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pr

Innocent and Coke – will it blend?

So Coke have bought c. 20% of Innocent drinks. There’s a feisty bit of feedback on the Innocent blog with many comments being negative, eg.

You thought wrong – you just killed your business 🙁

Disgrace but not surprising, you have sold your soul. Thats the last time we buy your products.

At best this is misguided – you’ll be a fig leaf for Coke’s unethical corporate machine. At worst it is a greed-driven betrayal of values and customers.

This is going to be an ongoing PR management issue for Innocent, but hats off for blogging it in the first place and keeping open the comments thread. This way the debate happens on their site and allows them to put their side of the story.

Indeed, so far the objectors have not gained much traction on other new protest platforms such as Facebook, and my bet is that this will die down. There’ll always be some people who object to corporate buy-ins (eg, McDonald’s and Pret. Btw, now no longer), but most people don’t care that much.

So long as Innocent remain open and engaged, they should be able to contain the dissent and continue with their plans.

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