Little bottle, big challenge 

Yakult’s iconic small bottle takes on a big challenge, blending its rich heritage with a playful, digital experience. Discover how our 'Short & Sweet' concept transformed Yakult’s brand storytelling—making health, happiness, and probiotics more engaging than ever.

Yakult, the renowned Japanese probiotics brand, was looking for a partner to implement its new pan-European marketing strategy. With digital playing a crucial role in its communication objectives, Yakult aimed to enhance its online presence, optimize organic traffic, and drive consumer consideration. However, maintaining brand consistency across multiple countries while enabling localized content creation presented a significant challenge.

Yakult has been committed to the same mission since 1935: contributing to a healthy and happy society. The philosophy of Japanese scientist Dr. Shirota provides a rich foundation for storytelling, directly influencing brand consideration. Leveraging this legacy, Yakult aimed to create a content-driven digital experience that aligns with its brand values while engaging audiences across diverse markets. We also drew inspiration from Yakult’s small, iconic bottle, which led to the 'Short & Sweet' concept - ensuring the experience and content were playful, concise and impactful to all audiences.

Partnering with VML, Yakult redefined its digital brand experience with a full website redesign. Multiple content and design foundation workshops were conducted with local marketing teams in Germany and the UK. By combining qualitative user research with data-driven insights on audience segments, a content-first digital platform was developed to support consumers in their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. To ensure brand consistency and local adaptability, a comprehensive digital brand guide and tone of voice document was created, providing clear guidelines for marketeers across different regions.

With the centralized strategic approach and localized execution, Yakult Europe and VML have built an efficient, scalable, and consistent brand platform, allowing for local market customization. The platform was successfully launched in the UK and Germany, with a planned rollout across 13 countries. Since 2020 VML continues to support Yakult’s digital transformation, with a focus on site optimizations, content updates, organic growth, digital shelf optimization, CRM and the development of in-house digital capabilities.

Through this collaboration, Yakult has taken a significant step forward in enhancing its online presence, optimizing organic traffic, and driving consumer consideration.

This new digital platform and pan-European collaboration made a giant leap forward, both in the content and experience we offer our customers, and in the strategic rationale behind it.