Ledo and Frikom are the largest ice cream producers in Croatia and Serbia, and their brand teams on Hypefy write their own briefs and pick their own creators.
Between April and August 2026, those teams worked with Hypefy on their ice cream campaigns. Each one sent a brief, approved the creators Hypefy proposed, and got the results back in one report, the way every Hypefy client does. Everything in between, including the creator contracts and payments, was Hypefy’s job.
When the season ended, Hypefy put the reports side by side and read the whole year as one data set. That reading showed the teams which creators to book again and what to change for 2027, and it’s what this case study is built on.
What Ledo and Frikom Get From Working on Hypefy
Two Freezers With One Owner
Ledo is based in Croatia and Frikom in Serbia, and since 2021 both have belonged to Nomad Foods, the group behind Birds Eye and iglo.
Croatia
SerbiaTheir ice creams include King, Macho, Kapri, Quattro, and Najlepše želje, which Frikom makes with Štark, the company behind the Najlepše želje chocolate.
The Question a Campaign Report Can’t Answer
A brand team judges a campaign by its own report. Say the report shows a combined reach of 1.2 million and a 4% engagement rate. Nobody can say whether 4% is good without something to compare it to.
In Serbia it is. In Hungary it isn’t, and the only way to tell the difference is a benchmark built from finished campaigns in the same market.
SerbiaIn Serbia it is.
HungaryIn Hungary it isn’t.The second gap sits between the teams. Four brand teams picking creators for the same freezer means four shortlists and four separate memories of who delivered. A creator one team passes on may be the one the next team needs, and there’s no way for that lesson to travel.
Both gaps close when every campaign sits on one platform and is measured the same way, which is what Hypefy’s year-end review did for Ledo and Frikom.
Ledo and Frikom’s first season on Hypefy, two Premium Mono campaigns in Serbia and Croatia in 2025, set the baseline. Their posts got 1.1 times the views of a typical post. It was a good first year, and it became the number everything in 2026 would be measured against.
Three Kinds of Campaign in One Season
Across the season, the four teams used Hypefy for three kinds of campaigns, and each kind answered a different question.
The first was the synchronized launch.
King introduced King Bliss and King Infinity in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina on the same day in April, with a local creator roster in each country. Macho followed twelve days later with its new flavors, and Quattro Layers did the same in May. Each time, one brand team took three countries live at once.
The second was the single-market push in Serbia.
The renewed Najlepše želje ice cream stick got nine creators in May, and Kapri’s summer campaign followed in June with eight. Both were in Serbia, the market that carried five of the year’s twelve campaigns.
The third was the market test. Quattro took Ledo and Frikom into Hungary in June with ten creators, their first Hypefy campaign in that market.
Each time, one brand team took three countries live at once.
Both were in Serbia, the market that carried five of the year’s twelve campaigns.
Quattro took Ledo and Frikom into Hungary in June with ten creators.
Alongside those, two of the brands booked three UGC campaigns for their own channels, and 32 creators produced 36 pieces of content for the brands to use themselves. Posting was optional, and the creators who posted anyway added a combined reach of 177,000.
Serbia and Bosnia Beat the Market Median
| Market | Campaigns | Creators | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate | Market median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Croatia | 3 | 38 | 3.38M | 101K | 3.8% | 3.9% |
| Serbia | 5 | 50 | 10.82M | 366K | 4.3% | 3.2% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 3 | 19 | 1.88M | 72.7K | 5.0% | 2.6% |
| Hungary | 1 | 10 | 705K | 18.1K | 3.0% | 4.7% |
| All markets | 12 | 117 | 16.78M | 558K | 4.2% |
Blue marks an engagement rate above the Hypefy market median.
Serbia carried five of the twelve campaigns and nearly two-thirds of the year’s impressions, and it finished above the market median on engagement. So did Bosnia and Herzegovina, where three campaigns came in at 5.0% against a 2.6% median.
Croatia finished within a tenth of a point of its median.
Hungary was new ground, and the one campaign there sets the baseline for 2027.
Three Reasons Any of This Worked
Three things made the year work, and the first one matters most.
1. Right Followers Beat Big Followers
Every campaign started with a brief, and Hypefy’s matching turned the brief into a shortlist of creators for the team to approve. Each team picked from the same database.
The year’s data says what the matching should favor.
Mid-size creators with a TikTok-first audience beat a typical post 60% of the time, against 30% for Instagram-first micro creators. The platform mattered too, because a creator’s audience doesn’t follow them to a second platform.
Semantic Selection, the matching every Hypefy client works with now, starts from that idea. It reads the brief, works out what the campaign is about and who it’s for, then looks at what creators publish, their posts, captions, and the themes they keep returning to, and proposes the ones that fit. Each name on the list comes with a short note on why it’s there.
- 1It reads the brief,
- 2works out what the campaign is about and who it’s for,
- 3then looks at what creators publish, their posts, captions, and the themes they keep returning to,
- 4and proposes the ones that fit.
2. One Platform for Four Markets
King, Macho, and Quattro each went live in three countries on the same day. Without one platform, that can mean a separate team in each market and three reports that can’t be compared with each other.
Each team approved its creators, Hypefy handled the contracts and payments, and every campaign came back in one report with the same metrics, so every creator they booked was measured the same way. From setup on Hypefy to launch, the 12 campaigns took under three days on average and never more than eight.
3. Every Number Came With a Benchmark
By the time of the review, Hypefy had finished 745 campaigns in Croatia, 336 in Serbia, 120 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 27 in Hungary. Each Ledo and Frikom campaign was measured against the median of those, and every post against a typical post of the same format in the same country.
CroatiaSerbiaBosnia and HerzegovinaHungaryThat’s how a 5.0% engagement rate in Bosnia reads as nearly double the market, and a 3.0% in Hungary reads as a starting point. Without the comparison, both are just numbers.
Bosnia and Herzegovinareads as nearly double the market
Hungaryreads as a starting point
Macho Showed Up in Three Markets at Once
Macho| Market | Creators | Combined reach | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate | Market median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serbia | 5 | 4.78M | 5.82M | 247K | 5.2% | 3.2% |
| Croatia | 11 | 1.04M | 1.34M | 59.6K | 5.7% | 3.9% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 7 | 779K | 918K | 44.6K | 5.7% | 2.6% |
Blue marks an engagement rate above the Hypefy market median.
Macho is one of the group’s ice cream brands, and its 2026 campaign went live in three markets with one hook.
The line was “Tough outside, soft inside.” The angle was new flavors for a young audience. The brief named the products and said exactly who the campaign was for, people aged 18 to 35.
Macho’s creators got 44% more views than they usually get on sponsored posts for other brands. In the other campaigns, creators performed at their usual level.
In Serbia, the median Macho post got 23.4x the views of a typical one, and the biggest post of the year came from this campaign. A creator with 843,000 TikTok followers posted a video that reached 1.8 million people, and the same creator’s Reel for the campaign reached 1.43 million. Another creator’s Reel drew 50,000 interactions at an 8.6% engagement rate.
Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia beat their medians as well. In both, TikTok brought more than four-fifths of the engagement, and the best TikTok in each market cleared 8%.
A brief that names its audience gives the matching something to aim at.
Bosnia Answered the Door for King
King| Market | Creators | Combined reach | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate | Market median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 5 | 402K | 524K | 22.0K | 5.5% | 2.6% |
| Serbia | 14 | 1.24M | 1.53M | 29.9K | 2.4% | 3.2% |
| Croatia | 14 | 721K | 911K | 14.0K | 1.9% | 3.9% |
Blue marks an engagement rate above the Hypefy market median.
King ice cream introduced two new products, King Bliss and King Infinity, in three markets on April 9.
Bosnia and Herzegovina was the smallest of the three, with five creators and six posts, and it produced the campaign’s best engagement rate. At 5.5%, it came in at more than double the market median, and TikTok did most of the work there. Two TikToks brought 13,700 of the campaign’s 22,000 engagements.
Two TikToksBosnia and HerzegovinaThe campaignBosnia and HerzegovinaSerbia gave King the year’s second-largest combined reach at 1.24 million, from fourteen creators.
Croatia’s campaign had fourteen creators, 26 posts, and a combined reach of 721,000, and those results go into the scored bench the teams will share in 2027.
The same launch got three different answers, which is the point of putting the markets side by side.
Quattro Took the Group Somewhere New
Quattro| Market | Creators | Combined reach | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate | Market median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serbia | 14 | 881K | 1.19M | 35.4K | 4.0% | 3.2% |
| Croatia | 13 | 927K | 1.13M | 27.8K | 3.0% | 3.9% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 7 | 284K | 442K | 6.1K | 2.2% | 2.6% |
| Hungary | 10 | 597K | 705K | 18.1K | 3.0% | 4.7% |
Blue marks an engagement rate above the Hypefy market median.
Quattro Layers went live in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina on May 8, and the Serbian campaign beat the market median at 4.0% with fourteen creators and 38 posts.
On June 1, Quattro went to Hungary with ten creators. Neither Ledo nor Frikom had worked with Hypefy there before.
The campaign had a combined reach of 597,000, and it sets the baseline for 2027. The post with the most engagements came from a mid-size creator with 94,000 TikTok followers, whose video drew a 7.5% engagement rate.
That creator’s videoHypefy market medianQuattro in HungaryQuattro now has a number in Hungary to build from.
Serbia Had Room for Two More
| Brand | Creators | Combined reach | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frikom × Štark Najlepše želje | 9 | 786K | 1.11M | 33.1K | 4.2% |
| Kapri | 8 | 827K | 1.17M | 20.8K | 2.5% |
Blue marks an engagement rate above Serbia’s 3.2% market median.
The Najlepše želje ice cream stick, which comes from Frikom’s partnership with Štark, was renewed in 2026, and nine creators posted about the new version.
The campaign finished at 4.2% against Serbia’s 3.2% median, and its eight TikToks produced 82% of the engagement from a third of the posts.
Kapri’s summer campaign had a combined reach of 827,000 with eight creators. Its biggest post was a Reel from a creator with 250,000 followers that reached 411,000 people on its own at a 3.8% engagement rate.
Five Things a Year of Data Showed
A creator’s audience doesn’t follow them to a second platform
A TikTok-first creator has more followers on TikTok than on Instagram. Their median TikTok got 54,000 views.
An Instagram-first creator’s median TikTok got 9,500, and 14 of their 33 TikToks stayed under 5,000. Those same creators’ Reels in the same campaigns got 58,000.
Mid-size TikTok-first creators were the safest bet
Mid-size creators have 50,000 to 150,000 followers. Among those who are TikTok-first, 60% beat a typical post in their market.
Among micro creators who are Instagram-first, 30% did.
Other food brands on Hypefy show the same pattern. In their best campaigns, 71% of creators were mid-size or larger and 50% were TikTok-first. In their weaker half, both figures were 33%.
Each campaign goal needs a different creator type
For reach, humorous creators got 2.8x a typical post’s views, while other creators got 1.6x.
For comments, cooking creators got 1.7x a typical post’s comments against 0.8x for the rest, and Instagram-first creators got 1.5x against 0.7x for TikTok-first.
Two of ten creators carry half the campaign
In a typical campaign of ten creators, two deliver half the views, likes, saves, and shares, and three deliver half the comments.
In 11 of the 13 campaigns the review covered, the creator who led on views didn’t lead on saves or comments. The other eight still bring 44% of the views and two-thirds of the comments.
Shares and saves travel with reach on TikTok
Call a TikTok a hit when it gets at least three times the creator’s usual views.
Across Hypefy’s creators, hits carry 34% more shares per view than the same creator’s usual posts.
Ledo and Frikom TikToks that were saved more often than a typical TikTok also got 50% more views, measured against the creator’s usual.
On Instagram Reels the same link doesn’t show yet. TikTok was 30% of the year’s posts but 41% of its impressions, with 5.8% engagement against 2.6% on Instagram.
Every Brand Left With Something to Repeat
| Brand | Campaigns | Markets | Creators | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| King | 3 | | 33 | 2.96M | 65.9K | 2.8% |
| Macho and Kapri | 4 | | 31 | 9.25M | 372K | 5.0% |
| Quattro | 4 | | 44 | 3.46M | 87.4K | 3.3% |
| Frikom × Štark Najlepše želje | 1 | | 9 | 1.11M | 33.1K | 4.2% |
Creators are counted per brand, and no creator worked for more than one of the four, so the rows add up to the 117 in total.
Macho and Kapri’s four campaigns brought in more than half the year’s impressions.
Every other brand left with a number of its own to beat next year, and the teams know which creators produced it.
Six Changes Built Into the 2027 Ledo and Frikom Campaigns
TikTok becomes the core of every brand’s 2027 plan, with Instagram in support, and six changes follow from the findings.
Each creator posts only where their audience is. TikTok-first creators can add a Reel, and Instagram-first creators post Reels only.
Humorous creators are booked for reach, cooking and Instagram-first creators for comments, and mid-size creators form the core of every roster.
Every creator on the roster gets an expected-views figure before the campaign starts.
Each market gets one scored shortlist that all the teams share.
Two or three lead creators post first to start the reach wave. The rest publish over the following days, and the remaining budget moves to whatever is winning, so a campaign no longer hinges on one post going viral.
Every brief gets a line people remember, a clear angle, named products, and a named audience, and shares and saves are tracked on every post.
The 2027 campaigns carry three tests, at no extra cost.
The first splits each campaign’s creators in half, with one half ending their post on a question to the audience, and counts comments per 1,000 views.
The second pits serving ideas, a dessert made with the ice cream, against lifestyle posts and counts saves per 1,000 views.
The third adds a carousel or a story set with a poll next to the Reel and counts views and interactions per creator.
How These Numbers Were Measured
Engagement rate is engagements divided by reach. The Hypefy market median is the median of all finished Hypefy campaigns in that market at the time of the review. That meant 745 campaigns in Croatia, 336 in Serbia, 120 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and 27 in Hungary. A typical post means the typical result for a post of the same format in the same country, and “x” figures compare a campaign’s or a creator’s posts with it.
A creator counts as beating a typical post when their posts exceed it while reaching at least 70% of their own usual views. A creator’s usual views are their median views on sponsored posts for other brands, with at least three such posts. Reach is the sum of each post’s reported reach, so it counts a person once for every post they saw. It’s shown per campaign only, and totals across campaigns are given in impressions.
Shares are counted only where creators reported them. UGC campaigns aren’t part of the 12 campaigns or of the engagement figures. The 2025 comparison uses the two Premium Mono campaigns in Serbia and Croatia from May and June 2025.
Hypefy’s review also covered one Frikom frozen food campaign, which this case study leaves out. The five findings, the typical-post comparisons, and the 2x figure were calculated across all 13 campaigns in the review.
Hypefy has finished more than 2,200 campaigns in 48 countries, all measured the way Ledo and Frikom’s were, so the next campaign in any of those markets has a median to beat.
