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Brand known for happy-go-lucky tweets gets all mortal
Innocent Drinks, the Coca Cola-owned drinks brand known for smoothies, hats on smoothies, and kooky tweets, has learned the — possibly manufactured — risk of assuming that the world is in on the joke. Having “released” a new conker milk drink for autumn, Innocent has had to issue a series of clarifying tweets reminding the public to neither eat nor milk conkers. Conkers — horse chestnuts — are inedible, poisonous, and possibly deadly: making milk out of them would not be a good idea. The brand even stipulated that it had “used” edible sweet chestnuts, although that wouldn’t be conker milk at all.
As the brand writes: “Why not make a fake dairy free drink as a joke? Something weird and ridiculous that no one would want to drink, to get people talking? It was genius.” A message that becomes marketing itself, right down to the brand’s voice, part of the endless cycle that conker milk began.
DO NOT EAT CONKERS
— innocent drinks (@innocent) October 18, 2019
Hello everyone. Yesterday we made a mistake. Now we're trying to put things right.
Long story short: PLEASE DO NOT EAT OR MILK CONKERS pic.twitter.com/3tFqJXsRdm
And in other news...
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- Pie and mash is dead, long live pie and mash: G. Kelly reopens on the Roman Road.
- Jamie Oliver’s former flagship restaurant is going to turn into a pub.
- Nominate your favourite London restaurants of 2019 for this year’s Eater Awards.
- Pret a Manger continues its commitment to basing things on plants with vegan versions of popular sandwiches. [Guardian]
- Businessman Luke Johnson plans to sell Bread Holdings, which owns bougie bakery chain, Gail’s. [Sky News]
- Nando’s will open its third “nino” express peri peri chicken restaurant on Lavender Hill. [Big Hospitality]
- Good tweet:
all I see is hummus https://t.co/0zJnA4oqS2
— Sophia Armen (@SophiaArmen) October 19, 2019