Last year Unilever announced a fundamental change in its marketing strategy. One of the world's largest advertisers publicly declared that over the coming years it wants to work with roughly twenty times as many influencers as it does now, and at the same time move half of its advertising budget to social networks.
The change is driven by Unilever's new chief executive, Fernando Fernandez, who has openly spoken since taking up the role about how traditional mass advertising is no longer effective enough in the digital world. According to him, people today trust content that comes from specific creators rather than anonymous brands. In his view, influencer marketing is therefore not just one of the channels, but the foundation of a new “social-first” strategy.
“We are building a marketing and sales machine that drives desire at scale in our power brands and ensures execution excellence across all channels,” the Unilever chief executive said at the end of July.
From billboards to conversations
Unilever has long been one of the largest advertisers in the world, and any move it makes tends to influence the whole market. This time, that is doubly true. The company said it wants to increase twentyfold the number of influencers it works with on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. At the same time, it plans for around 50% of all media investment to go to digital and social channels, compared with roughly a third of the budget previously. The result is a domino effect: other companies are rethinking their budgets, influencers are raising their rates and the creator economy is entering another phase of professionalisation.
At the same time, the other side of the coin is also showing. The sharp rise in interest in working with creators has attracted a large number of new UGC creators and smaller influencers to the market, all trying to win their place. In some segments this has led to an oversupply, which puts pressure on prices and raises brands' demands for quality, professionalism and measurable results. Creator marketing is thus quickly moving from the experimental phase into a highly competitive environment.
Creator economy as business infrastructure
Unilever talks about working with almost 300,000 creators around the world. The content is not tied to just one channel or format. It involves licensing, paid distribution, extension into e-commerce and the long-term building of brand relevance.
Marketing that feeds into results
The crucial point is that the change in strategy is not happening in a vacuum. In the first half of 2025 Unilever increased its marketing spend to 15.5% of turnover and at the same time reported sales growth of 3.4%. Investment went mainly into digital channels, premium segments and brands with global potential.
What is interesting about the whole story is neither the number of creators nor the volume of investment, but the way the company reads the transformation of the media environment. Traditional channels have not disappeared, but on their own they can no longer carry the full weight of brand communication. Attention is splintering into dozens of parallel conversations that arise outside the direct control of brands. Unilever does not steer these conversations from above. Instead, it tries to understand them, respond to them and step into them when it makes sense. That may be the most important change the rest of the market can take from its strategy.
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