to this ad once in a while, which reminds people that the team is human too and make mistakes.
So what happened?
The brand doesn’t play by the regular rulebook with their quirky, often irreverent & original tone of voice.
In October 2019, to launch their dairy free nut drinks range, the team released a tweet which included a ‘seasonal’ addition – Conker milk. For those who are wondering what conkers are, they are fruits of the horse chestnut tree – not edible and poisonous.
Innocent drinks posted the below tweet, without realising that people may actually try eating/’milking’ conkers.
The backlash was swift, as many people assumed this was a real product.
The reaction
In fact there were announcements and posts about how conkers are poisonous and harmful if eaten.
The team quickly released an apology, deleted the tweet and proceeded to release a series of tweets about their gaffe.
While apologetic, the brand was self deprecating and chose to make fun of themselves instead.
They used this opportunity to reply to twitter users who posted about the ad.
They even referenced other (edible) brands in their tweets, which interestingly resulted in a spike in demand for those brands.
The results
While the campaign started off on an ominous note, the team’s swift and humorous reaction meant that awareness of the increased and brand loyalty was sealed.
The brand also came across as more ‘human’ to everyone. In fact, this ‘human’ element was so good for brand perception and awareness that they still about this gaffe once in a while as you can see below.
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