Unilever commits to investing ‘where it matters most’ as it ups marketing spend

Consumer goods giant Unilever upped marketing investment to its highest level in over a decade last year, as the business asserts it is committing to “invest at scale where it matters most” and become “a sales and marketing machine”.

The business, which owns brands including Vaseline, Hellmann’s and Domestos, has been on a transformation process over the past few years, which has been accelerated since CEO Fernando Fernandez took over last year. The transformation is designed to deliver more consistent growth across the business.

Speaking during the company’s full year 2025 results today (12 February), Fernandez asserted that the “heavy lifting” at Unilever had already been done, hailing “a new business”, which is “simpler, leaner, more accountable”.

Brand “superiority” and driving “desire at scale” have been much-talked about by Fernandez as pillars of the new Unilever. This essentially means driving demand for the company’s brands.

In its results today, continued investment in brand and marketing was underlined as a crucial component of this.

“We continue to invest at scale where it matters most,” said chief financial officer, Srinivas Phatak. “Brand and marketing investment was 16.1% of turnover, while capital expenditure was 3.1% of turnover.”

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This was the highest level of marketing investment at Unilever for over a decade, the company said. Three years ago, brand and marketing investment represented 13% of turnover, meaning spend is up 300 basis points.

Unilever has become more focused in how it invests its marketing spend, the company said, with 100% of incremental marketing spend being put into its beauty and wellbeing brands.

“More beauty, more wellbeing, more personal care” sums up Unilever’s category focus, Fernandez said, with the belief that these represent the best opportunities for growth for the business.

That focus on beauty and wellbeing was underlined by Unilever’s choice of chief marketing officer. Leandro Barreto took over as Esi Eggleston Bracey’s successor to the role at the start of this year. Barreto led marketing as CMO of the company’s beauty and wellbeing business group, a role which he will maintain alongside his promotion to oversee the whole group’s marketing.

The company’s focus on beauty and wellbeing was also underlined by its 2025 acquisitions: men’s soap brand Dr Squatch and deodorant brand Wild.

Digital focus

The acquisition of both Dr Squatch and Wild were also motivated by Unilever’s desire to ensure its portfolio is winning in ecommerce and digital spaces.

“Our focus in acquisition has been in digitally native brands, with a strong exposure to ecommerce, and that has been working for us,” Fernandez said.

Across both acquired and existing brands, he asserted that Unilever had a “strong performance” in digital commerce in 2025. While smaller brands may have taken a slice of the ecommerce pie, Unilever remains confident that its brands will win out in the long-term.

“Of course, ecommerce opens an entry point to many small brands, but very few brands have been able to scale big,” Fernandez said.

Another priority for a Unilever still undergoing a significant transformation is ensuring the organisation is “fit for the AI age”. That entails using AI for “supercharged demand generation”, such as driving personalised marketing, working with retailers on “agentic shopping” models and partnering with LLMs.

Innovation backed by investment

One aspect of the transformation that Fernandez said he was particularly proud of is the company’s innovation processes.

“Our innovation machine, I believe, has improved a lot in the last two to three years,” he said.

Premium innovation was highlighted as a key driver of volume growth in 2025. The business drove sales growth of 3.5%, with 1.5% volume growth in the full year. In the final quarter, those figures improved to 4.2% sales growth, with a 2.1% increase in volume. A “sharper focus” on volume growth has been one of the company’s renewed goals.

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As a market leader in many of its categories, Unilever’s path to volume growth must come from expanding those categories, or indeed creating new ones. An example of that is whole body deodorant, an innovation Unilever has launched across brands including Sure, and which is designed to be incremental to the existing deodorant category.

“You have seen in our results today how effective our premium innovation is when we create or grow categories like powder hydration, short cycle laundry, probiotics in surface cleaning, flavoured mayo, all powered by our superior science,” Fernandez said.

The company suggested it was focusing its increased marketing investment in supporting these innovations. Fernandez also highlighted the 2026 Fifa World Cup, which Unilever is an official sponsor of, as something that will be “a real support” for the company’s performance, both across its innovation and core.