#377 2025 · Vaseline (Unilever) / Ogilvy Singapore · Consumer products
Rather than deny or ignore 6,000+ viral hacks about its own jelly, Vaseline hired scientists to test each one on camera and stamped the true ones with an official seal
the problem
Uncontrolled viral rumor about product uses, true and false alike
background
Vaseline Jelly had spent decades as a one-note utility product, but by the mid-2020s TikTok and Instagram were flooded with unofficial 'life hacks' claiming it could do far more: grow eyelashes, prime makeup, even fake a soft-focus camera lens. Vaseline had never asked for any of this — the brand identified over 6,000 organic posts making these claims, most unverified, some plausible, some risky.
The instinct for a brand caught inside viral rumor it didn't create is usually to either ignore the noise, risking that false or unsafe claims calcify as 'common knowledge,' or issue a lawyerly denial, which reads as defensive and kills the very engagement the virality was generating. Neither option lets the brand keep the upside of a rumor mill it does not control.
what everyone would do
Either ignore the 6,000+ unofficial viral hacks and hope they burn themselves out, or issue a corporate statement distancing the brand from claims it never made and never tested — the two standard responses to viral rumor a company doesn't control, both of which forfeit the engagement the rumor was already generating.
what they saw
Vaseline saw that the 6,000 viral claims weren't a threat to be suppressed but free-floating attention with no verified authority attached to it — whoever tested the claims first and said so publicly, credibly, would own the conversation, not whoever denied it loudest.
the move
Vaseline and Ogilvy Singapore built a self-sustaining social engine: a brand scientist tested viral hacks in real lab-style videos, replying directly to the creators who posted them. Claims that held up scientifically earned a 'Vaseline Verified' seal, styled like a social-media checkmark; claims that didn't were publicly debunked in the same format, including a fast real-time response when a viral 'camera lens' hack surged online.
why it works
By putting an actual scientist on camera testing each hack against the creators who posted it, Vaseline turned itself into the rumor mill's fact-checker instead of its target, so the 'Vaseline Verified' seal became content people wanted to share, and the public debunkings of false hacks demonstrated credibility on the true ones without ever needing a defensive statement — engagement stayed with the brand because the brand was the one doing the testing.
the payoff
Unilever/Ogilvy report 63.3 million-plus total interactions, over 136 million social views since the March 2025 launch, 450-plus creators engaged generating thousands of posts, a 27% engagement rate versus TikTok's roughly 4% benchmark, and double-digit e-commerce and underlying sales growth for the year. The campaign became one of the most-awarded campaigns globally over the following year, including Cannes Lions recognition — figures self-reported by the brand/agency and its award submissions, not independently audited.
where it breaks
This only works when a brand can genuinely verify claims quickly and credibly, since a slow or unconvincing test just adds another unverified voice to the noise; it also depends on most of the underlying rumors being plausible or partially true, because a product surrounded mainly by unsafe or false viral claims risks its own scientists validating a dangerous minority of them just by engaging, and a brand with a trust deficit going in may find that public testing draws more scrutiny than it can survive.
what came after
Vaseline extended the mechanism into new retail products built directly from verified viral hacks, and the case became a widely cited template for brands treating user-generated rumor as an asset to be tested and owned rather than a threat to be suppressed.
references
- [1]Vaseline Verified — OgilvyOgilvy, 2025ogilvy.com
- [2]Vaseline puts viral beauty hacks to the test in playful new campaignMarketing-Interactive, 2025marketing-interactive.com