Interview with Bel France's Head of Communications and Influencer Marketing, Malaika Coco

[Dimaeiya333]

Supplier to the internationally renowned cheese brands Laughing Cow and Mini Babybel, French cheesemaker Group Bel’s rich 150-year history of innovative marketing has helped propel the company to its market-leading position. And while many things have changed over the decades, some things haven’t: in today’s rapidly developing influencer marketing environment, Group Bel continues to innovate as it looks to target younger consumers with its iconic brands. In this interview with Kolsquare, Bel France’s Head of Communications and Influencer Marketing, Malaika Coco, discusses the key pillars of the company’s influencer strategy, including its emphasis on developing long-term professional relationships with KOLs and extensive reliance on data at every step of the process.


Can you summarize the influence strategy at Bel France?
I have defined a long-term influence strategy at Bel that is based more on partners email database creating real relationships with influencers than on selecting them for a one-off campaign.

We work and co-construct content with influencers, following a medium- and long-term guiding thread. The value of maintaining real links [with influencers] is that we can leverage them to maximize the impact of classic campaigns at key times of the year , while operating outside the constraints of the commercial calendar to build community loyalty.

That's why we're also internalising and creating our own community of ambassadors. We continue to work in a traditional way with agencies - especially in some countries where we can activate several types of influencers - but we also have recurring influencers who work with us consistently. For (the children's cheese brand) Kiri, we started with a group of micro-influencer parents from which we have created a core of ambassadors. When we activate them for new products, for example, we already know that their content impacts their community and has a strong prescription power.

What criteria do you use to select KOLs?
Kolsquare has been very effective for us in the selection process, both for the KOLs we use through agencies and for those we internalise, and for monitoring campaigns and content. Using comparable KPIs, we defined a structured benchmark that ranges from credibility score to community analysis for each profile.

The challenge is to build a group of coherent influencers who are relevant to our brands and objectives. If the objective is more about consideration, prescription, or reassurance, we will play with micros. But it is still necessary to see the impact and that is why it is important to structure the KPIs . It is also necessary to maintain an optimal balance between the different profile sizes.