Region South uses influencers to create desire for VELUX solutions. VIEW met with Benjamin Dondina, Senior Public Relation Manager, to hear about the potential and why working with influencers creates new, exciting possibilities for showing people what our products can do.
In Region South, Benjamin Dondina and his teams work strategically with influencers as a way to increase desire to open up the roof, which is our ambition with strategic project 1.1. For Benjamin, it is a natural and authentic way to show people how VELUX windows can transform a space into a favourite place.
“Influencers are a media channel. Currently one of the most powerful ones and surely the one that delivers the highest engagement. People follow them and engage with them to get inspired – it’s a strong platform for us and a way to create compelling inspiration that will spark desire to transform a space with our solutions”.
A systematic approach to finding the right advocates
The influencers are far from randomly selected. Region South has an agency in each country who help them with the selection. Benjamin explains that it has been important to find national agencies, because of their local expertise and knowledge.
“The influencers are carefully selected together with our agency to make sure we find the right advocates for our brand. Of course we look at the number of followers they have, but we also want to make sure the aesthetics of the content on their profile fit and whether we feel the person reflects our values”.
The influencers are divided into 3 categories. People who already own a VELUX window, people who are planning to upgrade their VELUX solutions and people who do not own a VELUX window, but wants to transform their space.
“With the first category, we start building content directly, whereas working with the others, we develop content while upgrading and renovating. Our goal has been to create content with different people whose profiles all have a different focus. Not only interior design, but also people who promote beauty products or clothing”.
Watch how influencers in Region South have promoted our products the past year:
“For me, it changes everything that we are ‘transforming spaces’
Benjamin started in VELUX in July 2021 and was asked to help drive the influencer and PR activation in Region South. Although not having any experience in the building industry, his 14 years in the beauty industry prior to joining might be why Benjamin was chosen for the role.
“Our brand has been perceived as a functional brand for years. When contacting influencers in the beginning, they would be quite surprised, doubting what they could do with the brand, but we’ve been working hard on the perception. The way I see it, we are not merely selling windows, we are selling a concept and different ways of living,” he says.
“For me, it changed everything when we introduced our new brand promise of ‘transforming spaces into favourite places’ and shifted to the home improvement category –we redefined our brand and that’s really the key. We transform any space – bathroom, attic, kitchen – and the beauty of our brand is that we can go in any direction, because you always need that element of light. With this new focus, we allow for more angles in our communication and not only work with building partners, but also artists and influencers within lifestyle, beauty and fashion”.
Influencer get-away and a collaboration with Sony Music France
Benjamin and his teams have done many different activities and collaborations in the past year. Two, however, have been particularly exciting. One of them is an ambassador program where 10 influencers from each country were selected to communicate about VELUX on a regular basis. In 2022, they kicked off two ambassador events – one in France and one in Italy – where the ambassadors gathered in a house to create content, both separately and together for their social media platforms. An important factor was their friendship outside work, which made the content authentic. In 2023, they will kick off the same event in Spain and Portugal.
Watch the teaser film for the French event, which took place in Annecy in a beautiful cottage where six VELUX windows were installed for the purpose, by a local installer:
Another collaboration was with Sony Music France – a more unconventional partnership and a way for Region South to create desire in an alternative way. As Benjamin says: “We wanted to show that our brand can fit every form of art”. Working with Sony Music led to the collaboration with the French singer Jenifer, winner of the first French edition of the music show Star Academy who since then had released 8 albums. After some years since her last album, she recently announced her return, and in the music video to her new song, VELUX windows and light from above are featured as a prime element.
Watch the video: