Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), India’s largest consumer goods company, has reduced its overall advertising and promotional budget by 5.5% while simultaneously increasing its spending on influencer marketing by 40% in fiscal year 2025, signaling a shift in its marketing strategy.

HUL has expanded its influencer network from 700 to over 12,000 creators in just one year, representing a 1,600% increase. The company now collaborates with these influencers across more than 50 brands spanning 15 categories.

“We are embracing technology and collaboration to reach our new-age consumers differently, preparing for the future of marketing and shifting investments to digital marketing channels,” said Nitin Paranjpe, Chairman of HUL, in a speech delivered at the company’s Annual General Meeting on June 30, 2025.

Allocating 40% of its marketing spending to digital media reflects a broader strategy that CEO Rohit Jawa describes as “social-first demand generation.” This approach aims to meet consumers where they already spend their time—on social media platforms.

HUL’s strategic shift aligns with comments from Esi Eggleston Bracey, Unilever’s Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, who recently noted: “The biggest shift is moving from the traditional model of ‘one to many,’ where a brand broadcasts one message to many people, to a ‘many to many’ model, where many people communicate many messages to many other people.”

Data Approach

The company is leveraging proprietary tools and data analytics to optimize media budgets across various platforms. HUL has developed the Digital Voice of Consumer (DVOC), an AI-enabled tool that helps comprehensively analyze consumer sentiments to identify trends more quickly.

“We are creating a singular data lake for better decision-making and execution in the marketplace,” Paranjpe stated, highlighting the company’s focus on data-driven marketing.

Success Stories

Several successful campaigns demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach. The Moti soap brand’s ‘Din Din Diwali’ campaign garnered over 150 million views, resulting in one of the brand’s highest-ever market share growths. Another example is Knorr Korean noodles’ collaboration with Netflix’s popular show “Squid Game” for its second season.

Dove’s partnership with Crumbl Cookies in the U.S. also proved highly successful, with demand so strong that Walmart featured it in its earnings call. According to Bracey, this campaign exemplifies “how you make something desirable and shareable, so people add it to their cart.”

Broader Marketing Transformation

This strategy shift is part of what Unilever calls “Desire at Scale,” a transformation in marketing approach described by Bracey as “taking our brands beyond meeting people’s needs and wants, to meet their desires – those non-conscious urges that drive people to feel, ‘I have to have that’.”

The company is also focusing on what it terms the “SASSY” framework: superior science, aesthetics, sensorials, shared by others, and young spirited—elements considered essential for expressing a brand’s desirability.

As HUL trims traditional advertising spending while boosting its investments in influencer marketing, the company’s strategic shift, as Bracey states, reflects its assessment that in an era where “marketing today is about capturing hearts and minds, marketing tomorrow is about capturing hearts and machines.”