How La Maison du Chocolat drastically increased its revenue from Social with Next Level

An exclusive interview with Benjamin Costa, Japan Director of La Maison du Chocolat

About La Maison du Chocolat

“ La Maison du Chocolat is loved by Japanese customers as a premium and luxury French Chocolate Brand since it first opened shop in Tokyo in 1998. Since that time, the brand kept developing its business in Japan, more focused on retail strategy managing today 9 permanent stores in Tokyo, Yokohama and Osaka, and over 45 pop-up stores all over the country for the Valentine Day season. La Maison du Chocolat has been conscious for years of the importance to diversify its channels and encompass e-commerce as priority. In order to support this strategy, and our new website, marketing became challenging, especially social media marketing.

Utilization of SNS is indispensable to acquire new customers who will become new fans of the brand while maintaining the fan base through communication with customers who love the brand for a long time.

La Maison du Chocolat wasn’t making the most of social, while other brands were steadily expanding their fan base.

Next Level helped us elevate our brand image, reach new customers (younger generation) and raise our brand awareness. ”

How did Next Level contribute to increasing brand awareness in Japan?

“ Working with Next level, we particularly appreciated:

• Flexibility: in order to meet Customer demand, FMCG manufacturers need to adapt in real time to ever changing schedules.
To be relevant, social messages need to be sent out exactly when Customers expect them or are open to engage. Otherwise they’re just nuisance. Therefore, person who runs our social feeds always needs to respond to schedule changes, and Next level was able to do that.
When we’d sense an opportunity and request a sudden unscheduled campaign, Next level would immediately return a proposal maximizing the result by using their knowledge and understanding of Social. That’s why I can trust Next level.

• Brand consistency: Next level managed SNS carefully spent time understanding the brand itself and fans. For such a luxury long established brand, posting, replying, messaging to follower must follow perfect politeness and etiquette. Next level crafts communication very carefully, seamlessly with our other communication, in a much more precise way than a larger marketing agency would likely bother doing.

• Reporting: When making business decisions, it is important to leverage data and produce a concrete quantified analysis to formulate strategies and tactics based on the analysis. Next level’s report uncovered our problems, and allowed us to optimize strategy. Reach is now three times more, and Engagement has became high level. I would say, Next level definitely increased brand awareness and quality of communication on SNS.  »

Brand Passion

Our staff is passionate about the brand and its products. We want to deliver the highest quality chocolates produced by the Parisian genius Chocolatier to Japanese connoisseurs, and the brand’s commitment to perfection needs to be incorporated into every single Customer interaction. Cooperating with Next level helps us convey the delicate taste of perfection with every post impression.

What was a concrete result of Next level?

“ We launched a user generated contents (UGC) campaign and ads during the Valentine’s Day season with Next level. Sales via SNS were about four times higher than the previous year, and our rate of increase in followers reached a record high of 10% YoY. ”

Benjamin Costa
Japan Director
La Maison du Chocolat