Healthy Height is a protein shake powder designed as a complementary nutrition for healthy children between three and nine years old.
It is owned by ASX-listed and Israel-based firm Nutritional Growth Solutions.
Via a partnership with Yoola – a US-based multichannel network company – it will engage both China and overseas influencers and key opinion leaders to market Healthy Height in channels such as Weibo, WeChat, and its Tmall flagship store.
This will build on the existing offline presence that the brand enjoys in certain parts of China, in particular Nanjing, where the products are already sold in mother-and-baby stores and marketed via physicians’ or in-stores recommendations since last year.
It is also available online via its flagship Tmall Global store opened earlier this month.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, CEO and MD of NGS, Liron Fendell said the influencer marketing activities would kick off next month.
“As a new brand in China, we do not have brand recognition in the country, and so we need to catch the consumers’ attention by working with influencers,” she said.
The brand is not only looking to work with KOLs with a large following, but also micro-influencers.
“We will work with both the more popular influencers and micro-influencers – mummies who have a small but dedicated following and are nutritional minded.”
The content could range from short videos, livestreaming, to online articles, depending on the KOLs’ creativity.
“Short videos could attract attention and provide a brief understanding of the product. However, there are also many well-educated parents who will take a further step to educate themselves and find out the clinical data behind the product – this is where articles and graphs become important,” she said.
Elsewhere, in the US, the company has also relied heavily on digital marketing, where it has been using Facebook and Instagram to market its products since first entering the market in 2018.
“Digital marketing is the base we are doing for everything and how we started the business.”
It only recently decided to sell offline in the US via pharmacies, as parents could claim partial insurance reimbursement when making the purchase.
Aside from China and India – where GSK is selling the product under license as Horlicks Growth, the company also expressed interest in APAC markets such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
Flavour difference
A key difference between the US and China market, according to Fendell, is the parents’ preference for milder flavours.
In the US, the chocolate flavour is the bestseller while in China, parents tend to buy vanilla or plain – an unsweetened version similar to the taste of milk.
