With the help of Kolsquare, renowned French cheese brand Soignon is growing and professionalising its influencer marketing strategy, with plans for further integration of influence into the overall digital and marketing strategy in 2025.
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Soignon is a renowned French dairy brand specialising in high-quality goat cheese products. Established over a century ago, Soignon champions its commitment to sustainability and collaboration with local dairy farmers. A household name, the brand continues to innovate in its approach to marketing and consumer engagement, most recently by scaling and professionalising its digital and influencer marketing strategies.
Soignon began working with influencers to build its brand love and recognition several years ago. The key objective of the brand’s influence strategy is to talk directly to consumers about the value, convenience and, of course, great taste of its products.
“For the moment, the digital and influence strategies remain somewhat separate, but little by little we have been working on how to optimise influencer content and integrate it further into the global digital strategy as we move into 2025,” comments Soignon Digital Marketing Manager Julie Maupoint.
Prior to selecting Kolsquare as its in-house influencer management tool earlier this year, Soignon had relied on a manual, ad-hoc process for its influencer marketing activities. The team would manually search for influencers on Instagram who had talked about similar products, and try to reach out to them.
“In recent months, we’ve been using Kolsquare to focus more on the type of profile we’re selecting. Because we are not doing paid influence, we’re really trying to work out how we can build a give-and-take relationship with creators. We’re looking to interest them, more than motivate them, to produce content,” comments Soignon Assistant Digital Marketing Manager Vanessa Panetier. “Over time, we have evolved towards a more structured, professional approach."
Since early 2024, Soignon has leveraged Kolsquare’s advanced functionalities to refine its influencer marketing efforts. Using the platform’s filters and keyword search options, Soignon can efficiently identify influencers that match its campaign objectives and brand vision.
The platform has also allowed the team to focus on fostering stronger relationships with influencers, ensuring consistent follow-ups and maximising content opportunities.
“Our aim now is to really target the right people in relation to the products we send them and to stay in touch with them; to find out what they think of the products and to thank them when they post content,” comments Vanessa Panetier.
Each year for the busy back-to-school period, Soignon aims to position its products at top of mind for busy parents and hungry kids. Often, the back-to-school campaign focuses on the brand’s mini-buche cheeses (mini cheese logs) which are a practical kids’ size that can be easily slipped into school bags or gobbled down as an after-school snack.
Key amongst the campaign’s goals were to enhance brand visibility amongst families and inspire parents to incorporate Soignon products into their children’s meals. To meet this challenge, the brand decided to move beyond the typical food influencer niche and explore a broader range of family-related profiles.
“It was a test campaign to see what would happen when we targeted a different group of influencers,” explains Vanessa Panetier. “With Kolsquare, we have a lot of very comprehensive information about profiles. We searched for influencers by keywords that corresponded to families and kids, such as ‘cooking with children’, schoolteacher, nanny, mum, dad, and so on. It worked well, with a lot of accounts that surfaced so it was quite easy to choose.”
Vanessa Panetier also needed to ensure the influencers were genuinely interested in collaborating with the brand despite the campaign’s reliance on unpaid content creation.
Using Kolsquare, Soignon shifted its search keywords from traditional food-related terms like "cheese" and "recipes" to family-specific phrases such as "children’s meals," "parenting," and "school lunch ideas." This tailored approach allowed them to identify new, untapped influencer categories.
"We focused on influencers who created family content and hadn’t been approached as often by food brands. This allowed us to access a fresh and enthusiastic audience," notes Soignon’s Vanessa Panetier.
Because Soignon is concentrating on gifting rather than paid influence campaigns, Vanessa Panetier says using Kolsquare to carefully analyse profiles before reaching out is crucial to achieving results.
“I pay a lot of attention to the credibility score. When it’s not good, I move on and really try to target profiles according to it. We’re looking for influencers who are not too big, or who are targeted at a certain category. With Kolsquare we can set very precise filters for the type of influencer we’re looking for. We save a lot of time,” comments Vanessa Panetier.
The campaign proved highly successful, with eight influencers posting a total of 48 pieces of content, delivering 1,200 likes and 360 comments.
Soignon’s innovative approach also yielded creative, family-centric content that resonated with their target audience. Many posts showcased children enjoying Soignon products, adding an authentic and relatable touch.
"We were particularly pleased with the high number of posts, as this extended our presence on the influencers’ main feeds and not just their stories," says Vanessa Panetier.
Encouraged by the campaign’s success, Soignon plans to expand its influencer marketing initiatives in 2025. By integrating influencer content into its broader digital strategy and experimenting with culinary challenges for seasonal campaigns like Christmas, the brand aims to drive further engagement.
"We’ve seen how effective targeted influencer collaborations can be, and with Kolsquare’s support, we’re confident in taking our campaigns to the next level," concludes Soignon’s Julie Maupoint.
“Kolsquare’s customer service is another of its strengths. Camille, our client manager, is very accessible and reactive. She is very helpful with tips and ideas for improving our campaigns using the different functionalities of the tool. It’s something we very much appreciate.”
Want to learn how Kolsquare can help your brand craft impactful influencer campaigns and grow your reach? Book a demo with a Kolsquare influence expert now!
