Remember when brain health used to be associated mostly with older adults? That’s not the case anymore: Gen Z and millennials are putting into practice the idea that it’s never too early to start taking care of your health.
Younger generations are increasingly engaging in preventive care and wellness practices, from skincare and meditation to minding their heart and brain health. Everyone wants to perform at their best, and maintaining a sharp mind is important, regardless the age.
Healthy aging is essential, whether you want to make the most out of enjoying your golden years or trying to create the habit of caring for your brain from a young age. Consumers want to make informed decisions regarding brain health supplements based on scientific evidence of their benefits.
Meeting our customers’ specific needs is important for us, which is why we are excited to launch our most recent product in the brain health category: MemoryArmor.
Introducing MemoryArmor: A Boost for Your Brain
MemoryArmor is a brain health supplement made to support short-term memory recall and promote cognitive resilience as you age. It is specially formulated with bacopa, a plant that’s been used in traditional Ayurvedic Indian medicine for centuries, to support mental attention, learning and short-term working memory.*
We are excited about the product because it:
- Is formulated with bacopa to support short-term memory, recall and attention.*
- Delivers vitamin D and B-vitamins to promote healthy brain function.*
- Provides powerful benefits to achieve cognitive resilience as you age.*
An Inside Look into Our Product Development Process
As a global leader in the nutrition industry, we cater to a variety of daily nutritional needs, offering choices to consumers. We noticed brain health was an opportunity to further support individuals to achieve personalized health and wellness goals, so we embarked on the process of developing MemoryArmor.
The development process involved the following steps:
We listened to our distributors’ needs.
No one knows best what customers want other than our independent distributors: their high-touch relationship with their customers gives insight on what kind of nutrition solutions people are looking for. Our distributors had let us know about the growing interest from customers in brain health, and that was the spark that started the process.
We selected the best ingredients.
We spent quite some time doing research and attending trade shows looking for the ingredient that would be the core of the new product we had in mind. Our sourcing and product science teams analyzed different ingredients and met with several suppliers until we decided to use bacopa, a plant that has solid scientific research to support the benefits we wanted to offer.
We consulted our nutrition experts and physicians.
We regularly work with our advisory boards in areas such as general nutrition, fitness, and sports nutrition: not only do they train independent distributors, but they also support the development of new products. Experts like Dr. Gary Small and Dr. Luigi Gratton shared their expertise on brain health supplementation, and they understand our company product strategy and distributors’ needs. The connection that our experts have with our distributors is essential to these product launches, especially for a supplement product.
We took the time to brainstorm and analyze the supplement’s design.
Once we selected our ingredients, our research and development (R&D) and product science teams analyzed what would be the best way to present the product: a capsule, a pill, a powder? Sensory criteria were a big part of that decision: does the ingredient taste good? Should it be a capsule or a tablet? Is it too large to swallow? Is there any aftertaste? Thinking about our customers and their expectations on quality, we always consider these details.
We supervised the product manufacturing and rigorous rounds of testing.
Our product is a dietary supplement, and supplement regulations are much stricter than those for foods. We verify ingredient purity, nutritional value, taste, and more. We also ensure the label on the product is accurate and consumers are getting exactly what is stated on it. Claims are required to still be valid throughout the end of product shelf life, which is two years for MemoryArmor.
We brainstormed on the product name.
This is one of the final steps, and it’s a very fun one. We worked with multiple cross-functional teams: product development, copywriters, distributors and creative team members from other departments. We came up with a long list of names that then must go through the legal and regulatory approval process. We made sure that the name makes sense within the product line itself, but that it’s also fun and upbeat while telling you what the product does.
Building it Better
Launching MemoryArmor was a great way to test “Speed to Market,” our recently improved product development process. This new process is allowing us to bring our products to the market faster, but with the same high level of quality on which Herbalife Nutrition prides itself.
We rearranged the operation process: instead of having project managers supervise 100+ various tasks, we streamlined tasks into a pod and then assigned a system matter expert to each pod: R&D, creative, supply chain, etc. It was not easy at first, because change is hard. But once team members saw that it worked and the new process did shorten the development times and kept projects on track, it became a really positive thing.
It was a smart corporate decision, wanting to speed things up and get products to the market faster. We made our processes leaner, making it easier for employees to complete their responsibilities and continue to create functional quality products