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Innocent is one of the UK’s best loved brands that began as an experiment by three university friends at a music festival. Co-founder Richard Reed spoke to the London Business Forum (LBF) about how they started and their remarkable journey so far.

“There’s been bits that we got so right […] and there’s been bits we got so wrong and that we’ve nearly lost the business over,” Reed began. Throughout the ups and downs though, Innocent have stayed true to the values on which they were founded: making profit by doing the right thing. It has to be about more than money, insisted Reed, “any great business has typically got a very great sense of why it’s here.”

A well-constructed and truthful mission statement can be very powerful without costing anything suggested Reed. Google, for example, which happened to be set up in the same year as Innocent, say that they exist to “organise the world’s information and make it universally available.” That one sentence explains them, Reed told the LBF. Walmart’s raison d’être is similarly powerful: “to give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.”

Innocent believe in making healthy, nutritious food and drinks that do the consumer some good. A recent study by Glasgow University revealed that if you consume your five-a-day you will be more attractive to the opposite sex – a fabulous advertisement for fruit and veg believes Reed.

Another company with a “clearly articulated sense of purpose” is a company called Longaberger based in Ohio, Reed told the LBF. Longaberger make baskets and – just to make it really clear that they love making baskets and that’s what they exist to do – their office building is one giant basket, http://www.longaberger.com/ourCompany.aspx.

In Innocent’s first ten years of business, “it felt like nothing was going wrong, everything was going in our favour,” Reed told the LBF. However, in 2008 things took a turn for the worse: “In that one year alone we lost more money than the company made in its entire history.” Innocent are now turning things around with their own creative flair and the help of Coca Cola’s financial backing, who own a 58% stake in the business and who Innocent call their “sugar daddy”. Reed is proud that they have kept full control of the business despite Coke’s financial input.

Ultimately, said Reed, a company’s success depends on its people: “Can you find the very best brains […] have they got values that chime with the values of the organisation?” One thing that Reed realised along the way, particularly in the downturn, is that sometimes to create the “very best team” you have to ask those that aren’t contributing to move on. For a long time Reed was proud that Innocent had 100% retention but he learnt that such an approach ignores those that are not doing there bit for the business.

Reed told the LBF that Innocent also like “celebrating the people that have gone the extra mile.” They have their own quirky twist on an employee of the month scheme, awarding two employees the title of “Lord and Lady” of the month, “If you’re a lady you’re given a sash and a tiara to wear and if you’re a guy you get given a sash and top hat to wear, and bizarrely everyone has to get down on one knee and pledge allegiance to you.”

Reed’s language also gave a good insight into the company culture at Innocent, referring to the team at Fruit Towers as “the community.” Transparency is essential: “On a Monday morning […] the whole business gets together and each team explains what’s going on in the community that week.” It are these simple things that Reed believes make Innocent such a great place to work.

The finer details in branding are also what have set Innocent apart from the competition. “In a world of parity it’s amazing how you can create the little differences to get people to remember your business or service rather than someone else’s,” Reed explained. One thing that Innocent has done to create a point of difference is visible on their packaging where they changed the “use by” date to an “enjoy by” date.

Trading Standards let this slide but the joke ingredients that featured on their bottles were a different matter. A formal investigation was launched into a smoothie where the ingredients included “two plump nuns.” For Trading Standards it seemed this was a joke too far and they ruled that, “you must either take off the reference to ‘plump nuns’, or start putting them in your fruit juice.” Reed is not deterred as he believes the extra attention they pay to the packaging creates “a reason for people to remember you, to talk about you, to just feel emotionally slightly more connected to you.”

Innocent’s packaging also asks for feedback, inviting consumers to pop round to Fruit Towers, or to ring the banana phone. This approach, said Reed, “was born out of the original ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ test that we did,” where they had two bins at the music festival asking customers to vote whether they should or shouldn’t give up their jobs to found Innocent.

On an average day one or two groups arrive to look round Fruit Towers, explained Reed. Usually, the people’s champions answer the banana phone but if all three of them are busy everyone else’s phone rings too. A live Twitter feed in the chill out area and meeting rooms similarly act as a reminder of who brings the money in. It is, after all, “about the consumer,” Reed told the LBF. So try ringing the banana phone, it might just be Reed who answers.