LSN : Daily Signals : Stat: Why Gen Z is embracing Country Living

Vaseline turns viral beauty hacks into product line in creator-led innovation shift

Vaseline Originals, Global

UK – Vaseline has transformed viral beauty hacks into a commercial product line, marking a shift towards creator-led innovation in the beauty industry.

Working with Ogilvy Singapore, Unilever’s Vaseline launched Vaseline Originals, a range of products based on verified viral hacks from social media, while crediting and rewarding the original creators behind them. The initiative builds on the Vaseline Verified platform, which won a Cannes Titanium Lion in 2025, whereby users’ ideas were tested by scientists and those that were safe and effective were verified.

The brand identified long-standing viral hacks, including brow taming and primer uses shared by creators such as Jen Chae and Lauren Luke, and developed them into official products. This signals a shift from brand-owned innovation to community-sourced product pipelines, where creators become co-developers and cultural originators of commercial ideas.

The campaign highlights how social media communities are now actively shaping product development, not just influencing marketing, a shift we identified in our Neo-community Market report.

Strategic opportunity

Build structured systems to source ideas directly from creators and customers, using social listening to identify consumer behaviours and convert them into scalable product concepts

Foresight Friday: Ella Murray, strategic creative

: Every Friday, we offer an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, strategic creative Ella Murray reflects on her time celebrating the summer solstice in Finland.

: I’ve just returned from Solstice, a music festival right at the top of Finland that feels truly remote – a place where the landscape becomes increasingly expansive the further north you go.

Arriving felt like unlocking something completely new. Held at a ski resort in Ruka, to reach the festival means taking a ski lift to the top of the mountain.

Here were stages built into the landscape, electronic music, live performances and places to gather, all beneath a sky that never really changes because the sun never sets. Without darkness, everything feels stretched out, like time behaves differently there.

: At a moment when so much of culture is designed to be captured, Solstice felt notable for how inherently immersive it was.

What resonated with me most was the dualities it held at once. One morning I’d be doing yoga followed by the daily sauna ritual. A few hours later, into the endless golden night, I’d be in a packed tent looking out at the horizon.

Solstice Festival, Finland

: The red sun cut through the smoke machines, turning everyone into silhouettes – dancing, talking and connecting. I came away feeling restored, inspired and energised – like I’d channelled my inner wellness anarchist. Less optimisation, more oscillation. Less balance as discipline, more permission to move between intensity and stillness, more ritual and release.

Quote of the week

‘Life at the top comes in many forms’

Solstice, Finland

Stat: Why Gen Z is embracing Country Living

US – Country Living, the Hearst-owned media brand, has recorded 57% year-on-year growth in its All Access membership, an annual subscription spanning print, digital content, newsletters and access to live events.

Although Country Living’s average audience age is 52, its readership is getting younger. According to a spokesperson for the publication, Gen Z and Millennials now make up more than half of its audience – 51%, up from 36% last year (source: A Media Operator).

In our 2024 Remixing the Country Club report, we analysed how fashion and drinks companies are taking cues from traditional country clubs and at the same time imagining them as more inclusive and community-centric.

Country Living’s growth points to a wider reframing of heritage lifestyle codes, as younger consumers embrace analogue hobbies. The brand is expanding around these passion points through niche newsletters and live experiences. Its members-only antiquing newsletter taps into the second-hand collectibles market, while the revived Country Living Fair will return to New York in October 2026, with more than 250 vendors and 15,000 visitors expected.

Strategic opportunity

Create newsletters, events and membership tiers around analogue hobbies and niche interests, turning passive audiences into engaged communities with reasons to subscribe, attend and return