As it lands TikTok star Zach King, Nescafé is pivoting to influencer marketing

Until now, influencers haven’t commanded much investment, but it knows if it’s to grow on the gram, then they’re key.

“Influencer marketing is something that’s become more important for us recently. We recognize the importance that they have in driving a recommendation and connecting with consumers. So, we’re starting to put more focus on it to fuel engagement on our social platforms,” explains Liritis.

The marketer said that, right now, spend on the sector is managed at a local level and declined to comment further on how much it intends to invest globally going forward. But it has not escaped Liritis’s attention that FMCG companies are seeing greater potential in the space.

Unilever’s new CEO has stated that the company plans to spend as much as 50% of its marketing budget on creators, with the company wanting an influencer representing its brands in every postcode around the world.

Liritis says: “Influencer marketing is important and FMCG companies are realizing that. So Unilever’s choice of going all in.... I mean, why not? But I do think, I think what’s important for us is that influencer strategy is actually fitting a strategy.”

For Nescafé, that means a mix of local and global – and a new campaign with TikTok star Zach King exemplifies the approach he wants to take. Over the coming year, King will front a series of TV, OOH and video ads and create his own content to promote Nescafé’s cold coffee ‘concentrate’ – a product it developed specifically with the 18-24 demographic in mind.

King creates short videos showing “magic tricks” and illusions. He is the current Guinness World Record holder for the most viewed video on TikTok (2.2bn views) and the fourth most watched video on the platform in 2024. In addition to his 82 million TikTok followers, he has nearly 25 million fans on Instagram and over 40 million YouTube subscribers.

“Our [current] influencer strategy plays out locally,” says Liritis. “So Zach King is a first for us in the sense that we’re working with an influencer that has an appeal that goes beyond geographies. An influencer like Zach is able to actually transcend more generations and culture and the kind of local one is important, because it’s what also drives relevance, right? So we’re combining and believe in both and this is the first initiative where we’ve actually kind of developed both in parallel.”

So while King will front a series of global ads that play on the idea of “hacking your coffee,” expect to see creators in local markets brought in later down the line.

This approach means Liritis has been considering how it sets the marketing team up internally for the long term to ensure it’s bringing in more skills and expertise at a global level to mirror its increasing investment.

“I’ll be honest, I think it’s early days to have a point of view about what that structure or the operational model looks like. For now, we haven’t changed how we approach things, but maybe in the future we will. It is a question that we need to ask ourselves and that we need to figure out, because there is the component of how you manage the global strategy, global influencers, that also gets executed locally. That’s something that needs to be thought of.”