How Histoire 2 and Nocciolata spread organic chocolate love for their back-to-school campaign

About Histoire 2 and Nocciolata

French agency Histoire 2 has more than ten years’ experience in media relations, communications and influencer marketing. Since 2020, the agency has represented Italian organic chocolate spread brand Nocciolata in its efforts to grow awareness and market share in France. After a year’s hiatus in 2021, Nocciolata renewed its partnership with Histoire 2, tasking the agency with refreshing the brand’s target audience and growing brand awareness. 

The Campaign: Back to School with Nocciolata

For Histoire 2, the busy back-to-school period represented an opportunity to associate Nocciolata with a time of renewal, not only for children but also for adults heading back to work after the summer break. 

The agency developed ‘Nocciolata Gang’, a young and fun campaign that personalized the characteristics of each Nocciolata product reference — classic, vegan, Bianca, crunchy — to allow each to communicate its own specificity. 

With a new Nocciolata logo and branding to work with, Histoire 2 created a series of punchy, motivating catch-phrases that it printed on stickers. Stickers were used to personalize packages sent to KOLs, and were gifted for KOLs to stick on to laptops, scooters, car bumpers, mobile phones, street posts, baby’s prams… you get the idea. 

“Once we’ve identified influencers in Kolsquare, we always contact them first to make sure they are interested in the brand and participating in the campaign. We don’t send products into the wild, we make sure gifting will be qualitative,” comments Histoire 2 Influence Manager Marine Le Thiès 

Using a pool of eight paid and 22 unpaid influencers, Histoire 2 ran the campaign on Instagram and TikTok during the first two weeks of September 2022. 

“The idea was that the influencers, especially those who were paid, would communicate on Nocciolata being a source of motivation at a time when we might otherwise be dragging our feet to go back to work or school,” comments Le Thiès. 

Challenge #1: Deliver a younger vision of the Nocciolata brand and broaden its appeal amongst a larger audience  

At first glance, a product like Nocciolata makes one think of kids’ after school snacks, and the moms and dads who buy it for them. This ignores the fact that chocolate spreads are also enjoyed by teenagers, university students and young parents looking for a quick hit of chocolate to fill them up and propel them into the next task of the day. 

There are also large sections of this consumer cohort who are looking for healthier and more environmentally sustainable alternatives to their childhood favorites. 

Organic, made in the EU without using palm oil, and offering a lactose-free version of its classic spread, Nocciolata responds perfectly to the demands of younger, and sustainably-minded consumers.  

Growing awareness of Nocciolata amongst these groups will deliver sustainable market share over the long term and was the #1 objective for Histoire2. 

The Solution: Select a wide range of influencers to deliver a fun, motivating message.

First on Le Thiès’ to-do list was to identify a selection of influencers that would not only reach new target audiences, but so with innovative and quality content. Key to the selection process was identifying influencers in categories outside the obvious targets of foodies and families.   

“We really wanted to open the campaign up to everyone and especially younger people who also eat chocolate spread,” comments Le Thiès, who used a range of hashtags, brand mentions and even emojis during her search process on Kolsquare. 

“Kolsquare was an enormous time saver. I was able to filter out influencers who worked with competitor brands. It also allowed us to find people who had previously mentioned Nocciolata outside of any campaign initiated by ourselves, and to recruit them to the brand’s gifting campaign.” 

Challenge #2: Compete against big names in the ultra-competitive breakfast spread category and grow market share

Let’s face it, Nocciolata doesn’t have the name recognition of the global brands it competes with. Neither does it have the same level of marketing resources to play with. 

But big-name brands often also carry the big-weight baggage that comes with market longevity and changing consumer demands. For brands like Nocciolata, opportunities abound in delivering creative messages that highlight the innovation that infuses  the products. 

To this end, strong, reliable communication of brand values is an absolute must. As is ensuring paid and unpaid influencers involved in the campaign deliver quality, engaging content. 

The Solution: Delve deep into the stats with Kolsquare 

Identifying KOLs for influence campaigns is about much more than which sector they work in and how many brands they’ve partnered with. 

Achieving qualitative results means analyzing the impact of their content and how they interact with their communities. To this end, Le Thiès set a minimum engagement rate of 3% as a condition for being included in the Nocciolata campaign. 

“Kolsquare allows us to have a lot of information about profiles. A profile itself might seem perfect on the face of it, but if the engagement rate is low it tells another story.  The gifting and the communication would get lost in the ether if we were to use them in a campaign,” comments Le Thiès. 

“A good engagement rate means the KOL has strong ties to their community and will deliver a better impact for the campaign.”  

The strategy paid clearly off. The Nocciolata Gang campaign delivered more than 100 contents on Instagram and TikTok, with the vast majority produced by unpaid KOLs under no obligation to post. 

The Results: Nocciolata, rising star of spreadable chocolate snacking

At well over 1m impressions and 35K+ engagements, Histoire 2 and Nocciolata were thrilled with the results of the Nocciolata Gang gifting campaign. 

“We had fans reaching out to influencers to see if the stickers were available to the public. We had content that was really different to anything we’d seen before, so we were super happy,” comments Le Thiès. 

“It’s proof that access to qualitative data in Kolsquare combined with clearly defined objectives and strategy delivers results for brands.”

Want to find out how Kolsquare’s extensive data can help your brand grow market awareness? Book a demo with one of our influence experts.