Context:
CEVA, a global leader in animal health, sought to deepen its competitive advantage in China by building a China-market growth and innovation plan. QIVA was engaged to develop a structured approach to identify opportunities, validate concepts, and bring differentiated products in to market, locally in China.
The Challenge: From Centralised Strategy to Localised Innovation:
- The China Insight Gap: Innovation had been centrally driven. The existing model was not structured to systematically integrate China-specific consumer, veterinary, regulatory and market insights into the development pipeline.
- Lack of a Prioritisation Framework: The company required a clear, data-led process to prioritise opportunities, validate concepts, and ensure new products aligned with both global and local strategic goals.
- Sub-Optimal Digital Performance: Initial efforts on platforms like Little Red Book (RED or Xiaohongshu) and TikTok (Douyin) were underperforming. The storytelling wasn’t resonating with the platforms’ fast-paced culture, and search strategies were failing to capture high-intent audiences early enough.
- Organisational Design: CEVA had deep expertise in offline channels, but the team needed new capabilities, metrics, and agile processes to win in China’s eCommerce-driven market.
Our Solution: An Integrated Innovation and Execution Partner
Where others provide siloed consulting or basic eCommerce management, QIVA delivered a fully integrated solution. We acted as CEVA’s strategic partner, designing a bespoke innovation strategy while simultaneously optimising their commercial execution on the ground.
Our approach was built on creating a credible growth path and delivering it with precision execution.
- Credible Growth Path:
- Collaborative Environment: We broke down silos between CEVA’s central and China teams, fostering a flat, collaborative process that gave local teams ownership over idea generation.
- Data-Driven Prioritisation: The framework integrated market research, technical assessments, and commercial forecasting. This enabled CEVA to evaluate opportunities based on regulatory feasibility, consumer need, and financial viability.
- Agile Ways of Working: We facilitated a more dynamic relationship between French and Chinese teams, balancing local autonomy with global controls. This extended to manufacturing, creating an agile approach to support China-specific innovation.
- Precision Execution
- Optimised Digital Storytelling: On Little Red Book (RED), we shifted the content focus from “stressed cats” to earlier-funnel consumer queries, backed by a new data-led bidding strategy. On TikTok, we diagnosed why initial content failed—it was “too slow”—and co-developed an innovation plan for fast-paced video that matched user expectations and platform culture.
- Unlocking Deep Insight: We conducted extensive market and customer research to map unmet needs and identify “white space” opportunities in the pet healthcare solutions market.
- Building a High-Performance Team: Recognizing that eCommerce was the primary growth driver, we supported CEVA in reconfiguring its team, embedding new capabilities and performance metrics to excel online.
The Results: A Structured Engine for Sustainable Growth
QIVA’s partnership equipped CEVA with not just short-term wins, but a long-term, repeatable framework for market-driven growth in China.
eCommerce Performance & Brand Impact:
- >40% YoY Growth in eCommerce revenue.
- Achieved #1 Share of Voice (SOV) for “cat stress” on key platforms.
- Reduced Cost Per User View (CPUV) by 45% through optimised content and ad strategies.
- Generated content on Little Red Book (RED) that reached an average of 3.7 million target buyers.
Strategic & Organisational Impact:
- Delivered CEVA’s first China-specific innovation strategy, creating a structured growth engine balancing technical feasibility with commercial reality.
- Established a new product development (NDP) pipeline with a concrete action plan, supporting CEVA’s 10-year growth ambition in China.
- Strengthened collaboration between CEVA’s global HQ and China teams, building shared confidence and a more agile operational model.
- Built a robust pricing and loyalty strategy that maintained competitiveness while protecting margin.
By embedding an entrepreneurial mindset and fusing strategic design with relentless execution, QIVA provided CEVA with the framework and capabilities needed to win in China’s dynamic animal health market.
Transferrable learning:
- To win in China is complex. QIVA’s broad marketing and technical capabilities meant we could deliver a real innovation solution, not just e-comm performance.
- Long term success is about more than typical eCommerce push marketing. It requires deep understanding of the user journey and precision content/plans to engage with the shopper at each relevant touchpoint. Trust is key, so working with a spectrum of specific KOLs drives endorsement and demonstrates how your product fits the reality of consumers’ lives.
- An entrepreneurial innovation mind-set is critical to business success in China. Customers are not static, nor can you be. The way to win consumers is not just a continual approach to “educate” them. We need to engage, listen to what’s not working, and understand why.
- Remember, growth is a combination of tactical changes, and longer-term opportunities
- Helping create an optimal way of working for the specific needs of China is key for Western brands.
- An optimal search strategy focusing on brand words, category words, symptom and query words and competitor keywords is an essential requirement. AI is making this ever more complex.
