Creative Juices for the Good

Today, 101 London launches a new multi-million pound campaign for healthy drinks firm innocent, focussing on its scheme to donate 10 per cent of profits to charity by visibly demonstrating the results in an upbeat set of ads and executions that roll out from today (6 January) with a lead 60-second spot.

Playing on the idea that everything is connected, the ad shows how drinking an innocent smoothie can be win-win; for your body in terms of getting goodness and for the people who see the benefits of the unique charity scheme internationally.

The 60-second ad shows how a man decides to tackle his hangover with the goodness packed inside an innocent bottle; a decision that benefits the company’s long term African development charity partner, Send a Cow. A longer form ad is also set for release next week when we'll have insight and comment from the campaign's director, Max Joseph of Hungry Man.

Speaking about the new launch, Richard Flintham, ECD and founder at 101 London, believes that “if you try hard to do good things, then good things tend to follow”, and below he expands on the idea behind the ads, total teamwork and the decision to use long and short form to get the message across.

What was the brief from innocent?

We never really had a brief. The Chain of Good thought actually came from a script we presented in the pitch. And the brief for the pitch wasn’t really a brief either; more of a desire to ‘take the cork off the brand’. Our ‘brief’ to ourselves was to create a platform that would allow all the good in and around the brand to be joined up and shine through.

Why was Max Joseph right for the job? Had you worked with him before and why did the script appeal to him?

A long time ago I helped launch the brand and I’ve always enjoyed working with innocent’s creative team. So, in the same way we didn’t want this to feel like an agency/client relationship, we didn’t want this to feel like a director/agency relationship either. And certainly not a ‘director-to-do-one-script-and-then-say-goodbye-relationship’. So we needed a filmmaker/storyteller who understood and cared like we all did.

As we were writing the work I remembered how much I had enjoyed Max’s Baldessari film.  We were writing with a tonal hierarchy of ‘issue, pace, humour’ and the more we went on, the more Max seemed to make sense. So much so that we spoke with the team at Hungry Man before the pitch about putting them forward as brand partners, not just production partners. We needed this fluidity and they seemed to appreciate how a deeper involvement was necessary, so that’s how it went.

Why did you decide to do long and short commercials covering the two different charities?

There are so many stories that long form was always going to be our starting point, and we wanted to make sure Max had room to tell the story well. Shorter time lengths were used to explain the tastes good, does you good, and wider good happens thought.

The two charities (Practical Action and Send a Cow) were great in helping us join the dots between the drinker and the wider good.

Originally we were going to put everything in one piece, but because it was approached as a project we soon discovered we could break everything up and use extra stories throughout the year.

Tell us about the additional campaign assets?

It doesn’t really feel like a campaign because innocent do this all the time. So the list of assets is endless. This activity is supported by innocent's digital channels (chainofgood.co.uk) which, along with many other Chain of Good stories, hosts the long form. Outdoor and experiential will run for two weeks bringing to life the chain of good message - including buskers, sampling and good deeds to the public.

The longer form video will be available to view on shots.net next Thursday (16 January) along with an interview with director Max Joseph for shots subscribers.