Executive Book Summary: ‘Innocent: Building a Brand from Nothing but Fruit’ by John Simmons
‘Innocent: Building a Brand from Nothing but Fruit’ reveals the great story behind one of the most loved brands, Innocent, the brand with its simple products – “fruit and nothing but fruit drinks”. Innocent’s story began with three college friends, Jon Wright, Adam Balon and Richard Reed, who insisted on having a business they could be proud of. Since the early days, they had a clear idea of the company’s objectives, namely, “to make fresh, healthy, natural drinks, to be Europe’s favorite little juice company”. They started the company from scratch and consciously built it into one of the UK’s fastest growing businesses in the food and beverage industry in 2005 with a plan to ‘keep everything natural’, a simple idea that tells it all (Simmons, 2008).
The author of the book, John Simmons, is a brand consultant, a series editor for Great Brand Stories and a former director of Interbrand (Simmons, 2008). His book was written in the narrative style with a sense of humor making it easy and very enjoyable to read. Simmons mainly structured this book by following the five principles of the Innocent brand (Simmons, 2008). The book is divided into the following seven chapters: A Tasty Little Juice Company, Be Natural, Be Entrepreneurial, Be Generous, Be Commercial, Be Responsible and The Future’s Fruit. The information in this book was gained from a variety of sources from both inside and outside the company. Simmons interviewed the three founders of the company, other people employed by Innocent and experts from a number of fields, such as advertising, outside the company. The book is an excellent balance between in-depth information and comments from professionals which reinforce its credibility. ‘Innocent: Building a Brand from Nothing but Fruit’ allows readers to