Unilever Food Solutions

UFS Demand Generation: Achieving 1M+ Reach and Validating B2B2C Growth through Strategic Influencer Partnerships.

THE CLIENT / CHALLENGE

Unilever Food Solutions

The Client: Unilever Food Solutions (UFS), the professional foodservice division of Unilever.

The Problem: UFS needed to accelerate product adoption (e.g. their newly launched Mala range in SG market and popular products like Salted Egg) among food operators. However, simply pitching to chefs wasn’t enough; they needed to demonstrate consumer demand to convince operators that these flavors would sell.

The Constraints: The team had a limited budget for talent and uncertainty regarding the ROI of influencer marketing for B2B goals. They needed a low-risk, high-insight pilot to prove the concept.

SOLUTION

The Trend-Adoption Loop: Bridging Consumer Hype & Operator Utility

Vintedge’s role: End-to-End Influencer Management (Recruitment, Management, Performance Analysis).

The Strategy: “The Trend-Adoption Loop” We executed a B2B2C strategy that synchronized hype with ease of adoption.

  • Creating the “Pull” (Consumer Side): We engaged food influencers to generate massive “hype” around specific flavors (e.g., “Mala Month” or “Salted Egg Cravings”), driving diners to hunt for these dishes.
  • Enabling the “Push” (Operator Side): This hype served as a signal to F&B operators that the trend was profitable. We positioned UFS products as the “shortcut” that allowed chefs to immediately capitalize on this demand without mastering complex recipes from scratch.

Key Methodology & Execution:

  • Manual Curation over Automation: Instead of using generic databases, we manually scouted and recruited KOLs to ensure authentic alignment with Singapore’s foodie culture.
  • Trend-Based Activation: We aligned content briefs with seasonal objectives—activating “Salted Egg” content in October and “Mala” content in November to capitalize on current food trends.
  • Strategic Tiering: We selected a mix of influencers to test different objectives:
    • Mass Reach for awareness.
    • Niche/Authentic for trust and engagement.

RESULTS

Scaling Demand: 1M+ Impressions & 3x Industry Engagement

Hard Metrics (Performance):

  • Massive Awareness: The campaign generated over 1 Million combined Impressions, with a top performer (SingaporeFoodie) alone delivering 706k impressions in November.
  • High Engagement & Intent: Niche creator (Dibs.sg) has achieved a remarkable 6.4% Engagement Rate (ER). Their “Authentic UGC” style felt like a peer recommendation, driving 4,123 interactions.
  • Actionable Consumer Behavior:
    • SingaporeFoodie drove the highest “Save” count (243 Saves), proving that diners were using the content as a functional guide for where to eat.
    • MiddleClass (173k Reach) drove high “Likes” via polished visuals, successfully triggering visual curiosity.

Soft Metrics (Sentiment & Insights):

  • Trend Validation: Sentiment analysis revealed a strong hunger for the “Salted Egg” series, with audiences explicitly asking for more. This provided UFS with data to pitch future product ranges to operators as “guaranteed sellers.”
  • Client Retention: The detailed performance reporting—specifically the strategic breakdown of “Polished vs. UGC” styles—led the client to renew the partnership for future campaigns.

Overall, this campaign successfully validated the B2B2C model for UFS. We proved that by driving consumer cravings through influencers, we could incentivize operators to adopt UFS solutions as the fastest way to meet that demand. This data allowed the client to move from “testing” to “optimizing” their future marketing spend.

Combined Impressions:

0 Million

Engagement Rate:

0.0%

(3x the industry average for F&B)

Proof of campaign concept:

Validated