Our favourite marketing campaigns of 2012: Innocent
For the past nine years, Innocent Smoothies have released their ‘Big Knit’ marketing campaign. Their work aims to raise money for Age UK. The concept gets ordinary people involved by getting them to knit little woolly hats that fit on top of Innocent Smoothies’ bottles. People send their knitted hats in, and they’re placed on top of the bottles sold by Innocent in Sainsburys and Boots throughout winter. 25p from every ‘hatted’ bottle goes towards Age UK.
The Innocent Smoothie marketing tagline is ‘making winter warmer for older people’. This line makes consumers feel like they are contributing to a good cause. Alongside selling the hatted bottles, they also have a webpage. Innocent encourages customers to hold the little hats over something or someone so that it looks like they’re wearing the hat and take a photo. Customers must then upload the photo to the site. For every photo uploaded, Innocent will donate an additional 10p to Age UK.
This concept lets everyone get involved, as uploading photos is simple for most people. Some of the pictures are really funny, which will draw others to the site. This year, the 3 photos with the most votes won £500 in Amazon vouchers. This gave people an extra incentive to take their snaps. Not only that, but the three best photos each week won a smaller prize of a box of smoothies.
Ethical campaigning
This year, Innocent aimed to raise £200,000 for Age UK and the ‘big knit hat-o-meter’ online shows that they succeeded! Since the Big Knit has been running, they’ve made £1m in total! Consumers are now more likely to associate Innocent with good ethics, as the campaign has raised so much money for charity.
Innocent kept their campaign current this year through the use of social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr. Photos that were particularly funny could be shared amongst friends in this way and therefore images of the Big Knit got out to a lot of people.
The Innocent Smoothie marketing campaign is successful because it has a fun, festive feel. It will encourage customers to get involved. The little hats look great on the bottles and make them stand out at point of sale. It’ll also be a talking point between friends. The whole thing has become iconic as the little hats have successfully become associated with Innocent products. They are memorable and also feel personal, as each one has been hand knitted by people like you and I. They’re great at showing off their authenticity. The interaction online will interest anyone who enjoys uploading and sharing photos, which is most of us in this age of creative social networking! So the brand have done a great job to keep the Big Knit current and engaging.
What were your favourite marketing campaigns of 2012? Tweet us!
