How important is the choice of KOLs to work with in this context?

[Dimaeiya333]

The choice of influencers is strategic and crucial because we have an organic approach . We don't do sponsored posts. We test our products with the influencers who ask us, but we don't pay for posts or stories with specific wording or captions. We focus on perfecting the relationship, because if we want to get the right message across, we have to find the influencer who fits perfectly with our campaign. The criterion isn't necessarily the size of the community. It depends on the topics, the products. We work with nano and macro influencers . We have a very large and diverse community, so we look for influencers with very specific communities. We have to fine-tune the segmentation because we launch a lot of products.

It's really about knowing the influencers well. If you have a personal relationship with that person, you know whether they're going to like the product or not. You know their editorial line and how they talk about the products. It's extremely meticulous work that requires a lot of time and very precise guidance.

What role does data play in executing your influencer strategy?
Data is very important. To evaluate the success of a campaign, we look at the number of posts and the audience reached. We also look at the quality of the photo, the interactions of influencers with their communities. We analyse the comments from the shops, which often tell us about the direct impact of influencers’ posts on people who come to us saying “I saw this or that post”. Have there been more requests from customer service? Are there more interactions with our web chat? There are many met r&d directors email database rics to analyse that will give an overall view because numbers don’t necessarily mean everything. Kolsquare helps us a lot because it allows us to find relevant profiles in relation to our campaigns, to really segment and get to know the profiles. It saves us a lot of time.

What platforms are you focusing on?
We look for influencers on Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest . It's very diverse. It can be people who have podcasts. We see influencers as key opinion leaders.

YouTube is the platform we want to push forward and we are currently reviewing our channel. YouTube gives us more time to explain complex campaigns, to invite people and to give voice to our associations. You don't need to have a YouTube account, you can stop at any time, there is no infinite scrolling. But if we want to talk about our new collection with its brightness and colour we will go to another platform. The goal is not to copy and paste campaigns.

How are you developing your social commerce activities?
We are planning our first live shopping event in October for Halloween . We have set up our own video studio and are recruiting our brand ambassadors internally to be presenters. For now, we are going for a short 30-40 minute format with Q&As, presentations of our collection and product demonstrations. It will allow us to talk about our ethical sourcing of ingredients . We will schedule it for the end of the day and stream it on our website. People will be able to click directly to buy the products we are showcasing. The aim is to make it a friendly and convivial moment. It is very difficult to say [how many people will watch it]. We don’t know at all. We want to make something that feels like Lush and that our community will love. The aim is to start to establish a good framework so that we can gain a community. We know that it will take time to improve and get the footfall we want.