Culture of success: how a yogurt brand met its influencer match

When a brand is going for glob­al sta­tus, it’s vital that the com­pa­ny in ques­tion ensures its prod­ucts are read­i­ly acces­si­ble. 

But the road to suc­cess can be paved with chal­lenges, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the prod­uct sits with­in a sat­u­rat­ed mar­ket.

Yogurt brand, Chobani, encoun­tered a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges on its path to growth, and was open to new approach­es that res­onat­ed well with an audi­ence that was already spoiled for choice.

The Aus­tralian mar­ket was no stranger to yogurt; con­sumers already had plen­ty of brands and flavours to choose from – and many had their firm favourites. So, how could Chobani break through and get noticed? The com­pa­ny realised the key was to sell the brand, rather than the yogurt itself, which sparked the firm’s largest influ­encer cam­paign of its kind to date.

Expe­ri­ence Klear first-hand

Cumbersome manual process

The brand want­ed to con­nect with 500 unpaid influ­encers, who would cre­ate their own con­tent and increase brand aware­ness through­out the coun­try.

“Find­ing 500 influ­encers isn’t sim­ple – and try­ing to source them and organ­ise the process­es man­u­al­ly threw up chal­lenges that risked sig­nif­i­cant­ly delay­ing the cam­paign time­line – poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive­ly influ­enc­ing its out­come,” says Neil Bren­nan, VP of Sales, Klear.

“For starters, the brand had no quick or easy way to find and vet influ­encers. One by one, the mar­ket­ing team con­nect­ed with poten­tial influ­encers on Insta­gram and was tasked with man­u­al­ly log­ging all details and met­rics into a spread­sheet. This wasn’t a scal­able solu­tion, giv­en the lofty goal.”

It was at this point that Chobani turned to Klear to take a fresh look at its influ­encer mar­ket­ing. The yogurt brand want­ed to make cer­tain that its con­tent and mar­ket­ing approach res­onat­ed effec­tive­ly with its tar­get mar­ket – while access­ing Klear’s cen­tral plat­form, from which the brand could run its influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

Down­load Klear’s free Influ­encer Mar­ket­ing Plat­form Buyer’s Guide here

Influencers who resonate   

Start­ing with the dis­cov­ery process, the team was able to swift­ly source rel­e­vant influ­encers who came armed with audi­ences in the Aus­tralian mar­ket, and who fit­ted the brand’s ide­al cus­tomer pro­file. Via Klear’s plat­form, Chobani’s mar­ket­ing team took a deep dive into insights such as audi­ence size and engage­ment – to see who was dri­ving mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions in their tar­get space. Supe­ri­or Vet­ting – again, via Klear’s offer­ing – meant the brand could choose influ­encers based on gen­uine impact rather than fol­low­er count alone. Klear gave the brand valu­able insights into ele­ments such as past engage­ment rates, audi­ence growth rates, and oth­er types of infor­ma­tion that help to cut down on influ­encer fraud, where­by some­one is not what they pur­port to be. With this improved tar­get­ing, which homed in on the company’s needs, the brand was set to reach a greater num­ber of con­sumers – and improve the out­come of the cam­paign.

“Chobani’s team was able to man­age all cam­paign-relat­ed con­tent in one place,” says Bren­nan. “Before part­ner­ing with us, the brand lacked a con­sis­tent way to view and man­age user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent. Track­ing posts on social media was a man­u­al effort, which led to a risk of miss­ing out on posts and their cor­re­spond­ing met­rics.”

Bren­nan says Klear’s plat­form brought clar­i­ty to con­tent man­age­ment as well as the team’s back­end process­es, as the team now had a con­sis­tent way to view, track, and man­age con­tent. With all mate­ri­als in one loca­tion, the team could be sure of qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy in the mes­sag­ing and brand­ing.

Single source of measurement

The pre­vi­ous man­u­al process­es Chobani used for influ­encer mar­ket­ing left too much room for error. Small mis­takes, over­looked con­tent, and miss­ing met­rics could skew the per­ceived results of the cam­paign. 

With bet­ter man­age­ment and track­ing via Klear, Chobani could con­fi­dent­ly judge the ROI and out­come of its cam­paign. This sin­gle source of mea­sure­ment made it easy to gen­er­ate reports and demon­strate what worked – and what didn’t. 

“Our team saved sig­nif­i­cant time in the process of influ­encer dis­cov­ery, out­reach, man­age­ment, and cam­paign report­ing,” says Dami­an Young, gen­er­al man­ag­er of mar­ket­ing at Chobani. “Hav­ing a cam­paign brief built and man­aged by one per­son meant that almost every influ­encer post reflect­ed the tone of voice that the cam­paign required.”

What’s more, Chobani now had an easy way to bench­mark their per­for­mance. They had a healthy amount of data that could prove use­ful in com­par­ing future cam­paigns to past per­for­mances – a use­ful fea­ture for any brand enter­ing a new mar­ket and aim­ing to see growth and engage­ment over time.

“For a prod­uct as com­mon as yogurt in a mar­ket that is spoiled for choice, Chobani knew it need­ed to cap­ture its audience’s atten­tion quick­ly and with con­fi­dence,” sur­mis­es Bren­nan.

“Klear’s abil­i­ty to find, con­nect with, and mea­sure the effec­tive­ness of 500 influ­encers helped the brand grow strong roots in a new mar­ket and feel hope­ful about its future.”

See how Puma gained a 24x high­er engage­ment rate:

When a brand is going for global status, it’s vital that the company in question ensures its products are readily accessible. 

But the road to success can be paved with challenges, particularly if the product sits within a saturated market.

Yogurt brand, Chobani, encountered a myriad of challenges on its path to growth, and was open to new approaches that resonated well with an audience that was already spoiled for choice.