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How is a Giant Marketer Like Unilever Going to Spend Half of Its Media Budget on Creators?
00:24:28
Next in Media talked to Selina Sykes, Global Marketing Transformation Leader for Beauty and Wellbeing at Unilever, about the company's ambitious goal to allocate half of its media budget to creators. The conversation explored how a legacy CPG giant is reimagining its marketing model to stay relevant in a social-first world.
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- [00:00]
A
Looking to get more out of your YouTube advertising? With ViewPlanner, you can buy with total confidence and clarity. View Planner is a verified YouTube brand suitability and contextual targeting partner in the YouTube measurement program. Recognized by Google as a trusted independent leader in driving and measuring performance on YouTube, their advanced technology gives you a clear edge. Only with View Planner we're talking custom curated contextual collections, exclusive content strategies, transparent reporting and AI driven optimization to deliver real results. Don't let your budget go to waste. Partner with View Planner and experience the difference. Visit viewplanner.com now to unlock your full advertising potential on YouTube. That's v u e plash n e r.com this week on Next in Media, you will believe it. A brand exec who actually spoke in plain English about our company's media strategy. I recently caught up with Selena Sykes, who leads marketing transformation at Unilever Beauty and wellbeing about how she's tackling her brand's macro mission to allocate exactly half of its vast media budget to creators and the challenges inherent in trying to spend at that level in a category that doesn't exactly allow for standard ad units or metrics. Sykes also talks about whether Unilever wants to partner with creators to launch more brands and how she views beauty influencers pushing their own products. Super interesting stuff. So let's get started. Hi everybody. Welcome to Next in Media. I'm Mike Shields. My guest this week is Selena Sykes. She leads global transformation for beauty and well being at Unilever. Selena, thanks for being here.
- [01:27]
B
Oh, pleasure. Nice to see you. Thank you for having me.
- [01:31]
A
Excited to talk to you. We don't, you know, like we brands are sometimes don't want to do the show. So I'm, I'm excited to get into it. Everyone's afraid to talk to me. I don't know. I don't understand why. First of all, you've been at Unilever. I'm looking at your LinkedIn for 19 years, which I think is pretty cool. That's.
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B
I know.
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A
I look around like crazy. Yeah, yeah.
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B
It's what I say.
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A
Yeah. Because we're both in the twenties. But give, give us a little bit. Tell us about what that means, your role and what you're focused on these days.
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B
So now I think it like throughout my career I've always found myself in roles where we're like pushing the boundaries of what we need to be doing in marketing. We're kind of reimagining, we're reinventing models. And I think today things are Moving so fast that we have created a role for that within our beauty and wellbeing team that we're really looking at our marketing model. We're seeing the speed of transformation that we need to be able to deliver performance and drive our brand. And my job is really like spotting the new capabilities we need. It's about working out how we can codify them, how we can scale them and you know, make them like systemic changes in our business. So that's what I'm focused on in my job today.
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A
So I mean that sounds like super fun, but super challenging especially I would imagine. You mentioned the speed of change and that's true almost everywhere. But beauty feels like it has to be on the front lines of all this. I'm imagining you have to be extremely social first, depending on the age of the category. I guess you gotta have, you gotta work with influencers, many of whom have their own brands. But that changes all the time. Trends change. Like, how do you manage all that stuff?
- [03:03]
B
Yeah, I think, I think you've got to keep at your core the fundamentals of marketing. So like that's kind of where we start from. Like we've got some amazing billion dollar legacy brands. So we always try and think like consumer first. So we always stick with like what's going on with people, what do they care about, what are they passionate about, how are they living their lives, what do they desire? And we've got this term desire at scale. So we really always start everything from there and that kind of simplifies things for us. And then it's about building brands and building solutions, engage people today. And I think that's like you say, where some of this change comes in, where we have to meet people where they are in so many different situations and places. And the level of what consumers expect in terms of relevance is so much higher. So you know, meeting people's needs, really making sure our brands are relevant today is something that we're really investing in. Looking at our brands and saying, okay, who, who are brands really are, like really understanding what makes our brands relevant and authentic today. Like in 2025, in a contemporary way.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But also like, how are we going to show up in culture? You said in beauty, you know, obviously you need to be social first. I think so many brands need to be social first because that's the way the world is model. But yeah, for beauty, we need to think about how we're going to show up in a really credible, authentic way in like you say, in the way that culture is moving and the way that communities are moving today.
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A
We both, we both mentioned how young we both are, but I feel, I feel a paranoia almost of like, how can I keep up with the trends of a, how can I understand the media consumption of a 19 year old? It's so different and you have categories where you have to be like super in touch with trends. Is that, is it personally challenging for you? Do you have to almost delegate that to like a ton of different people that will help you there?
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B
I think as with everything, it's mindset. So I think you can be anyone if you've got the right mindset of curiosity, empathy, like this hunger to learn and you know, grow your mindset and grow your knowledge in whatever the topic.
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A
It's gotta be fun, not scary.
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B
Exactly. And I, you know, of course you need to be respectful of the communities you're serving and listen to them and not think you can put yourself completely in their shoes. But I think if you enter in with this, this open mind and there's things you can do like, you know, there's things you can do to really understand like what they're watching, what they're reading. With social media now, there's so many ways that we can really understand the conversations and the things that are driving the kind of zeitgeist that we probably couldn't before as marketers. We weren't in those conversations, but now we can be, we can watch them.
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A
And we can be part of. Yeah.
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B
So I think it's a balance. You have to be respectful, you have to have a understanding of the community. And you know, I know we'll probably talk about creators, but that's an example of how you can have an understanding of a community from a firsthand point of view. But I think as a marketeer, it's about that respect for who you're serving and that curiosity and that kind of growth mindset that you can bring to your job.
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A
So you, you led me there and it's an obvious one. But one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you guys in particular is you've been, like I said, very social forward, you know, deeply in the creator world already from up top, you were talking about spending half your media dollars on creators. I want to ask you how you do that. But first, what led you, you guys to that decision? Like, what's driving that?
- [06:30]
B
Yeah, I think it reflects a shift in how kind of society and marketing is moving as a whole, that kind of statement. And for us it's the, the realization that you need to be relevant Today, you need to create brands that are not just seen, but are shared by others and that are talked about by others.
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A
Right.
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B
So it's about inherently making your brand something that is. That can be part of people's lives and that people want to talk about and want to share with their.
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A
That is not just pushy messaging 100%.
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B
You need to start from that place. We often talk about how the models move from this, like one to many. You know, for a long time you could broadcast, and I know there's been models in between. Like, we talked a lot about, like performance marketing, personalization, but I think we've moved beyond that to this many to many models where you really need to harness communities, creators, consumers themselves to share and shape your brand as well as you, the marketeer or the brand manager that owns the brand. You need to think of that ecosystem and you've got to tap into it. And that's what we're acknowledging. And I think everyone can see how fast the creator economy is growing. And it's about how do we. How do we make our brands relevant to that and how do we leverage that opportunity that marketers have never had before? You know, there was always word of mouth. People were always, you know, that's always been.
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A
It was happening, just not in a way you could now wear control.
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B
Yeah. And we could never do that before, and that's why it's become a different opportunity. And you need to build an infrastructure to do that. Yeah.
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A
Now, all right, in terms of, like, pure execution, you know, like, if you're talking about the broadcast days, it's. It's. That's like the way you would buy media by a lot of rating points across a bunch of networks is so inherently different than spending half your money with creators. Right. But it seems inherently complicated. Like, how do you do that at scale? Can you do that at scale without, like, having to, you know, it feels like everything has to be so customer authentic, but then you want to be fast and spend a lot. Like, can you balance those two things?
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B
Yeah, I think, I think you can. And I don't think it has to be complicated. Like, I think it has to. You have to focus on what you want the outcomes to be, and you have to build models that deliver the outcomes rather than get too, you know, tied up in the inputs. But for us, you know, how we do that is really, as I say, we start with who are the people? You know, what, what. Who are the people that we serve? What do they need? What do they want to hear about? What Will they share? We then look at our brands and say, are our brands relevant enough for today? Are they showing up? Are they contemporary? Are they, we call it like young spirited, are they, are they really relevant today? And are they the ideas we're sharing good enough that people will want to share them with others? So we start from like that's what we almost control that understanding of our consumers and how we build our brands and then the model to get that at scale. That's like Unilever's mantra. Like we're a scale business, so anything we do, we have to build a scaled advantage. So it's about working with our partner agencies in markets, it's about working with tech enablement to really find the way that we're able to do that at scale and you know, tap into as we say, that amazing creator economy that is thriving.
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A
So how do you, when you talk about that scale infrastructure or that you'd like, do you, does that mean you're just going to work with a ton of creators? Do you, or is it like you have to zero in on the right micro influencers? How do you find the right folks?
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B
Yeah, I think, I think it's really important for us that just as, as much as our brands are authentic, the people we work with are authentic, you know, relatable, trustworthy. So we, we, we vet around brand affinity, we, we vet around how they work with their community and who the community they serve and you know, what can they add, how can they add value to that and how can they work with us? And then there are different types of creators. You know, they're kind of the more co founder type relationship where you're collaborating, you're working long term with partners. And then there's the, you know, the content that, the amount of content that you can, you know, really fuel your model with if you work with, you know, a lot of, you know, smaller creators. So there's opportunities across the spectrum that we want to tap into.
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A
So tell me more about the, I think what with the co founder thing, you hear this from, from creators like they would, they would like to not do. The big ones don't want to do a million one off deals. Right. They like to have partnerships that are long term. What do those look like? Are you doing, are those a couple a year? A ton of them? I guess it depends on the brand and the category.
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B
It depends on the brand and the category, absolutely. But like generally what is interesting about those, those opportunities is it's, it's, it's a true collaboration. It's about kind of you, you're almost tapping into their human ip. You're tapping into, you know, their values, their creative vision. So yeah, you have to obviously make sure that that's really authentically aligned. Often we look at creators that we've worked with before that have really performed well and that have like a deeper level passion for the brand or understanding of the communities that we're trying to serve. So that's, that's a good way to start those relationships. And then, yeah, I think a lot of those creators are moving away from kind of transactional to these more long term, long term relationships. So I think that's a really good opportunity.
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A
Now, one thing we mentioned earlier, the. You've seen a lot of creators launch their own brands in beauty. The famous ones are like Mr. Beast with his candy bars and stuff. I've heard mixed things more recently that that's kind of peaking that maybe you're going to see more big, big brands collaborate on new brands with a creator, if that makes sense. Where do you, where do you see that right now? Is there, is that calming down or is it still vibrant?
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B
I think it comes back to what I was just saying about this like human ip. Like if you have a strong sense of what you as a creator stand for, is this very. It's the same as marketing. You know, they're brands in themselves. So like what you stand for and what you can bring and then you execute that in a really great way, then you can really form an amazing platform. And that's what, you know, with legacy brands like ours, I think we can also tap into that opportunity, but in a different way. You know, like I say, we're a scale, a scale model. So we need to think of different ones. I can give you a great example of where we've done this with Vaseline. So have you seen the Vaseline Verified campaign?
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A
I have not. I don't.
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B
You're probably the one.
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A
I usually lie about these things.
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B
Then you're probably the one person in the world that hasn't seen it. So what we did with Vaseline is, you know, Vaseline is 150 year old brand. It's one of our oldest brands.
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A
Yes.
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B
And you think like, you know, how can this brand be like the, you know, the epitome of social first in terms of how it markets itself. But actually we really did exactly what you said and we lent into the creators and we let into what they, what the brand meant for them and their own creative vision and their own creative direction in the form of Vaseline hair. So we were finding that there were 3.5 million organic uses of Vaseline on the web that everyone.
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A
So this was happening already. Nothing.
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B
You know, everything from polishing your handbag, your leather in your handbag, to putting on your skin to help your perfume last longer, which I personally love, you know, a range of them. And it's quite funny because the more you talk to people, you go and talk to some of your friends, everyone will have their Vaseline hat and these.
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A
Will be these secret things that they're.
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B
Exactly. And these will be. And sometimes not secret. They were like, you know, a family law that's been, you know, handed down from my grandmother. So these were being talked about. This conversation was happening, you know, with or without us. And what we did that I think was so powerful, which, which is exactly what you're talking about. It's about this co founding is we work with the creators and we said okay, like bring us your ideas. You know, it really, because it really aligned with the brand because it was about petroleum jelly, which is our like hero ski and Vaseline. And we were able to create a huge campaign called Vaseline Verified where we verified their hat with our own scientists in the lab.
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A
Oh, that's cool.
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B
And it's a huge campaign. It's driven double digit growth on Vaseline. We won a titanium can lion. We also won the Grand Prix for the social and creator. So you know, not that it's about the awards, but it's about like that being recognized as truly harnessing power of creators is a great example.
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A
Yeah. Innovative and really.
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B
Exactly. And I think it was, it was genuinely creator and community led. Like we were led by them and we were working with, with a massive at scale group of creators, you know, not just one to create that.
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A
And you get, you're, you're expanding that. You're highlighting the expanded use of the category and growing it which is, which.
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B
Has been around forever even to like innovation ideas. So yeah, huge, huge opportunities. Yeah.
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A
Okay, let's talk about, you know, we're in this outcomes obsessed era. Right. So many of the things you're talking about maybe don't always lead to an immediate purchase. Maybe they do. But where do you think, where do things stand with you and your brands with social commerce? You know, like it's, it was sort of slow to take hold in the U.S. tikTok shop has really popped in the last year. That's of course up in the air. Where, where are you? Where are you guys right now?
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B
So we're a global Business. So we obviously have business in markets where social commerce is like the leading kind of player when it comes to retail. So we really see how that model can work. I think I've actually worked a lot of my career, I've been involved in E commerce that as a, as a channel itself, how it's now like diversifying and changing. It's not just one channel of E commerce. There's so many different ways you can buy using digital. And I think social commerce is another key one that again, if you think about the trust in, in the creators, you know, whether they're a big creator or someone who's more hyper local and you think about them creating content that really is meaningful to you and relevant to you. And if you make that shoppable, you're just really making that journey seamless. And it makes total sense. And the whole like TikTok made me buy it is, that is the catchphrase that encompasses that journey. But ultimately I think it's, it's going to be a key channel. It is a key channel today, it will be a key channel in the future. It's obviously like any shopping channel, you need to think about all the components to make sure it's done in a responsible way, in a way that actually drives return on investment and drives your business. Affiliates and affiliate programs are something that we're really investing, you know, making sure you get that flywheel of growth. So you get affiliates that are creating content that's converting into sale and that's inspiring a network of other affiliates to do the same because you know, this, this network learn of each other. So, so there's huge opportunities and you know, obviously finding the right products to sell through that channel. Again, just like any sales channel, you need to think about your portfolio, your, you know, your mechanism for sale.
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A
Do you need to almost. I wonder if there's a restraint you need to show. Like I don't know if every creator should be a social commerce vehicle or not. Like is it something you kind of have to be pick your spots with?
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B
Yeah, I think what we find is where again different. I don't really believe in the funnel because I feel like the funnel's collapsing. But I do know what you mean. There's different types of content that will be, that will be better placed to offer a conversion opportunity than others. But yeah, sometimes you can do all of it if it's the right piece of content and the right creator. Sometimes you split it up and you have different jobs to be done for different pieces of content. But I Think either way is fine. I don't know if everything would ever become shoppable in the kind of content creation that billions of pieces of content.
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A
Right, right. Okay, we're nearly 17 minutes in and we haven't talked about AI so we have to jump in there.
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B
That's a new record for a conversation.
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A
There's like three or four different. Yes, there's like three or four different angles, of course, but where are you? I want to ask about media and creators. What's going on with. With how much are you pushing? I'm sure you're using AI with your creative to some degree. How much of. But like I guess the. The dream is, wouldn't it be amazing if we create 3,000 images for every campaign, for every individual using generative AI? Like where are you in the continuum of where people think it's going to go?
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B
I think we got started early in that journey and we've actually on the AI can be used for all parts of the marketing ecosystem. I'm quite an imaginative person and I like to think about technology truly as just something that can unlock your idea and make it real. And the speed at which technology is. Is moving. I think there's huge opportunity across the marketing ecosystem. What we found though is it's critical that you think about the human interaction. It's critical that as well as thinking about the technology, you think about the talent, you think about their skills, you think about the way of working. All of that is like reimagined when you introduce technology like this. So where we are. Your specific question was around content. Content's like one of the first areas that we saw as an opportunity. Everyone's having fun with the gen AI tools. Like, I don't know if you've used nano banana. Like there's so much coming out all the time. What we did quite early was we started building an infrastructure where we could do this. It's like a content supply chain almost. So how can we go from input to high quality content at scale? That was the goal. And how can we use gen AI as part of that? So we built out this content supply chain. We've now got AI studios in each of our markets and we're using that to, as I say, drive the quality of our content, but also drive the volume and efficiency of our content.
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A
So if I'm hearing you right, though it sounds like quality is important. You're not, correct me if I'm wrong. You're not just letting the machines run wild and nobody's look, no one's Paying attention to what's getting put out there.
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B
Yeah, of course not like I, as I say like what we've really learned is the how you, it's like the, the, the AI plus the human plus the humanity is what gets the great results ultimately when it comes to content and creative. You know, of course there's a brand safety, there's, you know, a lot that we need to check for. You can program a lot of that into the tools. It can actually do a really good job at checking things. But of course you've got human oversight, of course you've got human orchestration on that stage. But if you come back to the creativity you really need to have the opportunity for the like for the humans to be in the loop, you know, humans to be engaged in that model. And what we're finding where what I'm really excited about is it shows how you can augment human talent, like really level up. I, I always say to people that's what ChatGPT does for all of us is like it augments our own capability and just makes us better.
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A
So you didn't get rid of all the creative executives and no one, it makes everything, it's just making those people better and smarter.
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B
It makes you better, it makes you quicker at some tasks. That's how I'd say it. And it's about finding what those are and it's about unleashing the potential of the path of the human as what by using the technology.
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A
All right, that's encouraging. Now what about the other, the other end of the spectrum? You've seen a lot of traction with AI media buying optimization tools, especially from Meta and Google. Are you, are you work, are you using those? Because that seems to be powerful but requires maybe a little bit of a lack of control or not the transparency that some, some trade offs and transparency. You guys there yet?
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B
I think, as I said, I think AI has applications across the marketing kind of work, end to end marketing model. Definitely in media. I think ultimately when we, we look at, when we look at using AI we want to get more transparency, more opportunities for dynamic optimization, more opportunities for quality. So I think we're using it to enhance rather than kind of seeing the same trade offs in that.
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A
Do you think we're all going to be just using our agents to shop for all our stuff and no one's going to do this anymore?
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B
I think Agentic shopping is going to be huge. I think it's going to be a channel. Yeah. I think you see how much agentic has changed search you See how much it's changed search and I think for sure, really quickly, really quickly. Because you don't, you don't move to LLM search and go back to old search. You don't go back to clicking on hyperlinks. So you don't.
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A
Right. It feels archaic all of a sudden.
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B
Once you've tried it, you're like, this is a better search experience. Shopping will become integrated into that. Already starting to. And doesn't that take the fun away.
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A
And all this, like, you know, serendipity.
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B
One new shopping channel isn't going to take away from the others. So my example is, you know, when supermarkets came in, that was a huge, huge innovation in shopping. Oh, my gosh. I can go to one shop.
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A
Sure.
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B
And have my meat and my stuff.
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A
In one place, right?
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B
Yeah. And. Or even my, like pharmacy stuff and get my painkillers while I'm getting my steak. That used to be. You'd go to. It hasn't replaced it. You know, people still like going to the pharmacist. People want to go to their butcher, People want to go to their green grocery. So it's. I don't think it will replace. I think it will complement and it will become part of new shopping channel that we'll have to manage for. But in some instances, agentic shopping will be useful for people and it's possible.
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A
All right, all right. That, that's encouraging as well. Like that you, you've, you've, you've.
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B
I like how I'm encouraging.
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A
You said that we're all going to get fired. Yeah. Yes. You know, you've taken away the fear for a lot of things. For me, this is good. Last thing. Just like, give me something. What are you excited about for the rest of the year? Either with something you're working on or something you're looking forward to in the industry. Like, what's kind of top of mind for you?
- [23:20]
B
Oh, that's a great question. I think I'm gonna add two things. I think it's the two things we've talked about. I think I'm hugely passionate about AI and how it can enhance human potential. So I'm really excited about scaling some of those opportunities in Unilever and building some of those opportunities for our brands and for our people in our business. I'm really excited about that. And then I'm really excited about the creators because it's just, there's just so much creativity and passion for our brands that exist. Like the Vaseline example that if we really bring show up in a really authentic way as brands we can tap into and I think we can do some amazing things.
- [24:02]
A
All right, that's pretty hopeful. Note to end on we're not all going to get fired. That's inspiring. Selena, awesome conversation. Let's chat again down the road.
- [24:09]
B
Yeah. Lovely to speak to you. Thanks, Michael.
- [24:11]
A
Thanks again to my guests this week, Unilever, Selena Sykes and my partners at View Planner. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next time for more on what's Next in Media. Thanks for listening.