This week on Earned, Brit Starr sits down with Hassan Daoud and Antoine Héry from Beiersdorf—the German multinational company behind brands like Eucerin, Labello, Nivea, Coppertone, and more.
Recorded on the ground in London the day after CreatorIQ Connect Europe, Brit, Hassan and Antoine discuss all things creators like how to standardize practices across regions and optimize returns on investment.
To start, we dive into how Beiersdorf, the company behind iconic brands like La Prairie, Nivea and Eucerin, is investing heavily in influencer marketing to unify global efforts and optimize returns on investment. Antoine and Hassan share their unique journeys into Beiersdorf, highlighting their diverse backgrounds in fintech, automotive, social media, and sports management. Listeners will gain insights into the company's establishment of a center of excellence aimed at standardizing influencer marketing practices across regions, with a focus on Europe, North America, South Africa, and Brazil. The discussion extends to the broader implications of professionalizing the creator economy by 2025 and the competitive landscape of global skincare brands. As the episode wraps up, listeners are encouraged to harness the creator economy for their own marketing strategies, inspired by Beiersdorf's ambitious journey.
Check out highlights from the episode below, or or tune into the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen!
The following interview has been lightly edited for concision.
Beiersdorf on growing a creator marketing program: “The more we get data proving that influencer marketing is best for ROI and creator content is performing better than owned content, it starts to become difficult to tell that story without everyone looking at it the same way.”
Brit Starr: Why are you embarking on this multimillion dollar transformation, at the organizational level, full company level, especially with the center of excellence approach that you're taking? Why now? Why influencer marketing? Why the shift in focus?
Hassan Daoud: One of the things we were saying is that we know that everyone has been doing influencer and creator marketing for a while in Beiersdorf. Across all the brands, some in different capacities, with different reasons. You would always see a bigger shift between Nivea and Eucerin. Nivea is a mass product brand everyone knows versus Eucerin with a derma background, and also with that added med-fluencer layer and recommendations happening.
So we've been doing it for a while. When you don't have that clear definition and terminology and everyone is on the same boat in one way, going in the same direction, it can get a bit frantic. The bigger it becomes and the more we get data that proves that influencer marketing is best for ROI and creator content is performing better than owned content, it starts to become difficult to tell that story without everyone looking at it the same way.
With the company seeing more and more investment, with us seeing more and more ROI, we decided that we needed a program that would get everything in order. Hence we have upskilling enablement tools such as CreatorIQ, terminologies, and definitions, like what do you call a macro influencer in Romania versus a macro influencer in South Africa? That should be the same thing when you're a global company. There's been a lot of homework on that end, but I think we've done quite a lot of progress in one year.
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