Albalact is a dairy brand sourcing milk from an area filled with history and traditions, deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Because of its unique heritage, Albalact couldn’t work with the same mainstream influencers every other brand was using, as they were not in touch with the type of stories we needed to tell. So Albalact created its own influencers, the last inhabitants from a secluded village in its milk collecting area, Tecsesti. With their help, the brand managed to bring authentic and unique rural stories to the urban digitalized population, in a way that would grab their attention.

In 2018, Albalact wanted to create an awareness campaign to promote their products, sourced from deep in the rural area of Transilvania, in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains.

Albalact makes their products using only traditional methods inspired by the unique local customs.

We needed to bring the magic of these secluded locations to the urban, digitalized and social media savvy population. To do this, we needed to bend the digital environment to our rare stories. But popular Romanian influencers couldn’t tell these authentic narratives, so we needed to create our own.

We took the 6 eldest inhabitants of Tecsesti, a village from Albalact’s milk collecting area and launched Tecsesti Vlogs, a platform where they could share their amazingly unique stories, through popular vlogging formats.

Before talking about traditions, we looked at our local context. We saw that traditions are slowly dying because more and more young people are leaving their native places, migrating to the big cities. So how could we talk about the importance of traditional products in a society where only modern is trending.

We adapted them to a new medium, vlogging, by making our own content creators, the last people that know the local stories.

We took the 6 eldest inhabitants of Tecsesti, a village that now has 23 residents (in the 1950s it had 350) and launched Tecsesti Vlogs, a platform where they could share their amazingly unique stories, through popular vlogging formats.

We promoted the content series in a 360 campaign and made their stories famous and timeless.

Popular Romanian influencers don’t know much about local traditions, so Albalact wanted to create a new type of influencer that can tell authentic stories.

We launched Tecsesti Vlogs, a content platform where users could discover the real stories from Tecsesti, the secluded village with amazing traditions. The stories were told through the eyes of the 6 eldest inhabitants, the last keepers of unique local customs.

The campaign focused on the urban population, with ages between 24-40, who is looking to buy products with traditional heritage.

This being our main target we had to bring together local customs and long forgotten traditions to a medium that talks mainly about novelties. By replicating known vlogging formats with traditional village customs, we created a disruptive content series

We launched a dedicated Instagram page for our new influencers and created an entire ecosystem of custom-made content that directed users to the vlogs

A small documentary team was sent by Albalact to Tecsesti. They stayed with the villagers and talked about the local stories. They took these stories and reinterpreted them using popular vlogging formats.

We launched Tecsesti Vlogs and created an entire ecosystem around the content. We used special social media formats and, just like any respectable influencer would have, even launched their own Instagram page with custom made local content from our Tecsesti influencers. Furthermore, we used in-store and TV materials to direct consumers to our vlogs.

2,683,000 Youtube views

5,952,295? impressions

+512% increase in YouTube subscribers

+11% increase in sales value

9% of the profit went to rehabilitating the village community center

Albalact is a dairy brand that collects milk from the county of Alba, deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Tecsesti is a village from this collection area, 25 kilometers away from Albalact’s factory.

This village is one of the many villages that are losing their inhabitants (it has 23 inhabitants now, versus 350 in the 1950s) because young people are migrating to the big cities. This means that unique local traditions and the villagers’ way of life are slowly disappearing.

Albalact prides itself on making their dairy products through traditional methods and therefore it became a supporter of the local community, championing its inhabitants and their way of life.

The brand wanted to make the local stories timeless by bringing them to online communities who would have never known them otherwise.