Unilever-owned beauty brand Vaseline’s latest launch began by building on how people were already using it.
After selling out of its debut Vaseline Originals collection in Thailand, the Unilever-owned brand is expanding the limited-edition collection to Singapore and the Philippines in the coming days, where a limited number of the face primer product will be sold exclusively on TikTok Shop.
The expansion comes after the Vaseline Originals campaign was shortlisted in the Titanium category at Cannes Lions 2026. Plans for a larger U.S. launch remain in development for this year, according to the brand.
The first drop included an All-In-One Primer & Highlighter, inspired by the glass-skin Vaseline primer hack popularized on TikTok, and a Brow Tamer Jelly, based on the long-used trick of applying Vaseline to set brows. Both products launched via TikTok Live in Thailand, a major social-commerce market where platforms including TikTok, LINE and Facebook have become key shopping channels for beauty and consumer brands.
The launch gave Vaseline an early commercial proof point. The primer was restocked after the initial sellout, and the brand sold “one product every two seconds” across the first month, according to a brand representative. During the same period, Vaseline Originals products sold four times as much as the brand’s original petroleum jelly. The comparison is not like-for-like on price: In Thailand, original Vaseline petroleum jelly is widely sold as a low-cost staple, with small formats listed around ฿79-฿129, or about $2.40-$3.90. The limited-edition Originals products, meanwhile, are positioned as beauty SKUs; the Brow Tamer Jelly lists on Shopee Thailand for ฿119, or about $3.60.
According to Nathalia Amadeu, global brand director for Vaseline, Originals grew out of Vaseline Verified, the brand’s March 2025 campaign that lab-tested consumer-discovered Vaseline hacks. Through global social listening tied to that work, the brand identified more than 3.5 million posts in which people were sharing unconventional uses for Vaseline. The brand did not break out the number by platform.
“It has been a journey of turning Vaseline into a social-first brand,” Amadeu said. “We decided to stop talking and start listening more.” Vaseline has 509,300 followers on TikTok.
The two debut products were selected because their intended behaviors had repeatedly appeared across markets and over time. The primer and brow hacks were treated by the brand as evidence that consumers were already bringing Vaseline into beauty routines beyond its traditional skin-care role on a regular basis.
“A trend is a moment, an insight is a behavior,” Amadeu said. “If it lasts one week or two weeks, it is entertainment. But if it is repeated and consistent, then there is utility in it.”
The first drop involved two early internet beauty creators, Jen Chae (@frmheadtotoe; 30.8k TikTok followers), who helped popularize the brow-taming technique, and Lauren Luke, (@laurenluke_panacea81; 7.8k TikTok followers), one of YouTube’s earliest beauty creators whom the brand credited for creating the Vaseline primer hack. Both hacks were first shared online in 2008, according to the brand.
Amadeu said Vaseline “mapped the global internet” to identify early voices behind the rituals.
“One of the core principles for Vaseline is to credit the communities and creators for their creativity,” Amadeu said. “That is quite hard to do when you see 3.5 million posts, so we decided to go after the originators of the conversation.”
That creator-crediting question is becoming more important as beauty brands look to social platforms for product ideas. In April, L’Oréal-owned Thayers launched its $14.99 Hydrating Milky Mist after creators Nina Pool (6.2 million TikTok followers) and Shelby Ann Bell (2.3 million TikTok followers) helped turn their TikTok product hack into a finished SKU, as reported by Glossy. The brand brought the creators into its New Jersey lab, used Pool’s “touchless” description on the bottle and involved both creators in the go-to-market strategy.
At the same time, recent backlash around Patrick Ta Beauty’s Transition Blush launch showed how sensitive attribution has become, as reported by Glossy. The launch drew criticism after TikTok users accused the brand of profiting from a look associated with makeup artist Ngozi Esther Edeme (@paintedbyesther; 409,200 TikTok followers). Ta later said he did not own the look and credited Edeme with popularizing it.
Vaseline’s approach gives the brand a clearer answer to that question. Chae and Luke were not only included in the campaign but also compensated with a discretionary share of sales.
“These creators did not directly develop the products, but they were a critical source of inspiration and insight,” Amadeu said. “They were not just featured in the campaign. We brought them into the launch moment and into our labs. It has been a very close relationship with our communities, because this is a shift from creating for them to creating with them.”
TikTok Shop was central to the launch strategy. Vaseline debuted Originals in Thailand through TikTok Live, rather than through traditional retail partners or a brand-owned channel, because the platform was where many of the product behaviors were being shared.
“We wanted to be present where the conversations were happening,” Amadeu said. “TikTok was incredibly important because it is where the behaviors originate, where the behaviors evolve and where ideas gain trust.”
The next phase will test whether that demand travels. According to the brand, the decision to bring Vaseline Originals to new markets was informed by repeated consumer behavior, the Thailand launch and the way Vaseline beauty rituals have been shared globally, particularly among U.S. consumers.
According to U.S. survey platform YouGov BrandIndex data, from September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2005, Vaseline posted the strongest year-over-year gains in consideration among health and beauty brands, with 49% of Gen Z consumers saying they would consider buying the brand in 2025, nearly four times the category benchmark.
“Relevance is not something we inherit,” Amadeu said. “We earn it over and over again. We cannot rely on our legacy only. We do not need to change who we are, but we do need to adapt how we show up.”
Vaseline is already using hacks to inform its innovation roadmap for 2027 and 2028, Amadeu said. For a brand long associated with household staples, Originals gives Vaseline a way to turn familiar consumer habits into new beauty products, sold where those habits are already visible.
“This is not a one-off campaign,” Amadeu said. “It is a new model to innovate. It affects modern marketing, supply chain, legal, customer sales — literally everything.”
The Singapore and Philippines drops will give Vaseline another read on whether TikTok-first product development can scale beyond Thailand. The U.S. launch, coming later this year, remains the larger test.
