By Betsy Vereckey

It’s a great time to be in the wellness market. Sales of vitamins and supplements are booming. But how can retailers in the space stand out?

“The vitamins industry is a very large category with many, many brands that all in a way look alike and are trying to differentiate from each other,” says Federico Troiani T’04, chief marketing officer of Ritual, a Los Angeles-based maker of vitamins and supplements. “Marketing plays a crucial role in building a brand.”

Troiani has been CMO of Ritual for a year and a half. He discovered the wellness space after a stint with General Mills, working with Pillsbury, Lucky Charms, and other top brands. Then as it happened, his personal and professional journeys aligned. He ran his first marathon in Minnesota, an experience that taught him “how important it is to pay attention to nutrition and really take care of your body.”

Ritual is a B Corp that abides to high sustainability standards, whether that’s using recycled packaging or providing consumers with traceability of vitamin ingredients to build trust.

“Traceability is something new that Ritual is leading,” Troiani says. “We’re setting a new standard in the supplement industry through traceable science and traceable sourcing, like giving consumers a Certificate of Traceability, an online tool on Ritual.com that details ingredient sourcing, third-party testing and packaging sustainability.”

The company is highly active on social media, crafting posts that feature influencers, cheeky conversation, and a “bold brand voice and identity that makes Ritual a leader, which really helps the brand stand out in a crowded category,” Troiani says. On Instagram and Facebook, the company has over 540,000 followers, and this requires a strategy of “strong brand storytelling across all our marketing channels.”

Ritual started out as a direct-to-consumer subscription company but recently expanded into Target, Whole Foods, and Amazon to meet consumers’ different preferences on where to shop the brand. “The brand took a very measured approach to build trust and relationships directly with consumers before expanding into new channels,” he says. That said, the company’s direct-to-consumer business is still an important part of the business, and it’s where Ritual does a lot of its performance marketing.

As CMO, Troiani is tasked with leading all brand and performance marketing. Ritual has an in-house creative team that “is extremely passionate about the brand, is provocative and rooted in cultural insights, better than any agency could.” While it’s common for companies to separate their brand and performance marketing teams, Troiani thinks that in the future they will merge.

“Brand marketing plays a key role to building awareness and creating an emotional connection, while performance marketing—born out of e-commerce—is attractive because it's metric driven,” Troiani says. “It has immediate returns but also runs the risk of becoming highly transactional without building enough strong connections with consumers to build that lasting brand. I think in the future, marketers will need to know how to do both.”

This story originally appeared in print in the summer 2023 issue of Tuck Today magazine.