The best way to influence a community is to create it
The challenge
Unilever Food Solutions (UFS) has historically been a sales-driven organization, relying heavily on its distribution network to reach a well-established base of hospitality professionals. However, the rise of social media and influencer chefs began to reshape how chefs discover inspiration, knowledge, and brands. UFS needed to adapt and strengthen its brand recognition among a new generation of food professionals.
This new wave of millennial chefs had different expectations: they were looking for inspiration, authentic relationships, and communication in a language that felt relevant to them. Yet UFS primarily relied on traditional brand-voice content, which proved restrictive, culturally limited, costly to produce, and ineffective in sustaining meaningful engagement or ROI within the niche community of professional chefs.
The creator ecosystem also presented a structural challenge. Professional chefs were rarely content creators, while popular creator-chefs largely attracted audiences of home cooks, mothers, and food enthusiasts rather than the professional culinary audience UFS needed to reach. As a result, the community UFS sought to engage with online effectively did not exist.
Finally, UFS faced a brand architecture challenge: individual product brands enjoyed stronger recognition than the UFS umbrella brand itself, making it harder to build a unified relationship with chefs.
Our strategy & work
We decided that the best way to influence a community is to create it.
To address the shift in how chefs engage online, we designed a community-driven, chef-to-chef influence model that positioned Unilever Food Solutions as an enabler of meaningful conversations within the professional culinary community.
We identified high-potential but relatively unknown professional chefs and trained them to become content creators, equipping them to co-create content that would inspire, educate, and entertain fellow chefs in their local markets. Through a combination of organic growth and targeted paid media amplification, we helped these chefs grow their presence and reach the right professional audiences across the GCC, Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.
To sustain a continuous flow of relevant content, we built a network of chef-led community platforms.
Chef Forum was developed as a non-branded community page bringing together chefs within each market through entertaining and practical “tips & tricks” content delivered with attitude and authenticity.
Alongside this, we created Chef Network, a series of chef-led channels showcasing relatable and educational culinary content, from plating techniques to emerging food trends. While the platforms remained creator-led, UFS played the role of the enabling partner behind the ecosystem.
This multi-voice content model allowed us to scale content production while reducing development costs and minimizing audience fatigue. High-performing organic content was amplified through paid media and lookalike audiences, while remarketing through UFS channels helped convert engaged chef audiences into qualified leads.
Rather than flooding the platforms with brand messaging, we positioned UFS as the supporter and collaborator within the chefs’ content, allowing product integration to feel natural, credible, and relevant within the professional chef community.
The results
Over two years, the initiative built one of the largest digital communities of professional chefs in the region. The program engaged 102K unique chefs from a 122K addressable market, reaching 83% of the target audience across priority markets.
Through a creator-led content ecosystem, 88 chef-driven videos generated more than 3 million views, delivering 42K qualified leads while reducing cost-per-lead by 43%.
Beyond performance metrics, the initiative significantly strengthened UFS brand visibility among professional chefs, positioning the brand as a trusted partner within the culinary community and unlocking new cross-selling opportunities across its portfolio.
