There are few experiences quite as personally deflating as buying a lotion that smells like a French bakery and leaves your elbows as parched as the Mojave. Vaseline, the Unilever brand that has been lubricating American skin since the petroleum jelly days of the 1870s, is now positioning itself as the antidote to such disappointments.
On Saturday, the company will host what it is calling a "lotion trade-in event" at Flatiron Plaza in Manhattan, where consumers may surrender their underperforming moisturizers in exchange for bottles of Vaseline's newest offerings, which bear the names Cherry Aura and Vanilla Comfort. (The fragrance nomenclature suggests someone in product development has been spending time in the candle aisle.)
The event represents an unusually direct form of competitive positioning for a legacy brand. Kate Godbout, head of Vaseline North America, told Adweek that the promotion was inspired by consumer frustrations with what she called "trendy" lotions — products that deliver on scent but fail to actually hydrate. Vaseline, she said, offers "sensory with substance," a phrase that walks the line between marketing slogan and implied criticism of the competition.
The skincare aisle has indeed become crowded in recent years, as direct-to-consumer brands and social media-fueled newcomers have elbowed their way onto shelves that were once the quiet province of Jergens and Lubriderm. For Vaseline, which has been part of the Unilever portfolio since that company's formation in 1929, the challenge is a familiar one for heritage brands: reminding shoppers that the thing their grandmothers used might still work.
Whether a pop-up in the Flatiron District can accomplish that goal remains to be seen. But there is something pleasingly old-fashioned about the whole affair — a brand confident enough in its product to say, essentially, bring us your tired, your poor, your insufficiently moisturized.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Vaseline's NYC Lotion Swap Bets on Quality Over Skincare Trends"