Mandy Hooijmans – Yakult Europe

Mandy Hooijmans is Team Lead Media and Insights at Yakult, a fermented dairy drink with the unique Shirota bacteria, founded in 1935 in Japan. Mandy works for Yakult Europe, providing and supporting the key markets in Europe and their local teams with insights. Mandy shares how the product and the mindset from Yakult are the same globally: “Yakult was founded by Dr Minoru Shirota and his ideas are still clearly noticeable within the whole company. Caring for people, and working on a healthy society is what makes the company and product so unique. 85 years ago, Dr Shirota already had the idea of the product is available worldwide, preventively ensuring people wouldn’t fall ill, wherever they lived.”

Main KPIs for growth

“In these times especially, everyone is quite aware of how important their health is”, Mandy continues. “This is also reflected in our results, mainly in sales. On brand KPIs, we have been pretty stable these past few years. In the Netherlands, our brand awareness is for instance already high, so it is difficult to see much improvement in that. When it comes to brand growth, we look at the entire brand funnel, from awareness to consideration and trial. But within Yakult we also have our own KPI, the number of bottles sold per day. That is a KPI we use in every country to evaluate our sales and the number of consumers we reach.”

In many countries, Yakult is considered a functional dairy product. Mandy comments: “We won’t compare ourselves with regular yoghurts or milk because the product categories are substantially different. Functional dairy is what relates most to our product, but that also includes things like protein drinks and cholesterol-reducing beverages. Many people are concerned with their health, but the number of things you do to improve that is limited. You won’t take a bunch of vitamin tablets, but also venture into teas, protein shakes and ginger shots. People often pick and choose a few things, so in that respect, we are also competing with things that are further removed from our category. Recently, we have focused on our performance within the functional dairy shelf, and have found that there are many differences between markets. In the Netherlands, probiotics aren’t very well known. People don’t really know what it is and what the benefits are, whilst in Italy, almost everyone knows how important they are for you. We notice a real difference between Southern and Northern Europe, which makes it quite challenging. In the Netherlands, we are the market leader, but the view people have of Yakult is very different from for instance Italy and Germany where we aren’t as big. Different campaigns work for different markets.”

“You depend on the people that need to make those marketing decisions, so it really helps when someone joins who supports that same data-driven narrative.”

role of data

Mandy shares how within Yakult, data-driven decision making was still very much in its infancy: “We are working on gathering more data so we can base more decisions upon that, and we are currently taking things step by step. In the past, every country within Europe could conduct their own local research projects, but many of the smaller countries had never done that. When I first started, we only had a European brand tracker and an ad tracker in place, which weren’t being used frequently. These past few years we have really worked to improve that in many areas, from reporting to conclusions, to getting those insights to the right people. Next to that, we have started doing more research across multiple countries, instead of running those separate country-specific projects. We conducted a Pan-European segmentation study and are now working on getting those insights throughout the entire organisation so every country can get a clear picture of the different segments within Europe, and can try to use that to create Pan-European communication. We have also noticed that people make a huge difference. When new people who are very much data-driven join the organisation, it helps to enthuse others as well. You depend on the people that need to use that data to make those marketing decisions, so it really helps when a leader rises who advocates that same narrative from a marketing perspective. We have some more steps to take, but I notice that people are more willing and happier to take those steps. We are receiving more questions from the local teams on media investments, to campaigns and pre-testing. We haven’t done much pre-testing in the past, but we are now conducting those tests more often.”

continuous journey

Yakult wants to continue their journey towards being more data-driven, Mandy shares: “There are several questions we aren’t addressing enough right now, like the level of trade marketing which differs amongst the various countries, but also topics like media effectiveness. I want to be able to measure the effectiveness of our media even better and support the countries in their media buys. Having the right KPIs, being able to have those conversations with media agencies to do more with the money being spent. This is also something that can differ per country. Some countries are more traditional with their media, a lot is still happening on tv for instance. Other countries tend to be more present online, and in Germany radio continues to be a big channel. It would be good if we could measure all those different things better. Our current ad tracker is very much tv-focused, whilst the budget in some countries is moving towards other media and channels. We need to have more insight into the contribution of each campaign. If your campaign isn’t performing well, chances are there won’t be much happening in your brand awareness and consideration. Being able to measure the potential of each campaign, knowing whether it is deployed in the right way, and reaching enough people, that is the goal.”