Raisio Benecol was awarded by Frost & Sullivan

Benecol –the cholesterol-lowering ingredient – has received the 2006 Frost and Sullivan Award for Brand Development Strategy Leadership. Benecol received the award for demonstrating superior market growth skills through a combination of a unique product based on plant stanol ester, quality and communication strategies. The success of the brand was also attributed to the way Raisio Benecol has helped its food industry partners work collaboratively for the benefit of the Benecol brand both locally and globally.

The brand was developed and introduced year 1995 by MBA Jussi Hirvelä, who was on those days responsible for the commercialisation of the plant stanol innovation. Jussi Hirvelä did the comprehensive branding strategy for the global markets as well. Unfortunately the head of the company (Raisio) didn’t believe in young Hirvelä’s strategic wisdom and insight. The time has shown that they should have been.

I was listening Jussi Hirvelä having his presentation at Helsinki Future Food Seminar year 1996. He described his Benecol strategy briefly and the basic idea was to enter the global markets through licensing the use of Benecol ingredient to companies like General Foods, Kraft and Nabisco. But Raisio decided to start the co-operation with a medicine company and we all know the results. Now the company has started to follow the original Hirvelä’s strategy, but 10 years too late.
It is unfortunate for Raisio that they lost Hirvelä, known as a marketing wizard of the Finnish food industry. As far as I know, Hirvelä is nowadays working as a Managing Director in a customer relationship agency, which is part of Ogilvy Group.