A 153-year-old petroleum jelly brand had one of the most-awarded marketing years on record.
Vaseline.
No celebrity face.
No Super Bowl spot.
They stopped writing their own copy.
Here's what happened.
In early 2022, two skincare creators on TikTok started posting about a bedtime ritual where you smear a thick layer of Vaseline on your face to lock in moisture. They called it "slugging."
Vaseline didn't start the trend.
They didn't sponsor it.
They didn't know about it for weeks.
(Which is a sentence I find genuinely funny. A multi-billion-dollar Unilever brand, scrolling TikTok like the rest of us, going "wait, what are they doing?")
The Unilever exec who runs influencer for the brand, watched it happen and said one sentence that turned into the whole strategy:
"We need to lean into the love that is already happening."
For decades, Vaseline's voice had been fine.
Capable.
Remedy.
Soothes.
Heals.
Meanwhile their actual customers were on TikTok calling it slugging, posting before-and-afters at 2am, getting into mild arguments about whether you should slug over moisturizer or under it.
Different vocab. Different rhythm. Different energy entirely.
Vaseline borrowed it.
3 years later, that instinct became Vaseline Verified.
The team identified 6,000+ user-generated hacks online and tested them in their own lab. The hacks that worked got a "Vaseline Verified" seal. The myths got a public "It's Not What You Think" rebuttal on a billboard in Piccadilly Circus.
(Yes, that myth. Heritage brand. 153 years old. Big London billboard. Making the joke directly.)
136M social views in three months.
13.9% retail sales lift.
9 Cannes Lions.
AdAge's 2026 Social Campaign of the Year.
Note what didn't happen.
(Atleast... not to my knowledge)
Nobody workshopped a tagline.
Nobody ran a positioning offsite.
Nobody at Unilever spent a Tuesday afternoon arguing about whether "Wonder Jelly" sounded "us enough."
The headlines were already out there. The brand's job was to listen.
Here's the move.
Before I write a single line of positioning for a firm, I try to read everything their clients have already written about them. Not just the testimonials. (The testimonials, frankly, are the worst of it. Clients write testimonials in performance mode.)
I want the unperformed stuff, if I can get my hands on it.
Renewal emails.
Intake call notes.
Meeting transcripts.
Thank-you threads.
The "reasons we chose you" paragraph from a proposal-decision email.
The exit conversation from the client who left.
It's the only part of the engagement nobody ever argues with. The moment a firm hears its own clients' words read back, the room goes quiet.
Recently, an insurance agency owner sent me a folder of client feedback last year as part of an audit.
Mid-market commercial P&C.
His homepage described the agency as "an innovative risk management approach delivering responsive, tailored coverage solutions."
Adjectives every commercial brokerage in his market also uses.
In the file was a renewal note from a manufacturing client.
5th year together. One line:
"You guys are the only ones who explain what I'm signing before you make me sign it."
That's a headline.
It writes itself in a few directions:
- We explain it before you sign it.
- Finally, insurance you actually understand.
- The brokerage that reads the fine print with you.
- Because “just sign here” isn’t good enough.
- We translate insurance into plain English.
Any of those, on his homepage, and an operator in the next county over recognizes himself before he gets to the end of the sentence.
Headline gold like this was in his feedback folder the entire time.
Most firms write their marketing in a vacuum.
A partner offsite.
A copywriter draft.
A new CMO who joined six months ago and is still figuring out where the bathroom is.
Meanwhile the actual sentences their best clients use are sitting unread in last quarter's renewal correspondence, in language nobody on the marketing committee would have permitted into a draft.
That's usually a sign it's the right language.
Your firm has the same thing.
This week's exercise:
- Pull the last twenty client emails.
- Read them with a highlighter. Look for the phrase that made you wince a little because it was too honest, too plain, or too specific.
- Pull out the phrases and find the commonalities and patterns across the feedback (use AI for this!)
Those phrases are the ingredients for your copy.
They always has been.
That's all for today,
Dani
P.S. My 7-year-old's reading log this week, in his own writing: "I read all the words. They were okay."
Which is, accurately, how most prospects feel about your website.
Pull the feedback.