What ingredients companies can learn from a Thai beverage billionaire

Few people reading this blog will have heard of Chaleo Yoovidhya, the self-made Thai billionaire who died at the weekend. Yet he has arguably been one of the biggest influences on the beverage market, globally.  And we can all learn from him.
He is said to have had a net worth of over $5 billion. He made his money by introducing the world to energy drinks, creating his first energy drink in the 1960s. He was a co-founder (with a 49% share) of Red Bull, one of the most successful food and beverage brands in history. Red Bull gave birth to a category which is today worth over $37 billion, at retail sales values, worldwide.
What was the secret of Chaleo Yoovidyha’s succcess? Well, apart from the usual commitment to hard work that marks out most successful entrepreneurs, he grasped that enabling people to ‘feel the benefit’ was one of the most effective ways of marketing any product.
In the ingredients industry we get very excited about the science underpinning our ingredients, about the pubic health needs they meet, about what benefits our ingredients can offer, but what we forget is that consumers – the people who we need to convince about our benefits, the people who are the real deciders of whether an ingredient is a success or a failure – want more than anything else to get a benefit that is tangible.

Giving people a benefit that they can feel, see or measure is the most effective step you can take if you want your product to win consumers’ undying loyalty. After all, what better way is there to show people that they are getting value-for-money?

If you’ve ever wondered what makes energy drinks so successful, or why probiotic yoghurts for digestive health are so popular, or how Kellogg’s Special K became the world’s biggest weight-management brand, the tiny audio slide-show (it’s just four-minutes long) below this text gives you the answer.