Unilever’s Selina Sykes on AI, Creators & Desire at Scale

Up today on the Speed of Culture podcast, we're thrilled to be joined by Selena Sykes, the Beauty and Wellbeing VP and Head of Digital Marketing and Social First at Unilever. Selena is leading Unilever's global marketing transformation using AI creators and cultural insight to build brands that inspire desire at scale. Selena, so great to hear from you and to connect on the podcast.

Thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me.

And where does this podcast find you today?

I'm in London, so that's where I'm based. Okay. So yeah, here after a very busy week and really looking forward to our chat.

And what does marketing look like from a cultural nuance perspective in Western Europe versus the US? Are there any real differentiations for, in terms of brand building that you think are notable?

I think that's a really good question because With kind of the rise of social media and the kind of globalization of content, like you could get content on your feed from anywhere, can't you? I think it's really opened a window to those cultural nuances. And I'd say, of course there are, there are, you know, things that go on, um, in different parts of the world. But what I really noticed more than anything else is two things. One, that all of these trends that might show up differently in the US or in the East or in Western Europe, they tend to have this like undercurrent of a cultural force that is happening everywhere. So I'll give you a good example. I think we all noticed last year lots of trends like Bratz Summer, um, Demure Fall. These things were kind of trending, but what we've seen, the undercurrent and the force that's going on everywhere around that is this redefinition of femininity and what it means to women. And so actually, I think the trends might show up differently in different places, but these changes in humanity and what's really going on for people is huge and is something that as a global business, because Unilever is a global business and we try and do things at scale, we find that we can tap into those everywhere and then they show up in a different way.

And obviously as a marketer, you know, things are changing so fast right now with the consumer. I would argue faster than ever before, especially with AI and rapid evolution. That we're seeing and its impact on the way that people find out about products and ultimately they buy products, et cetera. How do you as a marketer keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on? What do you lean into in a world where there's so much noise?

Yeah, I think noise is a big threat to us in the business, but it's also for consumers. Like, this can get overwhelmed with everything that's being thrown at you. So personally, I lead transformation. So one of the parts of my jobs is being able to understand the big shifts that are going on and almost filter and codify them so that there's something that's meaningful for the business and can drive impact. So, you know, obviously how I do that is really keep close to people outside. All our partners are fantastic. Really keep close to our consumers, like put them at the center of everything that we're doing. You also mentioned AI. And I think that is the conversation everywhere. Like every conference I go to, every meeting I go to, there's obviously this conversation and it's been happening for a couple of years now. It's been, it's been the key topic of conversation. And I think as we get more and more into this shift and in what's into what's going on, you can kind of really start to see beyond the hype and understand truly how I see AI as a foundational technology. So it's not the AI itself. That we should get excited about. We should get excited about what are we doing with it? What are the real world problems that we are solving? And aren't we lucky that we've got this cool new technology and, you know, lots of providers out there willing to help us solve these problems. So we really try and start with the outcomes. Like what is the problem to be solved? What is it we need for our business? And, you know, fortunately a huge outcome at the moment for us, you mentioned we're trying to build this whole marketing philosophy around desire at scale. And to do those things, we are a huge business, and to do those things at scale, AI is such an incredible enabler for us because it allows us to shift to this marketing model where we were very broadcast and like one-to-many to a model now where we're many-to-many. And so we really focus on that. We really focus on what are we trying to do to reach persuade and convert our consumers. And then AI is an absolute critical enabler for us to achieve those things. So that's how we really think about this transformation and all the stuff that goes on. We think about the outcomes, we think about the real-world problems, and then we think, aren't we lucky that there's technology that can kind of bring our ideas and our wish list to life and make stuff happen?

So is there an example you could talk about, about ways that you are currently leveraging AI internally with one of your brands, just so we can kind of unpack it for the audience?

Yeah, that's great. So probably most marketers listening to this, like one of the biggest use cases for AI is content creation. Like that's probably like one of the biggest things that people are thinking about in marketing today is how do I use AI? And we've got all these fantastic GenAI tools, you know, Nanobanana, Sora, all these amazing things that we can play with, with content creation. But for us, of course, lots of fun and experimentation, but what we've really done is we've built what we call like a content supply chain. So because we've moved to this desire at scale model where in order to reach people today and in order to connect with them, you need to create so much more content because you're trying to feed an algorithm that is interest-based and you're trying to connect to people through their passions and through their communities. So to do that through old measures or old methods, sorry, of content and creative. It wouldn't just not be feasible. It genuinely, we wouldn't have the capacity in our business to achieve that. So now it's thinking about, okay, how do we maintain the creative excellence, the integrity of our content and creative, but use this supply chain to really create the volume, the variety, the velocity of content that we need today to achieve that many-to-many model. And that's a really exciting channel, channel, challenge. And for that challenge, we've built this kind of end-to-end. So we've thought about— I'll really break it down for you. So we've thought right upstream, the integrity of our brands is so important. We've got these like legacy 100-year-old brands and they really have so much, so many codes. There's so much salience and kind of equity in those brands. So we've actually taken that, we've, we've re-envisioned it for the, you know, for 2025, 2026, we've made it more modern and we've coded it into a system that we call Brand DNA.

DNAI.

So it's like the DNA of other brands and we've codified it and that isn't— that provides the context layer. So it gives you all the context about the brands to feed into all of our content creation AI tools.

So whether that feels like an agent basically that goes in and provides context on everything you need to know about the brand, which kind of creates the foundation for everything you do.

And we actually have an LLM layer on it too. So you can go in and chat to it and be like, should I work with this creator? Should I do this? And it really understands the brand because we're constantly programming it with not only everything we, we know about our brands, but the performance of those brands. So that's one kind of upstream in this content supply chain. Then you've got the factory, you've got the tools. And, and we, what we've learned in this journey is it's just as much about the people that use the tools as the tools. So we've got some fantastic tools. We work with some great partners. PencilPro is a great partner of ours. Lots of AI content generation out there, and we have built this like people and process around it. So it becomes this system that then creates the content, make sure we quality control the content, make sure we ship the content into the platforms, do that kind of dynamic optimization that again, AI allows us to do that real-time dynamic optimization. We wouldn't have been able to do it without that. And this is the supply chain that we've built and we've rolled that out globally now. And so we've got that infrastructure and, um, I think. I'm kind of even more excited about what we're gonna be able to do with it versus what we've built because the opportunity now is huge to really raise our game. Yeah.

And you're on the, I always say like, get on the rails because as the frontier models get better, the output of this engine is only gonna get better. So, you know, you talk about Nano Banana, which came out, you know, a couple weeks ago and its ability to create infographics and detailed high-fidelity imagery is unlike anything we've seen prior. And I'm sure a year from now we're gonna be talking about a different version of one of the models that's gonna be doing it even better. But as long as you have that system, set up and the pipe set up, well then you're gonna be able to continue to improve. For companies that aren't, as the models get better, they actually get less competitive.

I, I, I so agree with you. I always say, you know, you can't learn anything by sitting on the sidelines. Like, just get in there, just play, just get involved, just build things, and it's gonna be much quicker for you to learn, much quicker for you to build. And then you're right, as we hit maturity on some of these things, We're, you know, we're gonna have the opportunity to go faster because we've built, we've built the pipes. Like you say, that's, that's how we talk about it. We talk about we've built the pipes, putting water through the pipes. That's, that's exactly what we're doing.

So today here in December 2025, what are the types of content that you actually are able to create that are AI-powered? And I understand you have a human-in-the-loop component, but can you talk about anything that's actually in market that would, that AI had a role in generating for one of your brands?

Yeah, 100%. So, so we, we, like I say, we take this brand in and we've got all the context, we've got some base assets, and then there's a generative layer. So we can— you can generate so much, especially in the beauty world. We call it modes of action. So it's all the sensorials and the kind of science tech video parts of the videos. Then there's the product imagery. So if you can imagine how many times we had to like shoot, camera shoot different products and packs because we operate in hundreds of countries. So we've got these digital twins that are, are the kind of the packs that can be shot in many, many different angles. So you can then take that digital twin and you can use it in any product content in any way you want. You can change the light refraction, you can change the background, you can change the angle, you can change the language. So you can really drive that digital twin to, you know, make endless, infinitive, infinity amount of content with that. And what we're finding is as we're deploying, deploying AI to generate and remix this content, we're seeing not only the cost and time saving that you would expect, you know, so like we're seeing like 40% cost savings, 60% time savings, we're seeing all of that stuff, but what's more interesting to me is we're seeing higher effectiveness of our communication. So we're seeing like 3x the view-through rates. We're seeing 23% increase in purchase intention versus the non-AI creative. And I think the reason for that is you're able to take the insights, take the brief, take the context, and really shortcut to get that best quality content because you've got everything being integrated quicker. Than it's been able to do before. And also because we're creating such a big volume of content now, we're able to work out what's working, what's not working. So you really go after the stuff that's working. So that's the other reason why I think the quality and the effectiveness is going up as well as the efficiency going down.

Yeah. Also, like as a global marketer, you know, your ability to have multilingual campaigns, I mean, that was such a barrier in the past to executing. And that's why I kind of started off talking about the cultural nuances. Well, I think over time The models will know that, you know, these markets, this language works better, or these words, or this phrasing works better based upon the market. So I think it's just fascinating to think about where it's all gonna go.

You think about a market like India where there's so many different languages and dialects, you can really connect with people on such a deeper level. And that's what we wanna do as marketers. We wanna connect with people as people, not as consumers. We wanna matter to them as people. And so all the AI is helping you do is do what you wanted to do better. Like, you know, get to that depth, get to that volume, get to that connection that you wanted to get to. I think you were talking about cultural nuance. We haven't touched on how you can take insights using AI because you're right, like, there's so many different insights that are manifested differently for different communities, different markets, different product categories. And I think AI is able to sift through such a high quantity of data that it can help you as a human kind of synthesize so much. And then you put your human judgment and you say, this is what I'm going to do and this is the insight. But you couldn't possibly integrate that many signals. There's too many signals, there's too many data points, there's too much going on for a marketer to be able to really integrate it. So it's about, like I say, using the AI to make you better at doing what you want to do.

Absolutely. So I was looking through your LinkedIn, as I often do, stalking my guests, and you had a post 5 months ago saying, 11 Lions, 2 Grand Prix, a Titanium. And you're talking about obviously the Cannes Lions Grand Prix. And, you know, you know, we've obviously performed really well there. And, you know, are we going to be at a place 2 to 3 years from now where those awards are won by creative that's completely developed by AI models?

I don't, I honestly don't think so. I don't think anything will be completely, anything really will be completely developed by AI models because I, this, people talk about human in the loop, but if you really think about without the human, you don't have the innovation. Without the human, you don't have the imagination. Like AI builds itself off past history. So it can't possibly do that stuff that the humans do. They can't bring the heart to it. So I don't think anything's going to be able to be 100% AI driven, but I think people are going to be able to use AI to really elevate what they're doing. And I think I can talk about that campaign a bit if you want the Vaseline Verified.

Yeah, please. Yeah. I'd love to hear about it.

Yeah. Yeah. We, I think the reason we were really proud and I don't frequently post on LinkedIn, but that was something we were really proud of is we had a mission to transform how we approach marketing and become— we called it social first, but it's really about being community first, cultural first, people first, um, and move to this many-to-many model. And that's really what we mean in like desire at scale is, is tapping into that desirability in many different ways. And one of them is about tapping into culture and communities. And with Vaseline Verified, um, it was really like the epitome. That campaign brought so many of those threads together, and the fact that it was recognized was really cool. Um, but it was a campaign that literally came from the community. So it was the community who were talking about Vaseline and their hacks for Vaseline. And this is a 150-year-old product that is being talked about every single day, and we were able to really build on those hacks and bring value to those hacks as a brand. So we weren't just like crashing the party and being like, hi, we're the people you're talking about. We actually came with value., and we verified their hacks in our lab, you know, in it with our proper doctors and scientists verified. And then obviously went back to them and recruited them, say like, do you want to be part of this campaign? Thank you very much for your hack. Your hack's verified. Your hack's not verified. And, and it was this, this is more, this was more about the creator economy for me. This is about really leveraging community and kind of giving that power of your brand and co-creating with the community and your brand. So it was a really great example of this social-first marketing, and we're really proud to win the Grand Prix.

Yeah, I mean, social first is obviously it's, it's a buzzword and it gets thrown around a lot. But I mean, why I believe it's important is especially for your brands. I mean, this year for the first time ever in the US, a first-time mother is part of Gen Z, which means she grew up with the iPhone in the household. She grew up consuming content on the mobile device. And when, when these consumers are consuming content on the mobile device, they're consuming content not from major media networks, but from other people, which is kind of where the creators come in. So when you think about building your brand for this new consumer, you obviously have to be social first and you have to be mobile first, and you really do have to put creators at the center of whatever you're planning.

I'm so energized by how powerful the creator economy is and how many people that are already talking about our brands and love our brands, but also the way that we can co-create And so we're doing a lot to build this advocacy and this trust with the communities out there and the creators and bringing them in and working with them. But also, I think it's about— we talked about this— it's earning people's attention. It also makes you rethink your brand and say, yeah, it's great to kind of bring these people in and talk to these people and listen to these people, but it also makes you reflect on yourself as a brand and say, You know, how am I showing up? How am I showing up today? Am I earning attention? Am I actually really relevant? And I think that's exactly what we need to do always. Like I said, like the challenge for Unilever is we have these legacy brands, we have these brands that have been around for a really long time, and what we've always done successfully is make them relevant today and tomorrow. And that's the work we're doing. We call it being young spirited, but what it's really about is really earning attention, you know, being shared by others, having other people want to talk about us, want to share our content. And that is as much about leaning into the creators as making sure you are worthy of that as a brand.

Yeah, of course it has to be authentic. I mean, I think the second creator just is sort of like does a one-night stand, so to speak, and just takes money just to talk about something versus a marriage over a long term, I think You know, their followers really start to lose, you know, I think a lot of respect for what they're talking about. And then they become very much less effective at promoting whatever it is that they're trying to talk about.

Yeah. It's too transactional. Have you heard this? Like people talking about like the de-influencing era where it's like, but I think it's, I think, do you see that in your, in your feed? Like people start to scroll past that stuff because it's not authentic. So I think we've hit that point now. Where especially like you're saying, Gen Z, like they're like, I want real authentic connection. I don't want people that are just transacting, um, you know, and I'm being bought, my attention's being bought. Um, but it's good, it's a good place to be because I always think this is what we've all of us got into marketing for, is to really earn attention and do something that matters to people and make what you are selling really elevate someone's life and relevant to their life. So, um, yeah, it's just a fantastic way for us to raise our game to be shared by others.

It's almost like the new age example of if you read an amazing article about a company or a person, it carries a lot more weight than just seeing an ad from them. And I think that's the kind of difference between authenticity or pay-to-play that you really need to tackle within the creator economy.

Yeah, 100% agree with you. Yeah, really earning.

So, uh, we, we talked about AI and obviously its role. Within your organization, just in terms of creating content and building the engine. And I, I think that's such a super cool example. I'm curious your thoughts on where AI is gonna play a, a continued role and, and increasing role in the consumer journey. You know, what we're seeing is holiday season is as many as 80% of consumers, uh, are saying that they're using AI at least during one time in the consumer journey, whether it's the research or the consideration phase. Do you see in 2026, this sort of like agentic-powered shopping becoming mainstream? And what is Unilever doing about just the big shift we're seeing with the internet essentially starting to have a new front door from a traditional search engine like Google to more, you know, LLMs that help them along the journey?

Yeah, I think once you start using those like generative engines to help you do things, it's really hard to go back to like an old search model. So I think as the penetration drives, like you're going to get more and more usage of them. And then you're right, as like, because there's a difference between like just AI answer engines and genuine agentic where they're like taking action for you. And I do a bit of both personally, but I, I can see how it's going to explode. So I'll talk a bit about how I, what I think it's going to do for the consumer journey, because I think that's such That's such an important way because lots of businesses are only looking at AI right now. Yeah, yeah. But don't you think lots of businesses are looking at it from like productivity in their own business, whereas actually the shift in how our kind of like, like existential change in how they'll behave is like really going to be big.

So you're right. 100%.

Yeah.

How many markets has Google made? How many brands has it made? Because it was— it's become a verb. And now all of a sudden, if we're saying that the entire journey is shifting, That just is going to create massive business opportunities and it's happening fast.

Massive, massive, massive. So there's a couple of things here. There's like, there's the stuff you can do today, which is like, how are you showing up in these LLM searches? What's, what's making you show up or not show up? So we're doing all of that work and we're like really making sure. But if you do the work, what you find out quite quickly is the people that show up are the people that are authentically asking answering the questions that these people have because it's not— because people are, people are saying, I have eczema on my face, or I have eczema, like, what do I do? What's my routine? And they're getting really lovely personalized answers with, you know. And something I think is going to really be important next year is how consumers are getting better at prompting and giving context about themselves. So I don't— it's not going to be like a keyword strategy because the prompts are going to be so unique, it's going to be hard for marketers to like buy people out.

Hyper-personalized. Exactly. Yeah. And also the models, as they learn more about you, you're not going to have to say what shoe size you are. You're not going to have to say how old your kids are. The model's going to know that stuff. So it's going to make, to your point, it's going to make the journey so much easier for consumers, but it's not like the traditional way that consumers had these sort of one-shot search queries.

Yeah. And they haven't commercialized it yet. So you're right, there's a whole opportunity curve at the moment of how you get behind it. So I think there's some stuff you can do today, some like hygiene stuff. But when you get into it, you realize it all comes back to just really making products that people— and this is— I'll come back to this Desire at Scale thing because the reason we call it Desire at Scale is we feel like we want our marketing to tap into like, I need this. It goes beyond like there's a rational I want to buy this product, but we've created these, these, these brands that people need in their lives. And I think that is what, if you can truly do that, like in an authentic way, so you've got the, you know, the right technology, the right product experience, the right packaging, but also everything I just talked about in terms of earning attention and being truly relevant to their lives. If you can create that, I think the LLMs will pick it up because you've actually tapped into what really people care about. And then of course there's all the tactical stuff you'll be able to do around it that people are going to all have to get their heads around, which, which is a lot of the work I'm doing at the moment. But one of the things you mentioned that I love is this agentic shopping, which I think will evolve to not just be agentic shopping, but like your personalized agent. I think everyone will have this personalized agent that will help them with all aspects of their life. So, you know, I have one, I've created one that helps me with like prioritization and managing my time. But you could easily see how that could start making recommendations for shopping and doing my weekly grocery shop for me, doing meal planning for me. And then as soon as that's tapped into, you know, my, my shopping, my grocery shopping, like e-commerce site, then it will complete the whole transaction for me and I won't even have to think about it. And the stuff will come up and the meal plan will be ready and that will be the week done. And you can see how that's going to evolve into many different, different parts of people's lives. And so it's, it's— we sometimes talk about it as like winning the machines. It's just like another audience that we're going to have to understand how they're making those recommendations and how we show up in the right way for that, for those brands.

Absolutely. So shifting gears, we wrap up here. Selena, you know, you have been at Unilever for nearly 20 years, and a lot of our guests on the podcast you know, they jump around a lot and they'll, they'll be at one place for 3 years, one year, one place for 5. What are some of the benefits do you think you've gained by going through this two-decade journey with the same company? Albeit it's a huge company that is a house of brand, so you can obviously jump on globally and brand the brand, but you're still within the same organization, within the same kind of cultural pillars. What type of benefits do you think that has provided you as you grow professionally?

Yeah, I I think the first is what you said, like, the reason I've stayed for this long is because every single job I've had, or like every other job I've had, has felt like I'm working for a different company in terms of the opportunity they've given me. Because, well, especially me, you know, you can see I'm in a transformation job, like I need that stimulation of like a new challenge, pioneering, doing something different. So I think this company is big enough so you feel like you've You've done lots of different things. And in my career, I've done everything from running e-commerce to being the CEO of an incubator to what I do now, to doing a classic brand role. So it gives you that variety. Um, and, and I've had real depth of experience in many different places because I know the place. I can get stuff done quickly. I understand the people, I have the relationships. And, um, I think something that's really important when you're in a business for that long is not becoming institutionalized and like part of the, um, you know, letting it too much infect you and always feeling like you have that outside perspective and that you can provoke and challenge. Um, because that's the risk, I think, if you, if you stay somewhere longer.

Um, right, Stockholm syndrome, as they say. You want to be the revolution with any institution if you can.

Yeah, I've always tried to like keep a really fresh perspective so you don't feel like, you know, you're, you're the person bringing the freshness and provocation and driving the change and not kind of having that nostalgia and that kind of, oh, this is how things are done around here. But yeah, personally for me, it's enabled me to get a real depth of experience in many different places because I didn't have to worry about all the culture stuff because I know the people and I know how to get things done. So I can, I can do that and then I can get really deep into e-commerce. Or creator economy or AI, and I can get really into my job quite quickly and actually start delivering quite quickly because I know the place.

Yeah, I love that answer. So, as we wrap up here, you know, we often ask our guests if there is a saying or mantra that has helped sort of encapsulate their professional journey. I was just wondering if you have anything that comes to mind that you think really hits the nail on the head in that regard.

I don't know if it's like a perfect phrase, But I always, um, for me, my mantra is about always having a growth mindset. So it's always about, I'm always thinking, what, what, what haven't we done yet? It's not, it's not like something can be done or can't be done. It's like, what's the possibility? What's it going to take? Um, what, what do I need to learn next? And always feeling like you're on that learning, um, journey. And there's nothing's ever a kind of yes or no. It's about really trying to find the next possibility and, and and kind of level up and learn something new. And because I think if you keep a learning mindset rather than a knowledge mindset, I think you grow faster, but also you achieve more growth in whatever, you know, job you're doing or whatever ambition that you've got. You know, you're always keeping your mind open, going, I'm here to learn, I'm not here to just know everything. Um, I think that's something, and it's also enjoyable to do that because it's really fulfilling.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's hard to teach that curiosity and that learning mindset, but I think for those who are great at what they do and frankly love what they do, that never really goes away.

Yeah, I think it's really important to keep the curiosity. It's sad when people lose that. And I think curiosity is going to be one of the defining success factors for people in this like agentic autonomous, because I think that curiosity A, it's gonna get more out of the AI because you are gonna be really pushing to get benefits from it, but B, you are gonna be coming up with the innovation that is the next thing that the AI can't do. So you're gonna bring value to that.

I couldn't agree more. Yep, you're gonna, you know, be the pace car, so to speak, for innovation, which it sounds like you've been for Unilever and will continue to be. So thank you so much, Selena, for taking the time to share your wisdom and your stories with our audience today. I have no doubt they're gonna get a ton of value from it.

It was fun to chat. Thanks, Matt. Take care of yourself.

Absolutely. On behalf of Suzy and I, we team. Thanks again to Selena Sykes, Beauty and Wellbeing VP and Head of Digital Marketing at Unilever, for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Till next time, see you soon, everyone.