Unilever has appointed social-first agency Samy to develop and activate a global influencer strategy for the conglomerate’s food businesses.
Samy will work on the influencer account for food brands including Hellmann’s and Knorr, Unilever’s two largest food brands. The account does not include Marmite. The pitch was run without an intermediary, with seven agencies competing for the business.
Samy will run the account from the UK, with support from local teams. The account covers 13 markets: Indonesia, Philippines, Germany, France, Poland, Pakistan, Argentina, Canada, Turkey, UK, US, Mexico, and Brazil,
ITB Worldwide was the incumbent on Knorr, Unilever’s largest food brand, which produces bouillon and stock cubes. Weber Shandwick also worked on the influencer account, creating a campaign for Knorr in 2024, testing the demand for “Supercube”.
Billion Dollar Boy provided influencer support across Unilever’s food brands division, while Ogilvy worked on ad-hoc influencer projects as Hellmann's retained creative agency.
Campaign has contacted the incumbent agencies for comment.
Samy’s Maia platform will sit at the heart of the strategy, which will provide Unilever Foods with access to millions of global influencers and their performance data. Meg Bass, global media manager, foods, at Unilever, said the company is about “going where the consumers are” and embedding its brands authentically in culture.
“This means leaning strongly into creators who can help our stories travel further, feel more authentic and resonate more deeply,” she added.
“Working with Samy will allow us to combine technology and data with deep knowledge of the whole social ecosystem, leading to more informed decisions around where and how we activate creator partnerships across markets. This will give our markets a clearer structure for working with creators, while still allowing them to respond to local behaviours, tastes and cultural context in a way that feels credible.”
Unilever's “social-first approach” sits alongside brand marketing investment, according to the company, focusing on digital-native channels. It works directly with content creators via its in-house U Studio team; Unilever’s creative agency operated in partnership with Oliver, part of The Brandtech Group.
Sonsoles Piñeiro Kruik, chief growth officer at Samy, said: “Taking on Unilever’s ambition to deliver a strategy that can be translated across 13 markets, within an organisation operating at that scale, is a complex challenge. With teams working across continents, we’ll bring hyper-local intelligence into a shared global system, enabling Unilever to orchestrate influencer activity at scale while ensuring creator partnerships are shaped by the realities of each local market, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.”
Samy employs more than 1000 staff worldwide, across 20 offices and 55 markets. Clients include L’Oréal, The North Face, Diageo, Microsoft and Samsung.
Unilever confirmed to The Guardian last week that it is in talks with US-based spice and seasoning maker McCormick to combine their food businesses.
Last year, Unilever's chief executive officer, Fernando Fernandez, announced the company would hire “20 times more influencers”, increasing social media investment from 30% to 50% of total marketing spend.
Source: Campaign UK
