Chewable beauty: Convenience meets functionality in amazake jelly sticks
Snack brand Hananomi transforms the traditional amazake drink into convenient jelly strips to boost gut and skin health for busy consumers
Hananomi LLC taps the functional benefits of amazake – a traditional drink made from fermented rice or sake lees – to create a convenient jelly format for on-the-go consumption.
This latest launch focuses on gut and skin health support, aligning with the food-as-medicine trend that is sweeping across food sectors.
Ginseng democratisation: Advancing the Food as Medicine movement
With the concept of Food As Medicine growing rapidly in Asia, ginseng specialist firm Herbal Player is making the most of its nanotech to make affordable, market-first products
Ginseng is one of the most premium functional ingredients in Asia, with age often determining the price of these — the current record of most expensive ginseng in the world is valued at over US$500,000 and belongs to a wild ginseng root found in South Korea.
The premium price of ginseng, as well as its complicated processing and unpalatable consumption traditionally, have been two of the most significant challenges faced by the ginseng industry in recent years.
Embracing ‘genba’: Glico on balancing global trends with localisation
Yukio Kimura, COO of Glico Asia Pacific, says understanding ‘genba’ – the field where operations and consumer interactions take place – is key to keeping brands relevant in diverse markets
“Staying curious about each market – not just the numbers, but the cultural nuances and consumer behaviours that shape how our brands are experienced day to day – is something I consider a core part of the job,” said Yukio Kimura, who became Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Glico Asia Pacific.
Why thinking like an AI agent matters to marketing
As consumers increasingly turn to ChatGPT and other AI agents for recommendations, brands must rethink visibility beyond the physical and digital shelves – shifting their strategy from ranking on a page to winning a place in a single, AI-generated answer on this emerging third shelf.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is quickly emerging as a new frontier for marketers, particularly as consumers increasingly turn to AI-powered tools to research and choose products. While search engine optimization (SEO) has long dominated digital strategy, GEO introduces a fundamentally different way for brands to show up in front of consumers.
“Typically for many years everyone’s been focused on SEO, which has been ensuring that brands rank when someone searches for something in Google, whereas GEO is appearing in answers in the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude,” Joseph Levi, CEO and cofounder of UK-based digital marketing agency Noise Media Group, explains.
ASEAN poised as next halal growth market amid Middle East turmoil
South East Asia has all the parts in place to emerge as the key halal growth market for food amid the Middle East conflict — but will the region be able to grasp this opportunity?
The Middle East as a region is often recognised as a global halal centre due to the majority of countries in this region being Muslim, from Saudi Arabia to the United Arab Emirates to Oman.
However, if going by sheer population size, the country with the largest Muslim population is actually not located in this region, but in South East Asia — namely Indonesia, which houses at least 205 million Muslims, representing some 87% of the overall population.