Unilever has appointed social-first agency SAMY to develop and activate a global influencer strategy for its foods business group across 13 markets.
As part of the mandate, SAMY will deploy its proprietary Maia platform, giving Unilever access to a network of over 120 million influencers alongside performance-led insights to optimise campaigns.
The agency will operate through a ‘glocal’ multi-market model, combining global scale with hyper-local intelligence to guide where and how Unilever’s brands engage with audiences. Key markets include the United States, the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Germany, France, Poland, Pakistan, Argentina, Canada and Turkey.
SAMY will also establish systems and frameworks to ensure consistency in how creators represent Unilever brands, alongside measurement models to track effectiveness and deepen audience connections for products under Hellmann’s and Knorr.
Sonsoles Piñeiro Kruik, Chief Growth Officer at SAMY, commented: “Being appointed to support the global pilot of Unilever’s social-first approach within its Foods division is a major milestone for both teams. Being chosen to enable this transformation within Foods is a major endorsement of SAMY’s influencer marketing expertise within the social universe.
“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.”
Meg Bass, Global Media Manager at Unilever’s Foods, added: “At Unilever, it’s about going where the consumers are and building Desire at Scale — growing our brands by embedding them authentically in culture. This means leaning strongly into creators who can help our stories travel further, feel more authentic and resonate more deeply.
“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.”
