How TikTok gets you into Tesco | A radical responsibility to make good content

In 2022, Tonic launched its own organic TikTok video series and millions of views later landed a national distribution deal with Tesco. With eyes now on the US And Rising’s co-founder, Jonathan Trimble catches up with Tonic’s founder, Sunna Van Kampen, to discuss how it happened and how others can do the same.

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It has been an excellent year for Tonic, now the UK's largest and fastest-growing immunity drink. Beginning a second seed fundraise just over a year ago, Tonic has outrun the post-pandemic market headwinds, grown its direct-to-consumer business, and added a national listing in Tesco to its distribution alongside Holland & Barrett and Sainsbury. More significantly, Tonic will launch in the US  at the beginning of 2023, requiring founder Sunna Van Kampen to relocate to Austin. He does so with his new family in tow, as Sunna also became a Dad earlier this year. 

Converging factors are fuelling Tonic’s success. The vitamin aisles of any supermarket have stagnated since the 1990s, and recommended daily allowances date back to the 1950s. Tonic is a contemporary health offer, in sync with the stresses of modern life, offering the highest doses of any supplements available. Much has gone into the product’s formulation: Tonic’s approach is to help the body do its work rather than cover up symptoms or simply give you something sweet to drink.

Thinking a year in advance 

During the Summer of 2021, And Rising made a follow-on investment of creative capital to visually and strategically redesign the Tonic brand. The routine evolution of assets became a robust set of ideas around Tonic’s brand mission. One was the “Tonic Tribe” - bringing people together around shared information and activities. The thinking is simple: the world’s most valued and valuable brands understand scale by communicating a shared way of seeing the world. 

A radical responsibility to make good content 

One year later, Tonic has built community through a crowdfund and now through the ever-growing audience supporting, arguing with and learning from Tonic’s health hacks. These films are led and brought to life by the founder himself: Sunna. We caught up with him to reflect on our journey together so far.

Together we cover the following: 

• A deep dive into the world of creating content
• The impact it has had in scaling brand penetration
• How best to create content for TikTok
• How to launch in Tesco
• The ups and downs learned along the way

 

 

Let’s talk about Tonic on TikTok. You’ve gone from zero to 2 million to 11 million average monthly views. In August, you had 26 million views. So, let’s start at the end: what’s the secret? 

Like any overnight success, it’s not overnight, right? I’ve been this guy for a long time, telling my friends how to be healthier, figuring out ways to make things easier in my own life and now my wife's and baby’s lives. But the credit for my success probably has to go to my Dad’s stubbornness. He’s persisted in not being healthy for a long time; he just wants to eat his crisps and drink his wine. Who can blame him? And so I’ve persisted for a long time trying to get him to be healthier. Over the years, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t—working out small, one-step forward moves to get him to be different. 

It clicked when I took him from crisps to air-baked cheese crisps: same crunch but no fat in the fryer, high in protein, no stodgy carbs or whatever. And that got him off the crisps. So the next thing was, how can I make your wine healthier? Our first viral video ended up with me telling people to drink Pinot Noir instead of Malbec because, on average, it has about 50% less sugar.  That was a health hack I’d done with my Dad that worked for him. 

It’s about the nagging doubt about wanting to be healthier, knowing we are lazy. We don’t want to do it. We don't want to make sacrifices. We don’t have time to research. 

"I live and breathe healthily and have done so for years, so I wanted to set up a health company. When someone turns to me and says you need to film some stuff on TikTok, I’ve got plenty of things to say."

Doing health hacks is a few steps away from the core of Tonic as an immunity product. Organically, audiences on TikTok tend to skip blatant product messages. What was the journey to that realisation? 

Look, we’re the leading, fastest-growing immune health brand in the UK, and at first, we figured we should just stay in our lane and talk to people only about immune health; not least, there is a lot of education to be done. I was talking about how Centrum has four vitamins in its immune product alongside twelve E-numbers - so you’re getting more additives than vitamins. That makes no sense. But we quickly realised that videos about Centrum only drive engagement for buyers of Centrum: it’s too niche. 

Our philosophy has always focussed on overall health and wellness. Because being healthy is holistic. It doesn’t matter how great Tonic is; if you’re not sleeping well, you’re still scr*wed. A vitamin can’t be a miracle plaster on a lousy diet and everything else. So we have to educate on all kinds of angles. Take the leaflet inside our direct-to-consumer box: it has five steps to immune health, and four have nothing to do with Tonic. So we simply decided to take our content broader and realised when you touch many more people’s lives.

"Our first viral video ended up with me telling people to drink Pinot Noir instead of Malbec because, on average, it has about 50% less sugar.  That was a health hack I’d done with my Dad that worked for him."

Have you found that specific issues are more ‘viral’ than others? Has it informed a process around what topics you pick?

It’s clear the more significant the category, the bigger the engagement. Butter, milk, crisps, and wine will all do better than if I’m talking about some niche item.  But we don’t do everything for viral numbers. We try to focus on finding nuggets of valuable insight or typical misconceptions that go unchallenged. A large portion of the UK is buying certain things because they think they are healthy, not realising they aren’t and that there are cheaper and healthier ways to do things. Many people purchase margarine because they believe it’s good for cholesterol. But actually, they might be better off eating butter because it's less processed. So we’re trying to call out the bullsh*t, the things wrong with how we’ve set up our food system. 

We understand that the supermarket aisles themselves are part of that misinformation. You think you’re in the health aisle because it has a green banner. Meanwhile, the laws are changing on what foods are allowed in the impulse aisle, for example. Do you think setting your video series in the supermarket aisle is a factor, in the very place we often feel most confused? 

Absolutely. I mean supermarkets - and I don’t even know the latest numbers - but suffice it to say that they are the food system and have a vast corporate responsibility to try and make our nation healthier. Every supermarket I’ve spoken to in the UK or the US has it formalised as a goal within their corporate strategy framework. It’s not all their fault either; supermarkets aren’t health experts. They have nutritionists in their team, but they are presented with inherent conflicts between commercial and health goals. They stand to lose millions in revenue because people simply shop those unhealthy foods at another supermarket. Say you take alcohol off the market, and create a national prohibition; someone will brew it in their garage, and people will get access to it—supermarkets stock what we want to buy. I think, ultimately, it’s a consumer’s responsibility to invest in their health. If we all bought fewer processed foods, supermarkets would list fewer items. Finally, the consumer has to drive this change. And that starts with more education.  

"We’re trying to call out the bullsh*t, the things wrong with how we’ve set up our food system."

We know it’s a grind making videos to drive viewership constantly. Tell us a bit about your content machine - how do you go about it? 

The machine has been filming for four hours every week for the last four or five months. That’s one filming morning weekly to churn out a week’s worth of content. Now I’ve moved to the US, and we have moved to a monthly cycle. So we’re committing a whole day’s filming to generate a month’s work of content. It’s labour-intensive and requires you to do a lot of research, come up with ideas, and then go and film it all in a condensed time period. Then obviously, we have to manage the community, which is also a lot of work. Some of our posts have 7500+ comments. It’s wild. 

How often are you posting? 

We’ve been posting twice a day because we’re driving growth, and TikTok doesn’t have an algorithmic view of when content comes out; it just cares about the quality of the content and whether it’s entertaining. Now we’re settling into a rhythm more like once a day because the focus is quality over quantity. The beauty of TikTok is that it’s a meritocracy, right? You can have zero followers and post a fantastic video that will get millions of views. Or you can have hundreds of thousands of followers and only get 30,000 views. The days of influencers who have built up a legacy following will be over. Instagram and Facebook match the TikTok way of doing things because it leads to serving better content, and that’s what’s stealing people’s attention. People have stopped being entertained by an influencer posing for the camera while having coffee or some other stupid activity. People are getting bored of that. They don’t care. You’ve got to keep fresh, you’ve got to stay relevant and most importantly, you’ve got to add value. That’s the most important word in all of this: what we do has to be valuable. 

We’ve started to point out that TikTok is not social media. It doesn’t rely on a social graph to determine what content goes where. You don’t have to have a reason to be there. You can just turn it on and let it feed you TV-type content, programmed just for you, in shorter, quicker formats, just the best bits. For all these reasons, it’s getting more of our eyeballs. 

So, you started with many health hacks in the back pocket because of your Dad. Has it gotten harder? You’re now having to research, right? 

Exactly right. Running our podcast has helped as we talk to doctors and nutritionists worldwide. But now it’s gotten to the point where we’ll take different sections of the supermarket and analyse the categories to understand what’s healthy and hot. The sheer shooting time in a supermarket every week helps you discover things. We often see a lot of marketing nonsense. Last week we saw “Tropicana Lean”, with like 50% water added, and they charge the same price, well, more per litre because it even comes in a smaller bottle. You’re paying more for Tropicana to add water to your juice, something you could easily do yourself. But people haven’t got time to read the back of a pack or understand the difference. They see the word ‘lean’, which has less sugar, and they figure that’s a good thing. We’re in a cost-of-living crisis, just add your water, and you’d be in a much better place. It’s hilarious, but not. 

You’re sort of the worst kind of mystery shopper, broadcasting to millions. When you go into Supermarkets to film, do the store managers want to throw you out? How does it work? 

I mean, that’s our secret sauce. I can tell you some stores aren’t keen on it. Others are totally fine. I often have conversations with store managers, let them know what we’re doing and even sign in. So far, so good. I’ve been recognised a few times on the street. People shout at me: are you the guy with the health hat? I’m like: oh my gosh, this is crazy. 

"Some of our posts have 7,500+ comments. It’s wild."

One of the pinnacles for any brand is to have an owned publishing arm, which you’ve achieved with Tonic health hacks on TikTok. You have a broadcast relationship directly with your audience at scale. It would cost a lot of money to buy those eyeballs. There’s a version of events here where the publishing side of Tonic becomes more valuable than the product side…

Switching back to the products, we were all involved in the early side of landing Tesco national distribution, where Tonic’s TikTok presence was a defining factor in getting their attention. 

What’s impressive is that we’re doing a proper rollout into 259 stores across the country, meaning we can get field sales teams in to ensure the listings are up and running and looking good with the proper facings. So, it’s been a great start to build that out. Two things happen when you list in Tesco. First, you build a lot of trust in the brand. So that’s been phenomenal. Equally, our work together on the packaging has made an enormous difference. People can understand better which product is best for their needs. We’re only four weeks into the listing, and our rates of sale are outperforming Sainsbury's without any marketing. To me, that was a complete surprise. So, it’s come down to a combination of online awareness, TikTok and physical shelf presence. Everyone talks about seeing a brand 7-14 times as the golden number to enter a person’s consideration set or say, ‘maybe I should try that’. The pharmacy display counter is also helping us, and in Tesco Extra, Tonic is placed at the till, transforming our visibility. Tesco has been great. Awesome launch.

Yeah, it’s great. Similarly, Tesco is a broadcast channel. We’ve always strived to give Tonic a modern visual presence: natural and high dose. There’s a much better awareness, post-Covid, of the power of vitamins C and D. This brings me to my next question about the total addressable market for Tonic. 

We believe that over the next ten years, we’ll see a dramatic shift in capital pouring into prevention over treatment within healthcare. For example, we can’t keep making ourselves ill with what we eat and our lifestyles and then cure it with drugs and public money.  

The pandemic threw the need for prevention into sharp relief. But now we’re moving on. It’s not been so long that we’re reminiscing about it. Yet, we’re no longer talking about anything pandemic related. And all products that saw boosts in the pandemic, from Netflix to Peleton, have had a tough time of late. 

How are we doing on our mission towards a world more committed to preventative health?

To be honest, it’s a perfect point. For two years, the only thing on everyone’s lips was Covid. And now, I think we’re in a different world, moving from crisis to crisis: first Russia and Ukraine, then inflation, then food scarcity. When you hear about the amount of wheat and fertiliser produced in Ukraine, you realise how much that war affects everything. So I think it’s inevitable that we’ve forgotten a little about our health. Closer to home, we need to save our wallets from the dangers of inflation. We’re humans and will focus on the most significant issues in front of us. Two years ago, it was health; now, it’s war and money. We get many comments on our videos saying, ‘yeah, great, but it costs a fortune, you know?’. 

So we’re partly trying to say: investing in your health is essential. You only have one body. You only have one life. You need to fuel it with the proper nutrients. People aren’t just financially struggling; they are also time-poor, unable to research the best options. It’s one of the reasons why our videos are short, a maximum of 30 seconds. Otherwise, they simply can’t absorb it. 

"You’ve got to keep fresh, you’ve got to stay relevant and most importantly, you’ve got to add value. That’s the most important word in all of this: what we do has to be valuable."

You raise some excellent points on this. We talk about addressable markets as a set of macro societal forces, presented as if inevitable to increase investment or be bullish about our book. But, in reality, change happens through our actions and changes.  The game in front of us is people walking down supermarket aisles, getting information from screens glued to their hands. We create societal shifts; it doesn’t just happen to us.

We have to take radical responsibility for our lives, right? If you Google who the health leaders at the governmental level are, many of them could be in better shape. It’s not a secret that healthcare isn’t based on healthcare. It’s based on sick care. If you’ve got a major issue, we will try and sort it out for you. But healthcare, to me, is something different. Healthcare is the choices you make in the supermarket. It’s what you do daily, eating well, running, whatever it is. That’s healthcare; that’s the societal shift. And the responsibility will ultimately be down to the individual. 

At this point, I always quote Jon Alexander and the idea that people need credit for having a more prominent role in society than just buying stuff. So yes, you can buy Tonic, but you can also buy into Tonic. 

The shift in how brands advertise is fascinating. We have done videos on TikTok where we talk about what Tonic is and why it's great. And organically, it just tanks. People’s reaction is, ‘of course you would say that about your brand’. We get much more success when we break down information into helpful signposts: this product is 85% sugar, and this one has 12 E numbers. Even just reading out what’s on the back of the pack because people don’t have the time. So it’s about building trust with the audience, helping them with their lives and educating them, rather than just saying, “hey, buy my product”. 

You mentioned some posts get 7,500+ comments. Are they all positive? How do you deal with that? 

The numbers are so big that you get a bit of everything. Some are positive: “oh my God, I did not know that; that’s so good to know.”. There’s amazement. There’s gratitude. But then, some people refuse to believe anything you’re saying. On artificial sweeteners, we’ve even had doctors do take downs of our videos. And they are correct; the science isn’t clear on whether artificial sweeteners harm you. The science, of course, is never settled. If there are enough studies that say something is wrong with your body, then my view is to avoid taking risks where there are accessible alternatives. 

And we spend a lot of time on research. If I say vitamin C is fantastic for colds and flu, some people can show me a study that says it’s not. But, I’ve spoken to Harri Hemla, the leading researcher on vitamin C in the world, based in Finland. He explains it very clearly: there is good science, and there is bad science. When vitamin C is too low in a study, it won’t have an impact. So you have to make choices, apply some logic and take ownership of your options because science is never concrete. Even with Covid, everyone wanted to follow the science, but the science was never settled on Covid. 

"We’re only four weeks into the listing, and our rates of sale are outperforming Sainsbury's without any marketing. To me, that was a complete surprise. So, it’s come down to a combination of online awareness, TikTok and physical shelf presence."

I was going to say similarly. I don’t know loads about science, but I think of science as asking questions which inevitably leads to a panopticon of answers. Quantum science shows that two conflicting solutions can be accurate simultaneously depending on how they are measured. 

Lastly, let’s talk about you. How are you doing? We’ve peered at many good and bad things over the last year. You’ve just moved to Austin in the US. What advice would you give to others on the rollercoaster of building a company?

I’m alright; you can probably hear I’m battling a cold. You can’t outrun sleep, right? With packing my house up, running the business in different timezones, and waking up at 3 am because of either the baby or jet lag, I’m finding it impossible to take time off. As you know, it’s one of the best experiences you can have in life. Incredibly stressful and demanding but also rewarding and exciting. You’re constantly facing a new challenge. It keeps you on your toes. Having built a solid foundation in the UK, I now need to get Tonic off the ground in the US, and you’re back at ground zero. It’s like starting again, building everything up, my network, retail, etc. 

"We have to take radical responsibility for our lives, right?" 

I’ve always found your perspective as a Founder is always looking forward and never back. You don’t celebrate your achievements because you’re always conscious of how much further you can go. It expands your emotional range in all directions. Exec coaches sometimes refer to that as having an unstoppable intention. 

I live and breathe healthily and have done so for years, so I wanted to set up a health company. When someone turns to me and says you need to film some stuff on TikTok, I’ve got plenty of things to say! For some Founders, the connection is to the commercial idea rather than a passion or belief they hold dearly. 

This conversation occurred between London and Austin in October of 2022; it has been edited for clarity.