At the SupplySide East’s lobby in the Meadowlands Exposition Center this week, between an attendee badge pick-up desk and a coat check, stood an arcade game called Beta Blasters. In this Space Invaders-esque game, players play as Captain Blake C. Trispora, battling nasty hemoglobins and free radicals to defeat the evil Emperor Oxide.
As power-ups throughout the game, players can collect carotenoid-rich food items like carrots, pumpkins and broccoli. It was developed and sponsored by Lycored, the Israel-based specialist of lycopene and other carotenoids for use as bioactive ingredients in supplements or colorants in food products.
The arcade game has made its round from one B2B event to another. It also made an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, UT.
Lycored is part of a growing number of ingredient suppliers, which tend to focus brand awareness and advertising in a business-to-business community, that are seeking to build awareness among everyday consumers.
“Ingredients suppliers have a responsibility to understand and respond to the needs of consumers,” said Zev Ziegler, head of global brand and marketing for Lycored’s Health business.
“We also have a responsibility to support consumer education, and by doing so we create new opportunities for our whole industry. If we fail to do so, we fail to meet the needs of manufacturers.”
Promoting ingestible skincare
Lycored’s main marketing campaigns that targets end consumers is the #Rethinkbeautiful campaign, first launched in 2016, when beauty positioning for supplements was just starting to gain momentum.
The campaign includes videos of people sharing what beauty means to them, using the term ‘beauty’ less for its surface-level connotations and more for its emotional aspect.
“We wanted the idea of ingestible skincare to resonate more with consumers, and to build an emotional connection with it. We also wanted to disrupt some of the conventional thinking in the industry by empowering consumers to challenge traditional notions of beauty,” Ziegler said.
“That meant exposing the warm heart beneath the hard science, presenting new research in exciting ways, as well as finding new ways to engage with consumers.”
At consumer events, Lycored’s booth is covered in #Rethinkbeautiful campaign materials—from posters with quotes to small cards where visitors can write about what they love about themselves. The company is going on a road trip with its booth, stopping off at places as diverse as a ski resort (Magic Mountain) and Fashion Week New York to the GoPro Mountain Games and the SXSW event in Austin, TX. (Similarly, ingredient maker Kyowa Hakko exhibited its Cognizin ingredient directly to consumers at the SXSW Gaming event. Read more about it HERE).
“#rethinkbeautiful is partly an effort to educate the public on the critical role nutrition plays towards skin health and appearance,” Ziegler said.
There’s an app for it too
Lycored jumped into the wellness app space this month with the launch of littleglow, an app that sends users mental, physical, and spiritual activities each week. Its part of the company’s latest initiative for the #rethinkbeautiful campaign.
In a press release, the company described it as a “guide for breaking down barriers of self-doubt and building small, inspiring moments into your everyday. The app reinforces the idea that beauty and wellness go hand in hand, and that making time to care for ourselves allows us to manifest beauty in the world around us.”
Completing the activities, called Pops of Positivity, will help users unlock achievements to climb higher and higher and reflect on the progress they’ve made.
What’s the ROI for ingredient companies when they advertise straight to consumers?
“In a campaign like this, success isn’t really measured in terms of ROI. We’re genuinely proud of some of the things we’ve achieved that have helped consumers rethink attitudes to beauty, such as the fact that we’ve helped 10,000 people send love letters to themselves, inspiring heart-felt moments of self-reflection,” Ziegler said.
“Hopefully, however, the campaign has played some role in the expansion of the ingestible skincare category.”
