Case Studied
Finding the original hacker

Viral hacks rarely come with a clear author. When one happens to involve a specific product, the brand attached to it often gets to claim the moment anyway: by the time a trick has been reposted, stitched, and duetted a few thousand times, the person who actually came up with it is usually long gone from the conversation.

Some brands reward this kind of activity after the fact, paying out to whoever posts the best UGC once a trend is already peaking—we covered GoPro's Million Dollar Challenge, which does exactly that with user-submitted footage each year. Vaseline did something narrower.

This week, Case Studied explores how Vaseline turned two 2008 beauty hacks into a sold-out, creator-credited product line.

The Brief

Vaseline, a Unilever brand, has been sold in its familiar tin and jar form for well over a century, originally marketed as a healing balm for minor cuts, burns, and dry skin. Beyond that original use, the product has picked up a long list of unofficial applications over the decades—people have used it to condition leather, prevent chafing during sports, and, more recently, as part of "slugging," a skincare trend where a layer of Vaseline Jelly is applied to the face overnight. More than 3.5 million Vaseline hack-related posts exist online today.

In 2025, Vaseline launched Vaseline Verified, a campaign built around testing viral Vaseline hacks with Unilever scientists and awarding a seal of approval to the ones that actually worked. The campaign drove double-digit growth for the brand, won a Titanium Lion at Cannes, and became one of the most awarded campaigns in Unilever's history. Vaseline then turned its attention to the creators behind those viral hacks.

The Execution

Vaseline worked with Ogilvy Singapore on Vaseline Originals, a product line built by tracing its most popular hacks back to source. 

"We started with a simple creative provocation: what if the best ideas were never in the boardroom, but already in people's bedrooms and everyday routines?" said Nicolas Courant, Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy Singapore. "We traced how Vaseline was being used in culture back to its origins and found the OG creators who had been shaping these hacks long before they became mainstream."

That search led to two creators. In 2008, beauty creator Jen Chae shared a Vaseline brow-taming trick on her blog. That same year,Lauren Luke, one of YouTube's earliest beauty creators, posted her own hack for using Vaseline Jelly as a makeup primer. 

Nearly two decades later, Vaseline turned each hack into an actual product: the Vaseline Originals Brow Tamer Jelly credited to Chae and the Vaseline Originals All-In-One Primer & Highlighter Jelly credited to Luke. The brand named both creators "Vaseline OGs," and gave them a share of the resulting sales. Both products debuted via a TikTok Live event hosted with Chae and Luke, and launched exclusively on TikTok Shop in Thailand.

"For years, creators have been reimagining what Vaseline jelly can do, often without recognition," said Nathalia Amadeu, Global Brand Director at Vaseline. "This campaign is about giving credit where it's due: acknowledging, celebrating and rewarding the people behind those ideas."

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The Results

Both Vaseline Originals products sold out twice over, first within minutes of the TikTok Live debut and again when a second batch of stock was released in April. At the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Vaseline Originals won six Lions (one Gold, three Silver and two Lions) and Vaseline Verified won six Lions of its own. 

Vaseline says the search for further hack originators is ongoing, with more creators expected to be certified as Vaseline OGs.

The Takeaways

1) Trace a hack back to whoever actually started it.

Vaseline didn't build Vaseline Originals off a recent viral clip. It went back to a 2008 blog post and an early YouTube tutorial to find the people who actually started the brow tamer and primer hacks, and both resulting products sold out within minutes of launch.

Crediting whoever posted an idea most recently, rather than whoever started it, risks a less specific and less credible story. Tracing an idea to its real source can also become part of what an audience responds to, not just a footnote.

2) Make credit tangible, not just symbolic.

Vaseline named Chae and Luke "Vaseline OGs," featured both directly in its own launch marketing, and gave them a share of the resulting product sales instead of a flat fee.

A title signals credit; pairing it with a financial stake gives that credit real weight, and together they sustain advocacy longer than either would alone. It's one of many ways to structure a creator collaboration, and the right format still depends on what the campaign is actually trying to do.

3) Limited availability does more work than the product itself.

Vaseline Originals launched exclusively on TikTok Shop in a single market, in stock small enough to sell out within minutes, twice.

Scarcity tends to increase how much people want something independent of the product's actual features, since the fear of missing out weighs more heavily than the reward of getting it easily. A wider, unrestricted launch would have removed that pressure entirely, even with the same creator story behind it.

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