Havas Play and Puy du Fou: cementing influence as a pillar of the marketing mix with Kolsquare

About Havas Play and Puy du Fou

A division of global communications group Havas, Havas Play specialises in creating immersive brand experiences, and leveraging influencer and experiential marketing to engage audiences. For the last two years, Havas Play has been working with French historical theme park Puy du Fou to define and manage its influencer marketing strategy.

Known for its spectacular immersive productions that bring French history to life, Puy du Fou attracts families, history buffs and curious tourists to the park from all corners of  France. Together, Havas Play and Puy du Fou have built a solid partnership, integrating annual and seasonal influence campaigns into the park’s broader marketing mix to drive awareness of Puy du Fou’s many attractions, capture new audiences and re-engage fans.

Meeting multiple challenges: explain the Puy du Fou concept and entice visitors through the gates

From Roman times, to the Middle Ages and through to the early 20^th century, Puy du Fou offers its visitors the precious opportunity to step back in time and become immersed in the daily lives of our forebears. A unique blend of meticulously recreated and crafted historical villages and spectacular performances that bring historical events to life, Puy du Fou offers a theme park experience unlike any other.

But while the park has strong brand recognition in France, its unique concept and offer is often confusing for potential visitors. With audiences generally more used to the idea of a theme park that features roller coasters and water slides; illuminating the idea of history as immersive and entertaining as presented by Puy du Fou is a key challenge. Likewise the park’s unusual location in the Vendée region often leaves the impression it is hard to travel to from around France.

To respond to these objectives, Havas Play Head of Influence Emilie Cananié has put in place an influencer strategy that incorporates several levers to address each question. 

“We have a two-pronged influence strategy. First, we invite couples to discover the park, particularly family profiles, and ask them for really specific content. It's important to us that they really become the voice and, to some extent, the reporters, the journalists on the ground who share what they've experienced and what they've understood,” explains Havas Play Head of Influence Emilie Cabanié.

“Our second objective is to dispel preconceived ideas about specific points like its location.”

The Strategy: concurrent campaigns running non-stop throughout the year

A spectacular and generous environment that naturally lends itself to social media content creation, Havas Play and Puy du Fou have developed an influencer marketing strategy that runs annually during the park’s opening months from March to November.

Havas Play’s Cabanié oversees around 15 influence campaigns for Puy du Fou annually, which may focus on seasonal peaks like summer holidays or Christmas, or on ongoing awareness of the park’s many attractions and location. Each campaign is divided into IRL (in real life) and paid influencer content, tailored to maximise engagement during high traffic periods.

With several objectives to meet, Havas Play’s Cabanié and her team have adopted a strategic process for selecting influencers that answer the needs of each campaign pillar.

"Puy du Fou is a rather special client. We work with them annually on several pillars, so using Kolsquare, we create several campaigns that are all linked together in an annual program," explains Cabanié.

Havas Play uses Kolsquare’s filters and keywords to find influencers across diverse profiles, including families with children of all ages, and young adults active in niches like gaming, travel, and entertainment. These influencers are selected to resonate with varied demographics and to dispel myths about the park. All told, Havas Play activated 205 KOLs in 2024 for the Puy du Fou campaigns.

“We've honed our selection criteria for KOLs using Kolsquare’s filters to target different audiences like families, gamers, and tourists,” explains Cabanié. “For the IRL side of the campaigns, we look at their content — which obviously also highlights their performance — and we activate a mix of micro, macro and top influencers. For creators in the paid campaigns, we are more looking at macro profiles for reach.”  

Campaign tracking and transparency with Kolsquare

With several on-going campaigns running concurrently throughout the year, Kolsquare is indispensable for tracking campaign evolution and performance, and detecting where and when strategy adjustments may be needed.   

Puy du Fou operates its influencer strategy as a pillar that sits squarely within the marketing mix and that runs in tune with the brand’s digital strategy. For Havas Play, this means working with a client that is fully invested in, and understanding, of the KPIs that demonstrate the success of influencer marketing.  

“Puy du Fou is a client that is very focused on the figures. We give them access to Kolsquare’s online dashboard and they are able to check daily how the campaigns and the strategy is evolving,” comments Havas Play’s Cabanié.

“It saves us an enormous amount of time because we don’t have to redo the reporting for the client every time. The autonomy that we are able to give to this particular client through Kolsquare has really been a game changer for us since we switched to working with Kolsquare. Being able to provide real-time updates on the campaigns has helped to foster client trust because they can see what’s happening as it happens.”

Emilie Cabanié and her team use Kolsquare to aggregate both paid and organic content pieces produced by KOLs in campaigns, and to measure and compare a variety of KPIs like reach, engagement, and EMV according to the objectives.

“For large events where we might have 28 KOLs visiting the park at the same time, Kolsquare’s content aggregation and data reporting is very valuable. It saves us a lot of time. We are great salespeople for Kolquare, when we tell our colleagues how much time we save, especially on the live events. It’s really a fabulous tool,” comments Emilie.

Kolsquare is an integral part of the partnership between Havas Play and Puy du Fou collaboration, providing a streamlined approach to managing and tracking influencer content within the overall marketing mix.

Kolsquare’s impact in facilitating the management of large-scale influencer strategies is evident, from KOL selection to reporting. Its efficient, user-friendly interface allows Havas Play to dispense with labour-intensive manual search and reporting, and focus instead on continuing to create high-impact, perception-shifting influence campaigns for Puy du Fou year after year.

What to learn how Kolsquare can help your brand to manage and streamline large-scale influence campaigns? Book a demo with one of our experts.