Unilever has appointed SAMY to lead global influencer strategy for its foods business group. This includes brands such as Hellmann’s and Knorr among others.
The appointment comes as Unilever doubles down on a “many-to-many” brand-building approach across 13 markets.
The remit will see SAMY develop and activate a social-first framework rooted in creator partnerships, as Unilever shifts further toward digital-native channels alongside continued brand marketing investment.
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At the heart of the strategy is SAMY’s proprietary Maia platform, which gives Unilever Foods access to more than 120 million influencers globally, alongside performance data to track and optimise impact.
A multi-market, ‘glocal’ SAMY team will support execution across key regions including the United States, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, the Philippines, Germany, France, Poland, Pakistan, Argentina, Canada and Turkey.
In addition, the agency will provide hyper-local cultural insight to guide where and how Unilever brands show up, while ensuring relevance in each market.
Beyond activation, SAMY will also build systems and frameworks to ensure consistency in how creators and partners represent Unilever brands, as well as measurement models to track and grow audience connections across brands such as Hellmann’s and Knorr.
Sonsoles Piñeiro Kruik, chief growth officer at SAMY, said the appointment marks a milestone for both companies as Unilever pilots its social-first approach within Foods. “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,” she said.
“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,” added Kruik.
Meg Bass, global media manager at Unilever’s Foods, added that the strategy is centred on meeting consumers where they are and building “desire at scale”.
“This means leaning strongly into creators who can help our stories travel further, feel more authentic and resonate more deeply,” she said. “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 also give 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, she explained.
Last year, Unilever appointed Publicis as its media agency of record for its newly formed independent ice-cream business.
The global remit covers media planning, buying and strategy in key global markets, including China, India and Indonesia. The incumbent on the account is WPP Media’s Mindshare, which handled Unilever globally.
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