One of the world's largest fast-moving consumer goods corporations has made an unprecedented strategic pivot: Unilever abandoned traditional advertising agencies as the main driver of marketing and built a network of nearly 300,000 content creators worldwide. This is not a course correction – it is a revolution that is changing the rules of the game across the entire FMCG industry and setting new standards for marketers for the decade ahead.
The bold decision of a new leader
When Fernando Fernandez took over as CEO of Unilever in March 2025, no one expected that in his very first public statement he would announce one of the most radical reorientations in the history of corporate marketing.
An economist from the University of Buenos Aires, who has been associated with the company since 1988 – first as head of the Beauty & Wellbeing division, later as CFO – he knew perfectly well where the weakness of the model based on costly campaigns by big agencies lay.
During an interview with Barclays analyst Warren Ackerman, words were spoken that shook the advertising industry: "Our spending on social media will increase from 30% to 50% of the total advertising budget. We will work with 20 times more influencers." The declaration was as simple as it was revolutionary.
"Today brands – by definition and by design – meet with scepticism when their messages come directly from corporations. Creating marketing systems where others can speak on behalf of your brand at scale is incredibly important. Influencers, celebrities, TikTokers – these are the voices that matter." – Fernando Fernandez, CEO of Unilever.
From 10,000 to 300,000 – a scale of change the industry has never seen
The numbers speak for themselves. Just two years ago, Unilever worked with around 10,000 ambassadors and content creators. Today that network numbers nearly 300,000 influencers spread across the globe – from local micro-creators in India, through beauty creators in Europe, to opinion leaders in Latin American markets. In the Beauty & Wellbeing division alone, the number of partnerships grew from 75,000 to 180,000 in a single year.
The strategy assumes not only volume but also geographic reach. Fernandez outlined his vision with disarming precision: "There are 19,000 postcodes in India and 5,764 municipalities in Brazil. I want at least one influencer in each of them. In some I want 100." This is not mass marketing.
It is hyper-local marketing on a gigantic scale – a paradox that only new technologies and models of collaboration with creators can realise.
"We now have nearly 300,000 people recommending our brands. Two years ago there were around 10,000." – Fernando Fernandez, CEO of Unilever, during a conversation with JPMorgan analysts.
Half the budget on social media – a strategic pivot that defines a new era
The decision to shift 50% of the entire advertising budget to social media is a step that many marketing directors are watching with a mixture of admiration and unease. Until now, the share of social spending was 30% – and that in itself was considered ambitious. Now Unilever is going all in on creators.
A key element of this strategy is artificial intelligence. Without AI, producing content at such a scale would be impossible. In the Beauty & Wellbeing division alone, the number of materials created increased sevenfold.
The company has also doubled the frequency of publishing posts featuring influencers, and the lifespan of a single video is now estimated at just 4 days – which forces continuous, automated production of new content.
"The era of lazy marketing – two ads a year with two innovations – is gone forever. Marketing today is hard work."
– Fernando Fernandez, CEO of Unilever, at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference, February 2026.
Results that are hard to dispute
Critics of the influencer-first strategy point to the risk of losing control over brand messaging with such a massive network of collaborators. Unilever responds with specifics.
Vaseline, a brand that is 155 years old, achieved 12% growth in sales volume over two years – solely thanks to social media activity. The Dove #ShareTheFirst campaign was 100% created from creator content, without any production studio, and was scaled across 14 markets, recording higher engagement than traditional campaigns.
How Unilever built an influencer empire instead of advertising agencies
For the Cleanipedia and Persil Wonder Wash brands, collaboration with 2,000 influencers globally brought a 5.2% increase in brand favourability. Broader data points to a 16.3% increase in engagement in FMCG campaigns carried out with creators. Moreover, the model allowed media waste to be reduced by 25% – which means that every pound spent in this model works more effectively than in a traditional media plan.
The strategy, however, is not a complete abandonment of the agency world. Unilever hired a specialist agency, Samy – described as a social-first agency – to manage the influencer strategy for the food division, covering brands such as Hellmann's and Knorr. The agency has access to over 120 million creators through its own Maia platform, and its scope of activity includes, among others, the Polish market.
The industry follows the giant's lead
Unilever's move did not go unnoticed. As early as the beginning of 2026, during seasonal financial results, executives of companies such as General Mills, Gap, Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works announced increases in influencer budgets. A Linqia agency survey of 200 marketers found that 62% of them plan to increase spending on influencer marketing in 2026.
According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) forecasts, total spending on content creators in the United States alone will reach 37 billion dollars in 2025 – 26% more than the previous year.
At the same time, a report by the Collabstr platform indicates that the number of UGC content creators grew in 2024 by as much as 93% year on year – which paradoxically lowered the average cost of a single collaboration to 159 pounds in 2025 from 168 pounds a year earlier. The growth in creator supply amid rising brand demand creates a unique market dynamic in which cost efficiency and scale can go hand in hand.
Challenges that cannot be ignored
Even the most determined supporters of Unilever's strategy admit that a model based on six figures of creative partners generates unprecedented challenges. Managing such an extensive network requires standardised contracts, performance measurement systems and tools for attributing results – which most brands simply do not yet possess.
Traditional measurement systems, designed to track the effects of a few dozen campaigns a year, are not suited to analysing hundreds of thousands of consumer touchpoints.
There is also a risk to brand image consistency. The lack of control over individual influencer statements – with such massive collaboration – is inevitable. Inappropriate content, a controversial stance by a creator or an unexpected reputational crisis can negatively affect the brand with which a given influencer is associated. This is the price that Unilever consciously accepts – putting authenticity and reach above full control of the message.
Fernandez himself rated the company's marketing strategy execution so far at "six or six and a half" on a scale of ten – far from the level of eight or nine he expects. This is a rare honesty in the corporate world, which at the same time shows the scale of ambition and readiness for further transformation.
New questions for marketers in Poland and around the world
Unilever's decision poses fundamental questions for marketing departments: does a traditional creative agency still have a reason to exist as a strategic centre? Can the creator-first model be effectively implemented outside the FMCG sector? And finally – how do you measure ROI from 300,000 partnerships simultaneously?
Poland is part of this revolution. The agency Samy, which serves Unilever's global food brands, is actively operating on the Polish market, which means that local content creators can become part of one of the largest influencer networks in marketing history. This is an opportunity for Polish creators and a challenge for agencies that until now have built their position on creative and strategic competences.
Advertising market analyst forecasts indicate that influencer marketing spending in Poland may increase by more than 30% by 2026, following the global trend set by players such as Unilever. IAB Polska data from 2024 confirms that social media marketing is already the largest category of digital spending among Polish FMCG advertisers.
Unilever
Unilever is one of the largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) corporations in the world, founded in 1929 as a result of the merger of the British company Lever Brothers and the Dutch Margarine Unie. The company employs more than 127,000 people in over 190 countries and serves 3.4 billion consumers every day.
The brand portfolio includes more than 400 products, including global icons such as Dove, Hellmann's, Vaseline, Knorr, Axe, Magnum, Ben & Jerry's and Persil. In 2024, the group's revenue amounted to nearly 52 billion pounds.
Fun fact: Unilever owns the Wall's brand – one of the largest ice cream producers in the world – and runs one of the largest sustainability programmes among global corporations, aiming for net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2039.
