Milena Traikovich is a powerhouse in the global digital strategy space, specializing in how massive legacy brands pivot toward digital-native audiences to drive meaningful growth. With her deep background in performance optimization and lead generation, she understands that modern consumers do not want to be talked at; they want to be part of an ongoing cultural conversation. Our discussion today explores the transition from traditional media to a “many-to-many” model, the role of sophisticated AI in vetting over 120 million creators, and the delicate balance of maintaining brand consistency across 13 distinct global markets. Milena provides a masterclass in building “desire at scale” by leveraging local intelligence to ensure products like Hellmann’s and Knorr remain authentic staples in kitchens from Brazil to Indonesia.
The conversation covers the evolution of brand participation in real-time culture and the technical frameworks required to scale influencer marketing. Traikovich explains the “glocal” approach to multi-market campaigns and the necessity of shifting from standard reach metrics to measuring deeper audience connections.
Large food brands are shifting toward a “many-to-many” brand-building model by prioritizing digital-native channels over traditional media. How does this shift change the way legacy brands participate in culture in real time, and what specific steps are required to ensure these digital stories feel authentic to consumers?
This shift fundamentally moves a brand from being a distant broadcaster to a dynamic participant in the daily lives of its audience. By leaning into social-first strategies, brands like Knorr or Hellmann’s can react to food trends as they happen, moving at the speed of the internet rather than a slow quarterly marketing cycle. To ensure authenticity, we must allow creators to lead the storytelling, letting them interpret the brand through their own unique lens rather than forcing a corporate script. It requires a decisive pivot toward digital-native channels where the narrative is co-created with the community, making the brand feel like a trusted ingredient in a creator’s kitchen rather than an intrusive advertisement. We focus on being social-first by design, which means every piece of content is built to spark a two-way dialogue rather than a one-way broadcast.
Using AI-driven platforms to access performance data for over 120 million influencers provides massive scale for global campaigns. What are the practical trade-offs when balancing these data sets with human intuition, and how do you use these metrics to predict which creators will deliver the highest engagement?
Having access to 120 million influencers through a proprietary platform like Maia is a game-changer because it provides a foundation of hard performance data that removes the traditional guesswork from the equation. However, the trade-off lies in ensuring that while the AI handles the heavy lifting of data analysis, human intuition still guides the final selection to ensure a perfect “vibe” fit for the brand’s specific values. We look at specific performance data to predict engagement, but we also analyze how these creators have historically participated in culture to see if they can truly drive the “Desire at Scale” that Unilever seeks. It’s about merging tech-driven, intelligence-fueled insights with a deep knowledge of the social ecosystem to ensure every partnership feels mathematically sound and emotionally resonant. This combination allows us to identify rising stars before they peak, maximizing the impact of every marketing dollar spent.
Managing a campaign across 13 diverse markets like Indonesia, Brazil, and Germany requires a “glocal” approach. How do you develop a shared global system that incorporates hyper-local intelligence, and what frameworks ensure that content remains culturally relevant without losing brand consistency across different continents?
To manage 13 markets—ranging from the high-energy digital landscapes of Brazil and the Philippines to the structured markets of Germany and Canada—we have to build a “glocal” framework that is both rigid in its values and flexible in its execution. We develop a shared global system that sets the core brand identity, but we empower local teams to inject their own hyper-local intelligence into every single activation. This ensures that while the overarching message remains consistent, the specific recipe or lifestyle tip a creator shares in Turkey feels vastly different and more relevant than one shared in the UK. It is a complex challenge of orchestration where we avoid a one-size-fits-all approach, instead allowing creators to respond to the local behaviors and tastes that define their specific region. This method ensures that the brand shows up in a way that feels credible to the local palate, no matter which continent the consumer is on.
Building “desire at scale” for household staples relies on embedding products authentically into local tastes and behaviors. What measurement models are most effective for tracking meaningful connections with audiences, and how do these metrics differ from standard reach or impressions in a creator-led strategy?
Standard reach and impressions only tell you how many eyes were on a post, but building “desire at scale” requires measurement models that track how deeply the brand is actually embedding into the local culture. We look for metrics that signify a meaningful connection, such as the sentiment behind comments or the way users proactively recreate recipes using Hellmann’s or Knorr in their own homes. It’s about measuring the transformation from a simple viewing to an active consumer behavior, moving beyond passive exposure to genuine brand affinity that drives long-term growth. By using tech-driven insights, we can see if these creator stories are traveling further and resonating more deeply than a traditional television ad ever could. We prioritize “meaningful connections” because they represent a consumer’s intent to actually bring the product into their lives, which is the ultimate goal for any food brand.
Maintaining consistency across thousands of creator partnerships requires a rigid yet agile deployment framework. How do you coordinate systems that allow for local flexibility while protecting the core brand identity, and what are the primary challenges when scaling these operations across multiple time zones?
Coordinating a strategy across continents requires an agile deployment framework that acts as a constant North Star for every agency partner and creator involved. We create clear, data-backed structures for how creators should represent the brands, yet we intentionally leave room for local behaviors and cultural context to take center stage. The primary challenge is avoiding the dilution of the brand message, which can often happen when scaling operations from a central hub to diverse markets like Pakistan, Argentina, or Mexico. By utilizing a dynamic team that works across multiple time zones, we ensure that every piece of content feels intentional and respects the realities of each specific market. This system allows us to orchestrate influencer activity at a massive scale while ensuring that creator partnerships are shaped by local realities rather than corporate mandates.
What is your forecast for the future of global influencer marketing in the consumer packaged goods industry?
My forecast is that we will see a complete departure from the “top-down” advertising model in favor of a permanent, creator-led “many-to-many” ecosystem where brands act as facilitators of community content. AI will become even more integrated into the process, not just for picking creators but for optimizing cultural relevance in real-time across hundreds of micro-markets simultaneously. For household names like Knorr and Hellmann’s, the future lies in becoming “social-first” by default, where the primary brand-building happens through millions of authentic, small-scale interactions rather than a single big-budget commercial. We are entering an era where a brand’s value is determined by its ability to move seamlessly through the digital feeds of its consumers, feeling less like a product and more like a natural part of their daily lifestyle. This evolution will require brands to be more agile and data-reliant than ever before to stay relevant in a rapidly changing social universe.
