I got the opportunity to meet Richard Reed of Innocent Drinks recently. Myself and Anna Farmery of The Engaging Brand met Richard following his presentation at Innocently Enterprising. The event was part of Leeds Business Week.

Anna's recorded a two part podcast so you can listen to the entire interview yourself ... and yes I'm on it and yes I hate the way I sound!

I also took some questions from the twitterverse.

The event was for young people to encourage them to think about being entrepreurial and enterprising. Richard was impressively engaging with the audience. Much of Richard's advice for the audience was relevant for anyone involved with a startup, the stand out piece of advice was to keep knocking on doors. If you believe in your idea then keep going.

I also liked their crowdsource approach to starting up. They set up a stall at a local music festival and sold £500 worth of smoothies under a banner that asked 'Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?'. Festival goers voted by putting their empty bottles in the Yes bin or the No bin. Turns out the Yes's won on the day.

After Richard's talk I got the opponrtunity to put a few questions to him. I was mainly interested in Innocent's social media strategy. They have a great reputation in the social media space.

I started by asking Richard what advice he would give to companies worried about engaging in social media. Richard's reply was that companies should be terrified about not hearing their customers' feedback. I think this succinct piece of advice is spot on. Many businesses worry about taking part in some of these conversations but non-participation isn't an option as far as Innocent are concerned.

Asked about how Innocent's social media strategy was developed, it turns out that Ted in the office takes care of it. It actually sounds like it's a passion and something that's evolved. I'm pretty sure these days there is a clearer strategy with a team of people involved but I like the idea of a geeky Innocent employee doing his thing because he loves it.

A very timely question that came from Alex Wolf (@101ofawolf) was about how Innocent maintain the 'fun' vibe during a recession. Interestingly, Innocent have a clear approach, the customer isn't ever disadvantaged. Internally changes have been made but they seem to be trying hard to maintain the 'fun' element of working at Innocent on a tighter budget, easier said than done and I came to the conclusion that Innocent's ability to keep team morale up was more about leadership than how much cash was splashed about.

I ended my set of questions by asking Richard what he thought of the recent Walkers Crisps Design a Flavour campaign. He thought it was brilliant and very brave of Walkers to see it through. I wonder if Innocent might one day try it, could a successful smoothie sensation be blended up by one of us ....

Thank you my twittering friends for your help and input:
Matt Seward - my co-director at kilo75
Jon Moss - of theappleofmyi
Alex Wolf - http://101ofawolf.blogspot.com/