BEL is home to some of the world’s best-known and highly regarded brands including The Laughing Cow, Babybel, Boursin, Kiri, Maredsous, Nurishh, GoGoSqueeze and a host of other local brands. BEL’s impressive portfolio of products is growing as it continues to stay ahead of changing consumer preferences.
In recent years, BEL has added two important categories to its business – plant-based cheese alternatives and fruit with the acquisition of well-known brands Materne, GoGoSqueeze and Nurishh. This marks a strategically important expansion of the BEL OOH portfolio alongside its core dairy product range.
BEL and Pubmarket! have come a long way together since the partnership was established in 2012. Having worked as the leading marketing and communications agency for BEL’s Belgian business, Pubmarket! soon started working with BEL Foodservice France, taking care of all major communications activities for the Out-of-home (OOH) market in France.
Today, as mentioned, we are the preferred partner to the global BEL OOH division. We play a key role in supporting the business to achieve its global growth aims via strategic, creative and digital communications activities. We position BEL as the leading provider of cheese, plant-based cheese alternatives and fruit products for the foodservice industry, putting its brands and products in the spotlight amongst its key chef and foodservice operator target audiences worldwide.
Timeline: BEL OOH and Pubmarket! partnership
2012: Proud foodservice partner to BEL OOH Belgium
Pubmarket! has been supporting the Belgian BEL OOH division for many years with creative communications materials that include designs for exhibition panels, brochures, ads, web banners and many more assets.
Over the years, we have also developed multiple brand activations. A recent example is the Babybel promotion campaign in collaboration with Disney at the Lunch Garden restaurant chain in Belgium.
2017: Pubmarket! is also active in France thanks to Mini Babybel®
Our partnership with BEL France Foodservice started since 2017. Main objective is to build awareness of BEL’s priority channels via engaging communication campaigns and resources that are targeted at foodservice operators and consumers.
We focus on the education, elderly and commercial channels, defining the individual approach for each channel and developing relevant activation materials and tools. We take a creative approach to decide on a relevant theme before developing several materials such as inspirational recipe booklets, posters, interviews and testimonials from local chefs, recipe development, photo shoots and brochure creation. We also develop bonus materials and rewards for individual audiences like chefs, students and the BEL sales reps where relevant.
They also include resources like: ads, web banners, leaflets, exhibition stands, packaging designs, POS materials, videos, interviews, websites ... in short, all creative and digital elements as part of a full communications suite. We have built up strong expertise in the French foodservice market over the years, thanks to this close collaboration.
2020: Belinspirations.fr – launching the digital website
In 2020, Pubmarket! developed 'belinspirations.fr', a French website with dedicated content for chefs and operators in the restaurant industry. The attractive site was built dynamically with chef testimonials, videos, stylish photography and inspiring recipes.
2020: Belinspirations.fr – launching the digital website
Our longstanding collaboration with BEL Belgium and BEL France and our wealth of expertise in the foodservice sector, led to us being given the great opportunity to start working with the Global Food Service Marketing Director, who leads the “BEL OOH Global division” at BEL Group.
Since 2020, we are proud to provide all communications and marketing materials for BEL OOH worldwide.
This includes a full suite of communications assets from the creation of a global presentation and video supporting the global marketing strategy to the development of an online internal hub that centralises all local and global communications materials and makes them available to all local teams. In addition, the development of ‘starter kits’ that allow regional marketers to build an even stronger channel in their local foodservice markets are part of the assets.
Overall, we are very pleased to be the partner of choice, providing all communications assets to support the BEL OOH global strategy and growth targets.
BEL has built ambitious strategic plans for the next three years based on four key pillars. Each of these so-called ‘Big Bets’ includes an online platform developed by Pubmarket!, which is home to a wealth of marketing and communications assets to allow all BEL OOH regions to further build the brand territory of the iconic BEL brands in their local markets.
Each platform acts as a repository of highly relevant information including up-to-date insights and useful resources. It acts as a guide offering ‘go-to-market’ advice and best practices to follow to ensure the BEL OOH marketing and sales experts across the globe have everything they need to win the hearts of current and future BEL OOH customers.
This includes current market- and consumer-based research, interviews with key people in the industry, photo shoots and interviews with star chefs recipe booklets and more.
Specially-created brand books and extensive communications packs offer online and offline tools as well as POS materials for each big bet and for the foodservice channels targeted. This also led to the creation of dedicated OOH brand equity for chefs and foodservice operators. ‘Boursin® Professional’ and ‘The Laughing Cow® Professional’ are two such examples.
The impressive big bet platforms and accompanying brand books are great examples of Pubmarket's strategic, creative and digital foodservice know-how. They are key to ensuring BEL Foodservice’s global expansion continues at pace.
2023: Digital transformation
We are truly honoured to be the chosen ‘digital communications agency’ to lead BEL OOH’s digital transformation.
Before starting the digital transformation roadmap, Pubmarket! developed – in close collaboration with the BEL OOH - a digital strategic plan based on the ambition of BEL OOH to become the thought leader in OOH industry and to get chef consideration on BEL OOH brands and products around the world. The plan evoked the need to develop a digital ecosystem that will connect BEL OOH with chefs, operators, wholesalers and chains globally.
We are currently developing this new digital platform, comprising a future-proof global BEL OOH website that will allow the digital execution and follow-up of all BEL OOH strategic communication activities in every region of the world.
This extensive project required us to conduct research and auditing as a first step before developing the website. Following its completion, we will also conduct audits of other existing BEL websites, as well as define the digital customer journey, develop a suitable content strategy and integrate technical features like marketing set up and automation, data tracking and e-commerce functionality.
Overall, it’s a unique project that crowns our loyal and long-standing collaboration with BEL OOH.
Dedicated team
Pubmarket! is guiding all of these projects from A to Z with a dedicated team of food strategists, art directors, graphic designers, content creators and copywriters, digital and IT specialists and account managers.
We are very proud to contribute to the growth of the fantastic BEL OOH division via our well-established partnership.
We very much enjoy being part of the BEL OOH team and being involved in many of the activities at a global level, right down to the development and creation of new product communications assets.
We look forward to continuing our partnership and watching BEL OOH go from strength to strength with a growing portfolio of well established brands and products that are right on trend with what consumers want today.
In short, our partnership continues with more impactful initiatives that are helping BEL OOH to realise its growth ambitions.
With special thanks to Sylvain Marchesson, Global Food Service Marketing Director BEL OOH.