It's been a week of strong contrasts. Morrisons (up) versus Waitrose (down). Cola (up) versus smoothies and bottled water (down). And, in another delightful example of how perplexing it must be to be a shopper, contrasting articles, on the same day, suggesting lard, dripping and suet are good for us, while celebrity chefs were roasted over fat-laden recipes by a think tank called The Fat Panel.
The contrast that intrigued me most, however (well, apart from our own report on the outperformance of own label by Britain's 100 Biggest Brands) surrounded the potential acquisition of a stake in Innocent by soft drinks giant Coca-Cola. It evidently intrigued our readers, too, as it was the top story on thegrocer.co.uk this week.
We've been following events with no little interest (in fact, I regularly wake up in a cold sweat worrying that we've missed this story), but until this week, we had kept our own counsel on the countless unconfirmed rumours we've been hearing linking Innocent to Coca-Cola, Unilever, Uncle Tom Cobbley and his mates.
And the timing of this story was all the more poignant because, as we report, Coca-Cola recorded double-digit growth in red cola, against Innocent's 22% decline.
But it's the nature of the tie-up that intrigues me. The prospect of Coca-Cola, a giant corporate, working with cute, wacky, unconventional Innocent, would take a lot of getting used to. Unilever pulled it off with Ben & Jerry's, leaving it to its own devices. But Coca-Cola is a big piece of cheese to Innocent's chalk. And as we've seen with PepsiCo's handling of PJ's Smoothies, big corporates, however brilliant they are at what they do, aren't always comfortable with wacky.
This is way more radical than Innocent getting into bed with McDonald's to flog smoothies with Big Macs. This would be marriage. This, you might say, would be the Real Thing.
The contrast that intrigued me most, however (well, apart from our own report on the outperformance of own label by Britain's 100 Biggest Brands) surrounded the potential acquisition of a stake in Innocent by soft drinks giant Coca-Cola. It evidently intrigued our readers, too, as it was the top story on thegrocer.co.uk this week.
We've been following events with no little interest (in fact, I regularly wake up in a cold sweat worrying that we've missed this story), but until this week, we had kept our own counsel on the countless unconfirmed rumours we've been hearing linking Innocent to Coca-Cola, Unilever, Uncle Tom Cobbley and his mates.
And the timing of this story was all the more poignant because, as we report, Coca-Cola recorded double-digit growth in red cola, against Innocent's 22% decline.
But it's the nature of the tie-up that intrigues me. The prospect of Coca-Cola, a giant corporate, working with cute, wacky, unconventional Innocent, would take a lot of getting used to. Unilever pulled it off with Ben & Jerry's, leaving it to its own devices. But Coca-Cola is a big piece of cheese to Innocent's chalk. And as we've seen with PepsiCo's handling of PJ's Smoothies, big corporates, however brilliant they are at what they do, aren't always comfortable with wacky.
This is way more radical than Innocent getting into bed with McDonald's to flog smoothies with Big Macs. This would be marriage. This, you might say, would be the Real Thing.
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