Drinks brand Lipton plans to expand its network of ‘social hubs’ into the Americas and Asia, following a successful two-year pilot.
The hubs feature a “market-specific” team of social media creators, producers and strategists, who produce “culturally resonant content at the speed and scale modern audiences and platforms demand”.
The hubs, which “operate as an extension of the brand’s in-house team”, have already been rolled out across France, Turkey, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands and Poland over the past two years, with a Saudi Arabia-based hub to launch in the coming months.
“At Lipton, we’re focused on earning attention in culture, not just delivering campaigns,” said Emrah Oner, digital marketing director at Lipton. “It’s no longer about control – it’s about participation. And creators are essential collaborators who shape how our brand shows up.”
The social hubs model “gives our teams clarity, but not constraint”, Oner added.
“It allows each market to respond to its audience in a way that feels right. As we continue to bring in new creators and producers, we’re building something that keeps pace with culture, rather than chasing it,” he said.
Lipton has been working with agency Billion Dollar Boy on the rollout, which sources and hires the local talent. The hubs are powered by the agency’s technology platform Companion, which features influencer discovery tools, audience analytics and content tracking, and is used by the likes of Heineken and Nespresso.
“As brands grow their spend, maintaining consistency while staying relevant to local audiences becomes increasingly complex,” said Ed East, Billion Dollar Boy’s global CEO and co-founder. “What brands need now is not just more creators and more content, but a system that allows them to operate in social as it exists today.
“We built social hubs to solve that. It responds directly to what global brands need now – a way to connect central strategy with the reality of how culture moves in each market.”
As well as providing “always-on content creation across markets and producing reactive content tied to local cultural moments”, Lipton’s social hubs have allowed the brand to support peak regional activations such as Lipton France’s sponsorship of music talent show The Voice; Lipton Poland’s new Green Strawberry product launch; and Lipton Turkey’s Tea Shake campaign, which drove a 648% increase in social media brand mentions.
“By placing regional creators at the centre of content production, we bring hyper-local intelligence and creator fluency into a connected global system,” East said. “That allows brands to operate with both control and agility. Lipton proves that when you build creator systems in a way that focuses on communities, not campaigns, you don’t have to choose between scale and relevance.”
Through last year, the Lipton hubs produced content that reached nearly half (48%) of 18 to 35-year-olds across TikTok and Instagram in each market, and earned a combined 924 million views across Instagram and TikTok in 2025 – a 281% year-on-year increase.
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