Vaseline’s Marketing Renaissance: AI, Creators, and Cultural Relevance

Vaseline's resurgence is fueled by cultural trends, AI-driven content creation, and creator-led marketing. Strategic brand partnerships and product innovation drive growth and enhance customer engagement.

We have a system in place where we track metrics like buzz, view, shares and on-line discoverability. We track that on a quarterly basis. How do we relocate the needle on those metrics as we create projects? There’s a lot of interior conversation on how to make the campaign more powerful.

Data-Driven Insights and Cultural Relevance

We have both sides of your home together as one, so we’re satisfying once a week as a group in a forum we call the “society team,” where we have the development team sitting together with our companies and the need production teams to talk about the signals that are happening in culture and things that are obtaining a lot of traction for the brand as it connects to our social material. Those meetings are meant to be extremely action oriented.

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We took this area motion of individuals talking about making use of item, and in fact brought it into the labs where the science entered into the tale. It was playful, enjoyable and unusual, but we tested every one of these amazing hacks that consumers had for Vaseline jelly in the laboratory, and either validate that they are efficient and safe to use the item for, or they’re not effective whatsoever.

Lab Validation and Consumer Hacks

It’s exciting to think about just how much capacity is going to be liberated via making use of AI devices and workflows, and just how that produces even more space and time for you to be innovative and strategic and to assume even more expansively concerning the brand name.

AI’s Role in Content Creation

It showcased a various character of Vaseline as a brand name. It enabled those makers right into the discussion to co-create the brand name. And there were real, measurable outcomes connected to it: we had a 43% uplift in our sales, over 136 million views and enormous favorable belief of 87% with consumers.

KATE GODBOUT: Previously this year, there was a structural modification in the elegance and health team where we united end-to-end advertising. There’s one half of my group that’s concentrated on item innovation and portfolio method, however the beauty of it is they’re very closely working alongside our demand-creation group. We’ve brought professionals in who deeply comprehend PR, influencer, creator-led content, media approach, even more typical advertising imaginative and dealing with agencies.

Amusement residential property or brand name collaborations are everything about intentionality. How do you discover means to raise your brand name values and what the brand represents– the individuality, the accent you want to bring forward with points that are very culturally relevant– that you recognize will get a great deal of buzz, yet have a means to bring your product in to develop relevancy with customers in a fascinating method?

Strategic Brand Collaborations

That are the unforeseen and interesting companions that our neighborhood actually attaches with, and just how do we discover those partnerships to elevate the brand name discussion in an intriguing way? If you do the ideal partnerships at the best time, it can actually generate a whole lot of worth for the brand name and possibly bring in new consumers that may not have actually considered you in the past.

There’s one fifty percent of my team that’s focused on product innovation and profile method, but the beauty of it is they’re very carefully working along with our demand-creation group. It showcased a various personality of Vaseline as a brand name. It enabled those makers into the conversation to co-create the brand. Who are the unexpected and interesting companions that our neighborhood truly connects with, and exactly how do we locate those partnerships to raise the brand conversation in a fascinating means? If you do the ideal collaborations at the appropriate time, it can truly generate a lot of worth for the brand name and potentially bring in brand-new customers that could not have actually considered you previously.

Unilever had the intuition to make sure you have the appropriate people at and around the table to have these discussions and your agency competence embedded right into those discussions on an once a week basis. Often I question if we should be doing it greater than as soon as a week, because society relocations so fast. But it’s a truly terrific structure to have in area of making certain that signals are reading and the dots are being connected.

Unilever’s Social-First Approach

Execs attribute Vaseline’s renewal to a combination of item development that taps into fads in a transforming body treatment area and strong marketing that complies with Unilever’s intensifying focus on social-first and culturally-rooted initiatives. The brand placing itself into TikTok patterns around nighttime routines, is one current example.

After that we additionally have richer discussions about how to develop social-first technologies. Exactly how do we take all this excellent things we’re discovering in culture, all the things that customers are really getting in touch with, and after that feed that into the technology funnel to aid educate the names of the products, the textures or the layouts, what kind of web content strategy we intend to construct, just how we intend to bring it to life digitally and in-store.

“White Lotus” was led out of Southeast Asia markets with Gluta-Hya. They obtained a great deal of impressive traction out of it based on where “White Lotus” was recorded; it was truly pertinent to bring that item onward there.

Some of the low-value-added activities my team and I are hanging around on today, exactly how can we automate that work and after that maximize the moment to simply assume and fantasize regarding just how that manifests in various product implementations, methods and activations to get in touch with our neighborhood?

We likewise used the insight that customers are bewildered and pestered with details on social, and they’re having an actually difficult time differentiating what is real, what is risk-free and what works versus what’s simply hype.

Godbout signed up with Unilever in July after three years as CMO for Scholl’s Wellness Firm and previous stints with L’Oréal, Neutrogena and Mattel. Advertising and marketing Dive talked with the executive regarding the development of the advertising and marketing company, the acclaimed “Vaseline Verified” campaign and just how artificial intelligence will change how marketers work.

Vaseline Verified Campaign

We saw that there mored than three and a half million natural blog posts taking place in the social space, primarily on TikTok, however absolutely on Instagram as well, where individuals were making use of Vaseline for very unexpected purposes, in addition to expected purposes. There was this outstanding convenience of the product being showcased.

Vaseline was started more than 150 years back and has turned into a top entertainer of late for parent company Unilever, having seen an 11% worsened yearly development price over the last four years, ending up being a billion dollar brand and growing quantity greater than 10% in both 2024 and the first half of 2025. The brand likewise acts as a layout for the CPG giant’s portfolio.

“Specifically for a heritage brand, the concept of growing area is so important,” Godbout stated. “Deeply recognizing your customer on the most intimate level– their hopes, dreams, needs, barriers to utilizing item– past standard needs … actually recognizing their enthusiasm points, finding out how you can tap into that and providing actual utility in their lives.”

We’ve surrounded ourselves with actually strong company companions that are very innovative and consider that unlock. You get the amazing mind power of all these people that are taking a look at it from different angles … to really aid you mold and form the project with a lot of fantastic, creative minds all integrating with the same usual, lined up objective.

Vaseline earlier this month teamed with truth TV star Amanda Batula and her Loverboy drink brand, uniting loads that consisted of 3 containers of Loverboy cold tea and one container of Vaseline’s Glazed & Glisten Gel Oils. The brands marketed the partnership with an experiential event in Brooklyn and saw the packs sell out within 12 hours of launch.

We’re most definitely making use of [AI] in places, on a few of our material supply chain, but I’m additionally intentional regarding where the AI-driven material shows up with a brand name like Vaseline that has such deep trust and heritage out there.

How do you make use of AI to help supplement operations of points like content development to boost your work and supply a different point of view, yet not to necessarily take over what you’re doing?

Creator-Led Content Strategy

“We reapportioned our budget to lean a lot more right into creator-led web content, as Unilever calls it, leaning a lot more into creators, influencers, [user-generated content] to inform the brand story a little bit much more, versus only being led by the brand,” stated Kate Godbout, head of Vaseline brand name for The United States and Canada.