Kooky Drinks Brand Innocent Clarifies That Drinking Conker Milk Might Kill You

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.

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• Good tweet: