• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, June 15, 2023

“Feel the pop, hear the fizz and taste the natural fruit flavors, all while experiencing a throw back to the fun times from your younger days.”

That spiel for Haleon’s Emergen-C Crystals, a new Pop Rock-style brand extension of the 45-year-old vitamin supplement, provides a key clue on why the brand has partnered up with Christy Carlson Romano in a social media/live event/PR endorsement deal.

If Romano’s name rings a bell, you’re likely part of Emergen-C Crystals’ target audience of millennials and Gen Z-ers, the latter of whom are somehow nostalgic for things they originally missed out on.

Romano, a Disney Channel child star in the early aughts, has recently become a nostalgia podcast entrepreneur with her company PodCo, so “teaming up with Christy made sense,” Emergen-C’s brand director Evelyn Furia told Pharma & Health Insider.

More than just nostalgia’s at play, though, according to Romano, who told Pharma & Health Insider during a Zoom interview that she’s actually been an Emergen-C user from her days on the set of “Even Stevens” two decades ago to her current “very on-the-go-lifestyle.”

As a kid, she recalled, “When I was on set, I was using it as a daily supplement to boost my immune system. The medic, this big burly guy, would mix it up and hand it to me.”

Now that she’s busy as a mom and podcast host and producer, Emergen-C is just as essential to balancing her life. And she’s happy that no mixing -- nor assistant -- is needed with the new Emergen-C Crystals: “It’s great to know that I can just pop Emergen-C Crystals open and take it.”

Furia acknowledged to us that the sensation of downing Emergen-C is similar to Pop Rocks, but with a key benefit that candy product  doesn't provide -- namely, support for the immune system.

Wearing blue and orange in support of Emergen-C’s brand colors, Romano said the social content she’ll be doing will also be aimed at making people aware that they can use the brand not only when they’re sick, but as a daily supplement, as she does.

Romano is hardly a novice in product endorsements. Previous partner deals have included Eucerin [she has eczema] and Walmart, but she said “this is very different. I don’t feel any pressure from them to sell packages of Emergen-C. It’s more like, ‘Christy, we really like you, would you mind talking about your experience and telling people how great it is?’”

“I’m not an expert in wellness.,” she admitted. “I’m just a busy person, on the go.”

PodCo, which targets millennials with podcasts spotlighting Disney Channel and Nickelodeon stars of the late ‘90s and early aughts, banks on nostalgia, and Romano said she doesn’t see such nostalgia as a passing fad.

"Each generation looks back on its younger days…and now we get to make content for that ideology of ‘I want to honor my past, I want to talk about it, unpack it.’”

“We get to actually speak to the actors who grew up from being child actors. We get to hear the life lessons they learned... and to  really empower our hosts so that they can have their own social media presences and make their own sponsored content going down the line.”

Speaking of sponsors, Romano revealed that PodCo’s have included Petsmart, Disney, Hello Fresh, Liquid Death and Manscaped. Could Emergen-C end up on that list?

Time will tell, but Furia noted that the Christy Carlson Romano connection is just part of a “broader 360 marketing plan, including social media, TV, retailers, paid search and much more.”

Emergen-C Crystals debuted at the end of March in two flavors: strawberry burst and orange vitality. Haleon says the product contains more vitamin C than 10 oranges, plus B vitamins and such antioxidants as zinc and manganese.