The Innocent brand archetype: meaning, examples and names

The Innocent is the brand that makes life feel lighter. It is optimistic, honest and simple, and it earns trust by having nothing to hide. Dove, Innocent Drinks and Coca-Cola all play it.

It is one of the 12 brand archetypes, the personalities a brand can have if it were a person.

What Innocent customers need

Simplicity, safety and a sense that things will be fine. An Innocent customer is choosing something that goes into their body, their home or their child’s day, and wants to choose it without worry.

What they fear is the opposite: being tricked, the ingredient they can’t pronounce, the catch in the small print. So an Innocent brand keeps things short and in plain view: what’s inside, where it came from, what it does.

Brands that play the Innocent

• Dove launched its Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004 and put women who don’t look like models in its ads.
• Innocent Drinks started with a stall at a London music festival, where people voted with their empty bottles, into a “Yes” bin or a “No” bin, on whether the founders should quit their jobs to make smoothies. The name is the promise.
• Coca-Cola ran “Open Happiness” around the world from 2009 to 2016: a soft drink sold as a small, simple joy.

None of them is the Innocent because of what they sell. Soap, smoothies and a fizzy drink are very different products. They share a promise: you can trust this, and it will make the day a little better.

Watch the Innocent in action

Released in the US in July 1971, the ad shows a crowd of young people singing together on a hilltop in Italy. The song began as a jingle written for Coca-Cola and later became a pop hit as “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)”. Notice what the Innocent does here. There is no argument and no comparison, only a simple wish, sung plainly, with the product offered as a small thing to share.

When the Innocent fits, and when it doesn’t

When it fits: your brand promises something simple, honest and good: natural products, food and drink, family, baby care, feel-good everyday things. If your customers ask “is this safe?” or “what’s in it?”, the Innocent is a natural fit.

When it fights the customer: a product people buy to feel powerful, sharp or exclusive. An Innocent security tool sounds naive about the threat. An Innocent luxury label feels cheap. And a product with a real catch (fees, risks, side effects) can’t wear the Innocent’s smile for long: when customers find the catch, they feel tricked twice.

How the Innocent sounds

Soft, warm and plain. The Innocent doesn’t argue, boast or wink. It says the simple thing and stops.

The words it reaches for come from the world of mornings and gardens, not from your category: dew, bud, meadow, cotton, milk, honey, petal, nest, spring, daisy, sun. Its images are the kitchen table at breakfast, the open field, the first warm day, the clean sheet on the line.

Its names tend to sound soft and round: open vowels, gentle consonants like m, l and b, often two short syllables that a child could say.

What the Innocent does to a name

An Innocent name sounds kind before it says anything else.

• Kinds that suit it: evocative names from nature and the morning, real everyday words used plainly, and soft invented names that are easy to say. See the six kinds of startup names for each kind’s traps.
• The trap: virtue words any brand could say. Pure, Simple, Fresh, Natural, Happy, Joy and Bliss are on thousands of packs, and they claim goodness instead of sounding good. Smiling suns and daisies in the logo, too.
• A test: would a child say this name happily, and would a parent trust it on a label? If it needs a footnote, it isn’t the Innocent.

Good partners for the Innocent

Most brands play one personality strongly and borrow from one or two others. The Innocent pairs well with:

• The Caregiver, for a brand that keeps people safe: baby care, health, family products.
• The Everyman, for honest everyday goods that anyone can afford.
• The Jester, for cheerful brands that make simple things a little more fun.

An Innocent with a Lover can work (food or skincare that feels pure and indulgent at once), but it needs care: the pleasure has to stay gentle.

The Innocent in deepmarks

In the deepmarks brief, two answers point to the Innocent:

• “If your brand were a person, what would they be like?” Honest
• “What should your customers feel when they use your brand?” Safe, and Reassured counts for half (the other half goes to the Caregiver).

deepmarks reads the rest of your brief too, then suggests three personalities, in order, and says why in your own words. If the Innocent isn’t among them and you want it, click Change next to the personality on your names, then Read & watch on The Innocent, and Use as Primary. The first personality colours most names; the second and third add range.

The names written as an Innocent are shown in Fredoka, a soft, rounded sans, over a picture of an orange flower bud in a meadow.

The Innocent in short

• Promise: you can trust this, and the day will be a little better.
• Customers need: simplicity, safety and a sense that things will be fine.
• Sounds: soft, warm, plain.
• Avoid: Pure, Simple, Happy, Bliss, and smiling suns.
• Pairs with: the Caregiver, the Everyman, the Jester.