Vitafoods Asia, an event dedicated to nutraceuticals, functional foods and beverages, and dietary supplements industries in Asia, will be presenting the second edition of Vitafoods Asia Conference this year with a brand new format and an increase in content offering. Running alongside the exhibition on September 2 and 3, 2015, at AsiaWorld-Expo in Hong Kong, the conference offers sessions that cover both commercial and science aspects of business, presenting delegates with a full picture of the production cycle from idea to retail shelves.
According to a press release, organisers have divided the content of the conference into two distinct, parallel streams – ‘Your Business’ and ‘Your Science.’ The first focusses on how to turn consumer and business intelligence into insights and competitive growth strategies, whilst the second presents the latest R&D, product and ingredient innovations across a number of health categories. Delegates can choose to attend a mix of sessions from either stream, allowing them to customise their learning for a more personal and relevant conference experience.
Driving Innovation and Product Development in Functional Beverages
In a session titled ‘Driving Innovation and Product Development in Functional Beverages,’ James Tonkin, president of HealthyBrandBuilders (USA), will share from his rich experience on the latest innovation in product development, packaging, and flavouring in functional beverages.
Tonkin reveals, “I’ll be focussing on the intimate trends pervasive in the beverage business today. Many trends are multi-cultural and global in scope, so we will review some of the hot trends in the US, Asia, Europe, and South America. We’ll cover energy, protein, probiotics, brain-cardiovascular-bone-joint health, maple water, all the enhanced new entrants, and even some new beverage technologies! This overview is ‘fast and furious,’ so bring your ability to listen and learn, and hopefully we will have a few moments for a question to two!”
For more than 43 years, Tonkin has served in the private sector as a brand and marketing development professional. He successfully created and implemented business and financial strategies for domestic and international players, with branding initiatives in soft drink, bottled water, functional foods and beverages, as well as non-carbonated ‘new age’ beverage verticals. Apart from addressing the audience in a dedicated session at the conference, he also lends his presence to the ‘Your Science’ conference stream as a chairperson.
Successful Marketing: Baby Boomers vs. Millennials & Communicating Science
Also chairing the conference in the ‘Your Business’ stream is Jeff Hilton, co-founder and chief marketing officer of BrandHive (USA), a leading healthy lifestyle branding agency that provides high level strategic planning and branding expertise to consumer packaged goods and value-based ingredient companies around the globe. Apart from facilitating sessions, Hilton will also be speaking on two separate topics: ‘Successful Marketing to Baby Boomers vs. Millennials: A Tale of Two Distinct Consumers’ and ‘Effectively Marketing Your Science to Consumers.’
Commenting on a topic that is close to his heart, Hilton shared, “Baby Boomers are a strong market for health and wellness products and services, but as that group matures, another important demographic segment comes into view – Millennials aged 19-33. They will be the single-largest demographic group worldwide by 2020. Millennials and Boomers could not be more different in how they approach life and health, yet we, as product and service marketers, try to reach and influence them in the same way through the same channels. That approach is destined to fail.”
With 35 years of advanced business and marketing insights to his clients, including over 20 years working with leading brands in the dietary supplement, functional food and beverage, and health and beauty categories, Hilton is well-versed in communicating science to a consumer audience that is increasingly savvy and skeptical regarding dietary supplements and functional foods.
Here, he goes over some ‘quick and dirty’ tips for effective marketing using technical information: Tell a story; Use metaphors; Reach different parts of the brain; Break it up; Name that structure; Summarise findings; and Find the right place and time.
He explains, “Visualise your data whenever possible, perhaps through the creation of an info-graphic which outlines your process and findings. Using both audio and video stimuli will significantly improve engagement and increase recall. Repetition and redundancy also helps when communicating technical information. Last but not least, it helps to break your science messaging into small, bite-sized pieces, rather than force-feed the consumer too much information. It’s better that they remember one thing well than five things poorly!”
Going Social
Nutraceuticals companies looking to tap into the social media space to market their products need to note that this edition of the conference includes a session on developing a successful social media strategy to engage consumers and increase brand awareness. Martin Pasquier, MD, Agence Tesla, founded his agency three years ago. Together with his teams in Singapore and Paris, they work with clients (e.g. Danone, Accor, Akamai, and SMEs) to help them be visible where people spend today most of their time online – on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social networks.
One of the first things that companies should note is that top social media outlets favoured by consumers across Asia varies on a country-by-country basis. Pasquier shares, “Usages are indeed very different according to the country. For example, Singapore's top social media is Facebook, and the top messaging app is WhatsApp, whilst China's favorite social media and messaging app amongst users is WeChat.”
According to him, Facebook and WhatsApp are the top social media platforms in many Asian countries, including Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Meanwhile, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand are intensive users of Twitter. Jakarta is even known as the capital of tweets as the city registered the highest number of tweets in the world.
However, young users are increasingly switching from the traditional social media platforms such as Facebook to mobile native apps, especially messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat or LINE, and to pictures-based apps such as Instagram. Attendees can expect to learn more about various key factors for an efficient social media strategy and how to manage negative feedback or crises in Pasquier’s session.
Healthy Indulgence in Functional Foods
Last but not least, Emil Fazira Bte Kamari, research analyst, Euromonitor International, will speak about factors and trends driving premium yet healthy food, and touch on the future prospects of functional foods in Asia. A specialist in the food and nutrition industry for the emerging Asia-Pacific markets, Fazira Bte Kamari reveals that fortified/functional food in Asia-Pacific was worth US$70 billion in 2014, which corresponds to about 38% of global fortified/functional packaged food sales. Of the total Asia-Pacific sales, the dairy, baby food, and bakery segments comprised the bulk of it.
She added, “Dairy is a successful market in APAC for fortified/functional positioning, with products like drinking milk and yoghurt; whereas bakery is seeing more fortification for bread and packaged cakes. Manufacturers are mainly targeting millennials (young working adults) as they are more educated to recognise the added ingredients, furthermore do not mind paying more for products with higher health benefits.”
While there is no universal definition for functional food, Euromonitor International identifies fortified/functional foods as food that provides health benefits beyond normal nutritional value. The defining criterion for Euromonitor International is that the food must have been actively enhanced with health ingredients (e.g. calcium, Omega-3) during production, which forms part of the product’s positioning and marketing.
