Innocent stake taken by Coke. Does or should anyone care?

Innocent Smoothies hit the shelves in Austria, originally uploaded by viZZZual.com.

So Coke is buying a slug (excuse the pun) of the "ethical" smoothie/ juice company in the UK called Innocent for a reported 30 million pounds.

The owners say it will help them expand into other territories and bring their goodness to more people.

Does anyone care anymore?

It is hard to know if the success of Innocent was due to their homespun beliefs, interesting and quirky beginnings, the fact that consumers wanted to support young moral start up - or that the product met a gap and was good at doing it.

I think that once a brand passes from being a small local or regional size and enters the mainstream, people getting high and mighty about them "selling out" is probably unfair.

While there may be some that genuinely set up brands for an entirely moral or philanthropic perspective, I suspect the main unifying fact is they are set up by entrepreneurs who see a gap in the market and exploit it.

The really compelling things about Innocent and that they do have a brand belief that underpins what they do, this led them to be different and distinctive and they have products consumers like at a price they are prepared to pay.

If Coke sticks to these drivers that made the brand successful it can flourish.

As we have seen with Body Shop/ L'Oreal; Ben & Jerry/ Unilever and so on.