Netherlands · Goat milk formula · Market entry · Under 2 months to result
It launched the month Vietnam stopped trusting formula.
In May 2025 Vietnamese authorities broke a large-scale counterfeit milk operation. Every new formula brand inherited the suspicion. Kabrita was days from launch — and chose to keep going, with us.
The moment
A market-wide crisis of confidence.
The Food Safety Authority, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Public Security dismantled a major counterfeit milk ring. The story ran everywhere. For established brands it was a shock; for a brand nobody had heard of yet, it was potentially fatal.
The immediate commercial question was not how to launch well. It was whether the client would keep spending at all.
What we did first
We earned the client's nerve before we spent their money.
Holding the budget meant proving we understood the risk better than they did.
Position
Advise as the specialist, not the vendor
We came in with a strategy that covered every customer touchpoint rather than a media plan, and argued the phasing from market sentiment rather than from a calendar.
Inventory
Relationships that cannot be bought at short notice
Doctors, pharmacists and genuinely credible expert hot-moms — selected for standing in the category, not reach — plus VCCorp's press system for brand safety.
Support
Legal and licensing help
We assisted with regulatory advice and permit handling at the exact moment the category was under maximum scrutiny.
Team
People who only do mom & baby
Practical experience in this category, which is what made the risk assessment credible to a global brand's local team.
Strategy
Phase the campaign to the market's mood, not the media plan.
Market sensitive
Always-on content, PR and SEO infrastructure. Reach the audience in a trickle and build belief. No hard selling into a frightened market.
Market cooling
Bring in the credibility layer — specialists and expert hot-moms with genuine authority among Vietnamese mothers — to consolidate trust.
Market ready
Open the commercial taps: calls to action, livestream, affiliate review video, full commerce activation.
Throughout, we balanced against the brand's own resources and kept listening to the market rather than committing to a fixed sequence.
Positioning
Own the niche, not the category.
A five-nutrient step forward — maximum gentleness, elevated absorption
Rather than fight the mass formula market, we positioned Kabrita inside the imported goat milk niche, then positioned the product within it: the most advanced formula, the gentlest, the most absorbable, the closest to breast milk on fat profile, fibre and probiotic balance. "A five-nutrient step forward" makes the innovation concrete and believable; the benefit line promises a baby's immature digestive system the least possible irritation.
Execution
Surround the decision, stage by stage.
Vietnamese mothers move through a predictable sequence before buying formula. Each stage has a different question and a different trusted voice — so each got a different asset.
She notices a problem
Baby has digestive trouble. She asks family and friends, visits a clinic, and starts reading. — PR, SEO, social.
She researches formula
Reads articles and shared content, gathers advice from people around her. — SEO, expert content.
She considers goat milk
The category enters her consideration set and she wants the reasoning. — Hot page and hot group seeding.
She compares brands
She seeks out mothers in the same situation and weighs their verdicts. — KOL/KOC review, community.
She decides
Buys in a mom & baby store, on the marketplace, or in a live session. — Livestream, TikTok Shop, retail.
Two problems we solved with AI
Foreign source material, localised at speed.
Kabrita's material came from abroad: a limited pool of assets, none of it localised, and a documentation set that was highly scientific and entirely in English. Our production team used AI to widen the visual material and localise imagery, and to compress the reading load of a very large technical corpus into the points that mattered.
Post turnaround went from two to three days down to a day and a half.
Shoppertainment
Sold out. Twice.
Commerce activation improved sales sharply and visibly — the brand postponed planned booming activity on two separate occasions because stock ran out after livestream sessions run with AthenaCM. The livestream setup and the host and talent selection both drew positive feedback.
Servicing
Bilingual account handling, straight to global.
Our people worked as the brand's account team and ran multiple workstreams at once — content, PR, SEO, digital — which meant issues were understood and resolved inside one conversation rather than passed along a chain. This was Kabrita's first step into Vietnam and their standards were exacting.
Staff worked directly with the global brand contact, not only the Vietnam team, pitching and negotiating bilingually. Every planned line item was protected, and we proactively advised expanding the product mix.
Mid-campaign, while activity was still in its booming phase, the brand asked to renew for the following quarter with a budget of more than VND 1 billion.
Results
Under two months of implementation.
The campaign attracted genuine discussion about the brand and product rather than passive impressions — which is what made the branding strategy work beyond the view count, and what convinced a global brand to double down during a category crisis.
Keep reading
More work in women & family.
Each of these ran in the same market, through the same owned publisher, community network and KOL bench.
Social Athena — Women & Family Practice