Working as Van Leeuwen Ice Cream’s social media manager was more to me than just sharing really tasty, high quality artisanal ice cream on Instagram. I was invested in creating a community shaping experience; sharing a product from the love of its founders’ conception and ideation, to the mouths, dinner parties, play dates and first dates of its tasters-turned beloved customers.
The goal in growing Van Leeuwen’s brand experience and building real brand-consumer relationships, was to communicate that Van Leeuwen is more than a polished and modern ice cream brand to share with your friends, but also one you can feel good about since they source the best ingredients from local, fare-trade or sustainable producers from around the globe.
By creating and sharing original social assets, copy and carefully curated images from customers using audience feedback, I was able to grow Van Leeuwen’s Instagram following from 15,000 to 35,000 in under a year.
And while I did spend my time eating a whole lotta’ vegan ice-cream, I also spent my days arranging press partnerships, activating influencer cross-collaborations, sharing product launches and reveals across social media platforms and creating new strategy from social media analytics.
Be prepared to crave some ice cream as I share some of my contributions below 
And check out these fun press partnerships that include some of my contributions:
- Refinery29 came by Van Leeuwen HQ for a Facebook Live ice cream tutorial
- Insider shared their love for Van Leeuwen’s ice cream too with a showcase of our tastiest video content
- Food Network showed their appreciation for both Van Leeuwen’s ice cream and the content we created, sharing some of the in-house Instagram videos we made in their own video story here.
Chelsea Olle 