Mucking In: How Tati Lindenberg Redefined Unilever's Laundry Empire

Tati Lindenberg has spent nearly six years at the helm of Unilever’s gargantuan £3.7bn laundry platform 'Dirt Is Good' - but she knew the magic of brands long before she found the perfect detergent.

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, her family moved to a small town in Tocantins, deep in the middle of the country, when she was almost four years old.

Within her small, pre-internet world, the bright red logos and crates of neatly arranged Coca-Cola bottles that her father distributed to the north of Brazil captivated her.

"Even back in those days, Coca-Cola had its famous Christmas advertising - and to me it was counterintuitive because where we were living, it would be 38-40 degrees in December. I couldn't understand it, so that entire world of Coca-Cola and a wider world was ingrained in my mind from an early age," Lindenberg explains.

Lindenberg's early enchantment with Coca-Cola was her first glimpse into the power of dazzling brand storytelling - a principle that has guided her approach to marketing ever since.

And that instinct shaped the way she reimagined one of the world’s biggest laundry platforms. When Lindenberg - who has worked at Unilever in various roles since 2004 - took the helm of 'Dirt Is Good' as marketing VP in 2020, she brought her signature focus on igniting a spark of magic around the category.

During Paul Polman’s tenure as CEO (2009–2019), Dirt Is Good focused on unstructured play, celebrating how getting messy could spark creativity and build resilience in children.

"When I came in, we realised that approach was losing a bit of impact and making the brand very soft. We needed to make the brand a bit more modern so we evolved it into the idea that dirt is a force for good, and showed kids carrying out activities like collecting rubbish from the beach, or planting trees," Lindenberg explains.

While this focus on collective action resonated during the Covid-19 era, her latest (and extremely zeitgeisty) play has been to shine a light on sport, encouraging people of all genders, shapes and sizes to run around and exercise fearlessly.

This has led to partnerships with the likes of Olympian Usain Bolt, and most notably a two-year tie-up with Arsenal, which has featured players including Bukayo Saka, Leah Williamson and Beth Mead - tackling themes like sweat, the power of sentimental autographs, and stains of all kinds.

Working on a brand that spans over 60 markets has not deterred Lindenberg from ensuring that each campaign is cleanly centred on a laundry-based insight - Usain Bolt's work with Persil featured a focus on short-cycle washes, while more recent works with Arsenal have put a spotlight on period stains.

"Without the laundry context, I'm just doing a beautiful purposeful campaign. But, so what?," Lindenberg asks.

"That's the first fundamental. Then I overlay this with a relevant category insight - something that is out there in culture. For example, stains are the first layer; the second is girls stopping sports," she continues.

Lindenberg’s ability to connect product performance with cultural relevance that resonates across distinct regions has helped her continually redefine laundry and ensure that 'Dirt Is Good' maintains its status among the top three laundry offerings.

As 'Dirt Is Good' continues to evolve in its second decade, her approach is a top-tier lesson in brand building, purpose-driven marketing, and creative leadership.

In conversation with Creative Salon, Lindenberg opens up about the instincts that guide her, the campaigns that have shaped her, and the future she’s building - stain by stain, cycle by cycle.

The World Of Marketing, According to Tati Lindenberg

What do you enjoy most about being a marketer?

I’ve always been good at leading and galvanising people. Growing up, my brother was the creative one - he’s a musician and music therapist - and I was the one who enabled that creativity. We grew up with a dynamic where he would create stuff and I would sell his stuff.

Mostly, I love seeing people enjoy products. I’ve worked in laundry for over a decade, and nothing gives me more joy than visiting someone’s home and seeing clothes hung up, and people enjoying the fragrance. That kind of everyday interaction is deeply satisfying.

I also love working in big teams and making things happen.

What's a campaign you're particularly proud of?

'Every Stain Should Be Part of the Game', launched this year with Arsenal. I love it for many reasons. I’ve spent a long time in home care - though I’ve also worked in hair and skincare - but laundry has been a big part of my life. Sometimes I wonder if anyone at Unilever has worked in laundry longer than I have!

Because I know the category so well, I understand the pain points. Period stains are among the most frequent, yet laundry brands rarely talk about them. During our research, we found that 68 per cent of women and girls don’t know how to remove them. I didn’t know myself until I joined the category.

Six in ten girls fear playing sports due to period leaks. That insight, combined with the category truth, led to the campaign. It’s close to my heart - not just as a woman, but as someone who’s wanted to speak about this issue for years.

Two years ago, we launched 'Wash Away the Taboo' at Cannes. It was more graphic, and people at Unilever were terrified. I was told off. Very few countries wanted to invest. But I was stubborn. I said, "I’ll find a way to bring this back."

Over time, I evolved the idea. We embedded it in the 'Dirt Is Good' brand and connected it to the cultural insight around girls and sport. I learned my lesson - and we made it happen.

What makes a good agency partner?

One that is fast, of course. Especially nowadays in the world of AI, I don't push agencies to be fast at creating, but to be fast at producing.

I like to emphasise the importance of momentum: when we see something, we need to go fast, and we also need to be collaborative.

I love the back and forth, and I love to protect very good ideas. I always tell teams not to overtest. Of course, we validate with previews, but when it comes to qualitative testing, or opinions, people always have opinions. Okay, but I have a different one!

Is there a campaign you look at and wish you'd done?

Vaseline - which was a big winner at Cannes.

The reason I adore that campaign is because innovation starts with creativity. But I like to think the other way around: sometimes you look at different things and come up with an innnovation.

What I love about 'Vaseline Verified' is that it is based on a product truth. I love the fact that they identified that a lot of people use Vaseline in a multiplicity of ways and leverage that by working with influencers

I strongly believe that brands in the future will have less and less control of narratives, and it will be a more shared authorship of brands.

And for me, 'Vaseline Verified' is taking that idea of controlling the narrative to a new level.

Because actually, it's based on consumers saying, "Well, this is how I use Vaseline. This is my truth, my narrative, my product." And then Vaseline is actually coming and saying, "Wait a minute. What are you doing? Yes, it's verified. I can control back my narrative and tell you that it is verified."

They had a really great insight, but on a deeper, more human level, it's a really beautiful tension point on who owns the narrative of the brand.

What frustrates you most as a marketer?

The frustration comes in – how can we be in less of an ivory tower or work in less of a silo and communicate more.

Obviously you can do that via AI, you can do that via social. Because of the way that the digital world is, with all the algorithms and so on, the frustration I have is that we are becoming very, very biased. I see this happening quite a lot. People almost develop a campaign for the group of people they know, right? It’s almost as if we are living in a world where each different brand has its own circle of fans, and when you create something that you love, that your friends love, it's potentially not reflective of what’s out there.

I'm afraid that we might be even more biased in the future. As marketers we see the aesthetics that we like, the brands that we like. Our reference becomes that. But there is a whole world outside that which we don't see anymore. And my frustration is, how can you remove yourself from your biases, and look at opinions that are potentially not the ones that you would like to hear?

How does the role of the creator economy impact how you think about brands and control?

Some days I am more scared and I feel that as marketers we're not going to have control.

But as with everything in life, you believe what you want to believe. What I've been doing is to make sure that everything about the brand is saying something with clarity and authority. By doing so, people understand what you're about and they can play around that.

One of the best examples of this is Beyoncé. Amid all the rumours about her relationship with Jay Z - she took control of the narrative herself and released the album Lemonade two years later.

That's good marketing strategy - for me, it's all in how and when you react.

What makes you hopeful for the future?

I love the 'Dirt Is Good' brand. I worked with it before as a brand manager and then I’ve had the honour of coming back to the brand five and a half years ago.

It’s a brand that I love because it has a strong point of view that has been relevant and maybe it’s even more relevant now - with screens and phones. Because of my Coca-Cola dreams when I was younger, I always loved to see brands with a point of view.

Nowadays, you see so many brands that are popular for one year. The longevity of 'Dirt Is Good' makes me incredibly proud of working on the brand.

I’m not saying launching a brand is easy because it’s not, but I do feel that with the AI tools nowadays, you can create an incredible brand, put it in PowerPoint slides, and so on. But I always tell people, make it exist and make it relevant for two decades. Then we can talk.

For me the most important thing is not only to keep the brad consistent but to keep the business growing.

I'm incredibly proud to say that when I came to the brand, our global penetration was around 42 per cent and now it's 53 per cent.