Case Studies on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication. Ambronite (international, 2 years)

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Flora Ross
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1 Case Studies on Best Practice in External Marketing Communication Case on Ambronite (international, 2 years) Written in May, 2015 by the Finland/University of Vaasa team: Tuomas Lounamaa

2 AMBRONITE Introduction of Ambronite Ambronite is a drinkable supermeal that takes hunger away for 4-5 hours. Preparing the meal takes 2 minutes. Started the business from solving a very simple problem of healthy eating on a busy schedule. Group of friends wanted to solve something that had bothered them for a long time. Founders are enthusiastic about enhancing the quality of food they eat and the performance for daily tasks and hobbies, ranging from sports to work. Could not find a fast meal product that could fulfill the daily nutrition requirements. Started developing it by themselves and building a beta audience of 200 customers. Before they knew it they were selling it to 40 countries but it all s started from solving the problem of busy eating. The main innovation is the worlds first drinkable mealt that contains all nutritions the human body needs from natural incridients. That means combining some of the most nutritionally dense and organic wild grown incridients like nuts, herbs and berries from the arctic circle in a very scientific matter that combines medical and nutritional science. And the whole idea is that you can get all your macro and micro nutritions from one product which is made out of actual food. That s something that has not been accomplished before. The critical events Ambronite went through really affected on how the business looks today. Definetely on taking part on some key accelerators such as start up sauna. Start up sauna is an early age start up accelerator. Coaches in the accelerator are some of the most talented serial entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts in finland. More than 145 companies have graduated from start up sauna and these companies have raised more than 37 million in funding. Takin part of Slush conferences was important and global conferences. Slush is two-day event for startups, media and investors to meet. Slush takes place every November in Helsinki, Finland. Critical event was also moving to San Fransisco to launch a crowd funding campaign. What makes Ambronite an entrepreneurial company? How innovative are they? Ambronite set out to revolutionize food, they really wanted to create the food of the future for the busy professional, for the top performer. It is something that both athletes and information workers could use to maximize their productivity in their daily lives. This is not the tradiotional setting where multinational food giants would move from (nestle). They would look at a market where they could carve a profitable niche out of, they would rather acquire innovation than risk their own. Ambronites starting point was definitely challenging the status quo of

3 traditional food production. They wanted to change how food is being perceived. They set out create something that would really enhance human performance instead of just keeping you alive. What makes Amronite an example of best practice with regards to external marketing communication? How are these practices implemented? One of the things they would highly recommend to not only finance a business but also to involve the customer for product development and launching the product is crowd funding. Ambronite did a record breaking crow funding campaign in Indiegogo crowd funding platform where people from over 40 countries ordered their product, this helped them to create the largest indiegogo funding for a food product. Ambronite got funding worth of 102,824 USD through the Indiegogo crowd funding platform. 829 separate people funded the product by preordering it. The campaign lasted for 2 months between May and July in One of the perks of running a successful crowd funding campaign is the media attention they got. Some of mentions they got in international web publications came even before the campaign. They got the first attention from international media at Slush conference 2013, they gave Ambronite drinks to people waiting in lunch lines and some of the reporters noticed this. (reference in Finnish) Ambronite was seen in big international publications like Wired, Forbes, Time Magazine, Fast Company, Business insider. They say these article in popular magazines/ blogs from one year ago still bring new audience to them. On of the discussed topics is should or is it even healthy to totally replace warm cooked meals with Ambronite meal supplements. Even Ambronite does not recommend this and actually nobody really has made long enough research to verify the consequences. Ambronite still recommends people to enjoy family dinners and such but when running on a busy schedule, Ambronite is a healthy option. They say their production facilities and ingredients meet EU food regulation standards (which require high level of quality). Amronite is working with University of Helsinki Food Science Center in Finland to further validate the quality and nutrients of the product. Ambtonite have all their ingredients listed on their website.

4 On the big magazine publications and the comment sections the founders of the company how participated in the discussion. Exapmle: How is Amronite utilizing the new communications features? Ambronite is heavily present in social media and the web because they only sell online. Their fans share recipies online on Facebook and they have a fan community coming out with new ideas of how to use the product and sharing stories of the product. This has always been in the very core of what they do because frstly they made the product for themselves so it made sense for Ambronite to listen people like the were themselves from very early on. This was also to make sure that there is actually a demand for their product. They wanted to give the audience a change to shape the product instead of sitting in the cellar for 2 years on a million dollar budget creating a product that hypothetically would meet a product demand. Engaging with people has been at the very core of the business, they wanted to make it very easy to people to share their experiences. Private facebook groups are one of the most powerful ways of sharing experiences according to Ambronite. Ambronite currently (mid May 2015) has about 3000 Facebook followers. On average they seem to make about 2 posts a week on the page. All of the posts have tens of like and most of them have a few comments also. Some of the posts are links to blog posts that other people have written and some of the posts are to their own publications, to their blog posts or to their Instagram account. On Instagram Ambronite has today (mid May 2015) 725 followers. They post photos of people using the product as well as ideas of how to use it and how it benefits you. For example take a 2 minute meal with ambronite and relax the rest of your lunch break. Also they post recipes where people have used Ambronite, for example a pancake recipe that includes Ambronite. On Twitter ambronite has about 900 followers (mid May 2015). They tweet on a daily basis. They tweet quite a lot customer testimonials like: "I was expecting a satiating product, and Ambronite has met my expectations." admits Miikka from Finland On Twitter Ambronite seems to post more ad type of posts.

5 International issues (if relevant) International issues are a big part of the business. The biggest growth market for Ambronite is the United States. But from the launch they knew they would provide the product for a global audience. This has made them plan thing related to searching ingredients all over the world, ensuring the product gets to the customer safely and fast. They have to think a lot about logistics and sourcing. For a global audience they wanted to make a very lean type of approach in developing the product. That means every production was presold to customers who had pre ordered the product. And every customer had the change to take part in developing the next part of the product. This has been going on around two years. Each production batch has been improved on the basis of the feedback they have gotten from a global audience. That s something that does not happen in the fast moving consumer goods business. Reference: Co-Founder of ambronite Simo Suoheimo

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