Chef

The Objective

Chef, a well-known Italian brand specializing in culinary cream and besciamella, faced a significant challenge: repositioning its products in a competitive and mature market where consumers often associate them with traditional recipes or seasonal cooking.

The goal was clear: to strengthen brand relevance, build brand preference, and drive incremental sales through a repositioning strategy that highlights the brand’s unique pleasure and restores its value and distinctiveness.

The Solution

As TikTok has become a key part of users’ discovery journeys, especially through emerging food trends, the brand seized the opportunity to communicate in a fresh and innovative way on the platform. According to GWI data¹, 35% of Italian TikTok users aged 18+, specifically those interested in food, drink, and dining out, identify as foodies. Moreover, 53% of TikTok users have purchased a new product thanks to creators' contents². This can be attributed to the peer-to-peer relationship that develops over time between creators and consumers —one built on trust, authenticity, and credibility. Platform insights also reflect evolving user interests: the hashtag #RicetteVeloci (“Quick Recipes”) alone has garnered over 162 million views³ .

Recognizing TikTok’s unique ability to drive product discovery, brand awareness, and sales, Chef launched a bold, long-term communication strategy that fully leveraged the platform’s full-funnel capabilities.

To support the long-term strategy, TikTok activated a Custom Creator-Led Package through its premium program, TikTok Creator Exchange (TTCX), which connects brands with top-performing creators. The selected creators developed native content that resonated with audiences, placing Panna Chef and Besciamella Chef at the heart of engaging food trends and relatable recipes narratives.

In terms of media planning, the brand adopted a bundling approach, combining:

• Premium ad formats like TopView, Pulse Seasonal and TopFeed to maximize reach and impact during key consumption moments such as the Christmas period;

• Leveraging Smart+ solution to dynamically combine ad assets and automatically optimize top-performing creative, maximizing efficiency and scale.

The Results

The first campaign flight delivered outstanding results (+11.9% lift in Ad Recall, +3.9% lift in Attitude), significantly outperforming Italian benchmarks for upper funnel metrics. The strong results translated over time into meaningful brand equity gains. While initial lower-funnel metrics like Consideration remained flat, sustained presence and relevant creator-led content gradually drove impact:

• +300% relative growth lift in Recommendation (in the long term: last campaign vs first one)

• +177% relative growth lift in Intention to buy (in the long term: last campaign vs first one)

By consistently reinforcing top-of-mind brand awareness, Chef steadily increased its brand equity. Over time, this translated into tangible lower funnel impact extending beyond brand perception to tangible business outcomes.

Indeed, the GeoLift study conducted with Circana showed a:

• +2.4% sales lift for total brand Chef

• +8.6% sales lift for Besciamella Chef

This impact on sales validated TikTok’s role not only as a short-term activation tool but also as a key component of a long-term strategy, both as a brand-building platform and a performance driver.

Moreover, the GeoLift results were consistent with econometric models, helping to fine-tune the Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and further confirming TikTok’s tangible contribution to incremental sales and efficiency:

• ROAS was 316x higher than the average media ROI.

By combining a long-term strategy with creator-led storytelling and premium ad formats, Chef successfully repositioned their brand image and unlocked measurable business value. TikTok proved to be a powerful platform not only for brand perception but also for driving sustained incremental sales in a highly competitive category.

Sources

1. GWI, Q1 2023–Q1 2024; 2. CPG Survey Italy 2024, conducted by AYTM; 3. TikTok Internal Data, Italy, Jan-Dec 2024 overlapping hashtags.