Managing the Saf-moment communications with care

Lesaffre is a French yeast manufacturer best known for its flagship product, Saf-Moment yeast. Our task is to manage digital communications for the Saf Club—a community of home bakers.

The brand is well known in the market; consumers buy it, recommend it, and trust its reputation. However, until recently, the brand had no website or social media presence, and all customer communication took place on third-party platforms.

Lesaffre has accumulated extensive knowledge about yeast, dough, and the baking process, which it’s eager to share with fellow enthusiasts. The company’s mission is expressed as:

To fulfill this mission, we needed to establish digital communication channels and attract an audience. The solution was Saf Club—a community for home bakers.

We chose recipes as the core content for Saf Club and created a multi-channel system to distribute it: a website, Instagram, and a YouTube channel. To drive traffic to these channels, we implemented SEO strategies, special projects, and contextual advertising.

Our goal was never to become just another series of inexpensive, popular, yet identical video recipes. Yeast dough, in particular, demands precision and patience. It’s not about saving time—yeast activation, kneading, and proofing require over an hour. This vision led to the concept of a cozy, bright kitchen where a woman lovingly bakes pastries for her family.

We produced ten videos, twenty step-by-step recipes with photos, and thirty images of finished dishes over five sessions.

The Saf-Moment website serves as the audience’s primary point of contact with the brand. Its goal is to provide valuable content created by experts, which formed the foundation of the website’s information architecture, design, and development.

A major section of the site, the blog, offers comprehensive information about Saf-Moment yeast, including a detailed «About the Yeast» page and articles on baked goods. Users can also engage directly by submitting questions via the «Ask the Club» form, which are then answered by specialists from the Baking Center.

If a recipe is too long to fit on the screen (as many are), the ingredients list scrolls alongside the user, staying visible on one side of the screen. This makes it easier to reference quantities required for each step.

Recipe steps are displayed in a grid layout—an uncommon choice for cooking websites, but one that helps users keep their place as they follow along.

A bright yet unobtrusive corporate color and logo complement the site’s simple, modern design. The website is ad-free and will remain so, with a focus solely on delivering quality content.

Instagram is the primary channel for Saf Club communications, connecting a community of people who value high-quality baking, the warmth of home, and a relaxed, unhurried lifestyle.

Yeast baking requires time and dedication, and our target audience consists of those who have both the patience and interest to master the details. This includes mostly young and middle-aged women, young men, husbands, and children—people who enjoy caring for their loved ones and treating them with homemade food. They value family time, prepare multiple dishes for dinner, and take pride in decorating their homes.

This is why we adopted a friendly tone of voice across all texts—we engage with customers about shared values, ask questions, and encourage open communication. We committed to community management by responding to every comment, asking follow-up questions, and promptly replying to DMs. This live interaction with subscribers is far more genuine than engagement tactics like «drop a bird emoji if you agree.»

To boost engagement and reach, we launched special projects for key occasions.

We launched three contests targeting different customer groups: mothers with children, homemakers hosting Easter, and women who take on the challenge of baking a traditional Easter cake (a process that can take up to six hours). Each contest was supported by an Instagram influencer with a similar audience.

Additionally, we organized a short quest with a printable postcard as a reward and introduced the most active participants to one another.

We also encouraged our social media followers to visit the website by posting recipe previews, with the full versions accessible via the profile link. In some cases, the website played a key role in the special project; for one of the Easter contests, participants needed to hunt for an artifact on the website to enter.