Danone Actimel: Innovation Builds a Probiotic Mega-Brand

This 39-page case study delivers a close-up view of Danone’s strategy and positioning for Actimel and the lessons that everyone can learn from this extraordinary probiotic dairy brand, which has had a transformative effect on the functional foods market. Actimel’s marketing communications, pricing, packaging, labeling, merchandising, advertising and consumer insights are analysed and explained in detail and illustrated with colour photographs, charts and images from advertisements. Danone’s Actimel probiotic drinking yoghurt is the world’s biggest immunity brand and one of the world’s biggest and most successful probiotic brands. First launched in Europe in 1994 in innovative 100ml daily-dose bottles, Actimel’s meteoric rise helped create a category which did not previously exist. At the most conservative estimate, Actimel earned over €1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in retail sales last year. Today it can be found in 20 European countries as well as in South America and the Middle East and it was recently launched nationally in the US under the brand name “DanActive”. Its success has helped make Danone one of the world’s two biggest players in functional foods. This report is authored by Julian Mellentin, the editor of New Nutrition Business and an internationally recognised expert on the business of food, nutrition and health. Conceived in the same year that Actimel was launched, New Nutrition Business journal has been providing multinational corporations through to small start-up businesses with credible, reliable and thoughtful business insights for more than a decade