Vaseline has always been a household name, just not a very sexy one. The Unilever-owned brand, known for its petroleum jelly with occlusive healing properties, has 155 years of heritage and brand recognition that startups and indie brands dream of.
“This is a brand that is present in half of the households on the planet,” says Nathalia Amadeu, global brand director of Vaseline. “People knew it existed and bought [it] by habit.” But what Vaseline wanted was cultural relevance and desirability, particularly among Gen Z, to drive growth and broaden its appeal.
It’s a challenge most heritage brands face today, one particularly present in beauty, a category that has become overly crowded with newcomers. Micro-trends driven by algorithmic trend cycles explode and fade at warp speed. Challenger brands and digital natives are often catnip for younger consumers, known for their low brand loyalty and desire for discovery. For heritage brands, creating cultural relevance is essential to capturing younger consumers, ensuring continued growth and long-term brand value.
Amadeu joined Vaseline as global brand director from Unilever’s Dove in January 2025, tasked with leading an evolution that was already years underway: grow the brand across generations and expand its relevance in beauty culture. Vaseline was more associated with the medicine cabinet than innovative beauty, particularly among younger generations. But, the team noticed that online, Vaseline was appearing in unexpected contexts and use cases.
From this, the Vaseline Verified campaign was born. Over 3.5 million organic social posts existed online depicting the various uses, or hacks, of Vaseline jelly.
These ranged from using the jelly for a better shave and an easier nail polish application, to applying it on a camera lens to create a blurred effect. (Like many things on the internet, some hacks could be harmful if left unchecked, like eating the jelly for better skin or using it to whiten teeth.)
Vaseline Verified turned this into a social-first campaign, with Unilever scientists testing hundreds of viral hacks, awarding Vaseline Verified status to the ones that worked and debunking the ones that didn’t. The campaign garnered over 136 million social views in the first month and became one of Unilever’s most awarded campaigns in history — securing 14 awards at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, including a Titanium Lion and two Grands Prix.
With the help of this social-first marketing, Vaseline has experienced double-digit growth in the past three consecutive years, and maintained strong momentum in the first half of 2026. It’s now one of Unilever’s Power Brands, the core 30 brands that generate around 75% of Unilever’s turnover.
But for Amadeu, success extends beyond the metrics. “I feel most proud of how we connected with new audiences, with younger generations, by paying attention to culture, and by joining the conversations that were existing there,” she says.
The latest YouGov UK data found Vaseline to be the top-growing brand in consideration among younger consumers, as well as the third most-considered personal care brand among Gen Z. Its unprecedented growth shows the impact of its strategy to engineer cultural relevance at scale.
Its success points to the power of heritage brands surrendering control of their narratives. “We stopped thinking, what is the message that the brand wants to tell, and started listening to the message that people were already [telling],” Amadeu says. “We stopped controlling. We understood that controlling was just increasing the risk of irrelevance.”
This ability to listen plays an integral role in building cultural relevance today. “I think we have to stop assuming that the brand has all the answers and start paying attention to the people who use it every day,” she adds. “We don’t know more or better than them.”
A new way to develop products
This approach also extended to Vaseline’s product development. In April 2026, it launched Vaseline Originals, a first-of-its-kind product line inspired by some of the most popular hacks.
This created an avenue for the brand to “co-author” products with its community. Vaseline found the originators of the hacks, named them Vaseline OGs, and then proceeded to turn those hacks into physical products.
The creators even received a percentage of product sales, underscoring Vaseline’s commitment to creator-led innovation. “When we tell our communities that we [want to] open the space for them to be co-authors, co-owners of this brand, that means giving back part of the value that we create together,” Amadeu says.
“This is a recognition of the value they create with us.”
Vaseline Originals piloted with two products inspired by the hacks of beauty creators Jen Chae (@frmheadtotoe) and Lauren Luke (@laurenluke_panacea81). Chae’s hack, using the jelly to style her eyebrows, inspired the Brow Tamer Jelly, and Luke’s hack, using the jelly as a primer, inspired the All-In-One Primer & Highlighter Jelly.
The products launched on TikTok Shop in Thailand, the market of choice due to its highly engaged beauty communities and appetite for social commerce, selling out within minutes.
It has since rolled out across other markets, including Singapore and the Philippines, with plans to expand to the West. “Vaseline Originals [has become] a platform,” says Amadeu. “It was not a one-off campaign. It represents a model of how we can identify and develop innovation.”
Its success highlights the impact of letting consumer ideas lead product development and marketing more broadly. For Amadeu, this “co-authoring” helped unlock loyalty, trust, and brand love.
“Previously, we had a starting point. We had a message that we wanted to communicate, followed by the hope that it would resonate.
Now, we start with a message that is already validated by culture, and then we ask, how can the brand join the conversation? How can the brand add value to that?”
Adding value is key. Vaseline Originals didn’t just turn hacks into products: it added utility and improved the overall experience. “It’s something that people are already doing, now facilitated and improved by the brand. It was the click of ‘I’m doing it, I love it, and now the brand is improving the experience I wanted.’”
This added value points to Vaseline’s understanding of the role brands play today. “Too often brands try to create culture. When actually, the most powerful ideas are usually already happening in culture. Our job is to notice them, and then add value to that,” says Amadeu.
For brands looking to adopt a similar approach, there are many downstream considerations. This model impacts research and development (R&D), supply chain, legal, and even finance. As Amadeu notes, “it requires a new operating model. It changes everything.”
Beyond operational considerations, the approach also carries risk, given the cost and length of product development cycles. A small but loud cohort can make consumer insight appear more widespread than it is, and a trend may have come and gone before a consumer-led innovation makes it to market.
It’s why identifying the right consumer insight is critical for success. “I think the success of Originals comes not from the product idea, but because it was rooted in enduring behavior,” she adds.
“While many launches within the market are following trends that may spike for a week, [it] doesn’t have meaning behind [it],” Amadeu continues. “The insight behind Vaseline Originals was one that we have seen repeated across communities, [remixed] across countries, and traveling across the globe… It gives us reassurance — this resonates, this is validated.”
How does a brand identify an enduring behavior? For Amadeu, it goes beyond understanding culture. It requires cultural fluency. “You need to speak their language. You need to really understand its rituals, its jokes, its behaviors, and the unspoken truths that are often overlooked,” she says. “This is the difference. Understanding culture tells [you] what is happening, but cultural fluency helps you belong.”
This fluency enabled Vaseline to build an authentic brand platform within its running community, reinforcing its relevance as a heritage brand today. Vaseline identified a widespread hack among runners: the use of its petroleum jelly to prevent chafing.
Used for decades by runners across the globe, the behavior was so ubiquitous that Amadeu once described it as “hiding in plain sight”. This insight became the foundation of the global campaign, The Nipples Sponsorship, which included a partnership with the TCS 2026 London Marathon.
As the Official Nipple Protector, Vaseline supported over 100,000 runners at ‘Nips Stops’ across the marathon route.
Cultural fluency also informed the appointment of Blackpink’s Jennie as Vaseline’s global ambassador. Celebrity ambassadorships are ubiquitous within the beauty industry, but for Vaseline, this was a first. “If Vaseline wants to remain relevant to the next generation, we need to be in conversation with culture, not broadcasting it,” says Amadeu. “When we chose Jennie, it’s because she was shaping culture in real time.”
The move underscores a fundamental shift in the relationship between brands and culture today. “Most of its history, Vaseline spoke, and culture listened,” Amadeu says. “Today, culture speaks, and the brand has to earn the right to participate.”
Correction: This article was updated to correct the number of Cannes Lions awards and the year Vaseline Originals was launched. (25/9/26)