As a leading hand and body care brand, Vaseline was looking to leverage its power to address the inequities in skin healthcare and drive access to proper dermatology care for people of color, where the risk of misdiagnosis, avoidable disease, and even death is higher for people with highly melanated skin.
Purpose and Vaseline partnered on a year of brand purpose refinement and activism planning in support of a consumer-facing campaign about equity in skin healthcare. As Vaseline prepared for launch, Purpose continued the partnership by bringing oversight, a racial equity lens, and social impact expertise to the strategy and creative, including advice on authentic community engagement, influencers and partnership, and storytelling. Purpose’s strategic inputs continue to inform Vaseline’s online organizing tactics and brand purpose campaign creative.
Challenge
In the field of skin healthcare, 47% of dermatologists claim their training on skin conditions for skin of color is inadequate. The result is a matter of life and death — for example, Black Americans are 4x more likely than white patients to be diagnosed with melanoma after their cancer has spread.
As a leader in the skin healthcare industry, Vaseline needed to leverage its power to address this inequity and expand access to dermatological care for all.
Opportunity
As a brand, Vaseline knew that the field of dermatology underserved patients with dark skin; to address this issue meaningfully, they needed a brand purpose & impact approach that would make a systemic difference.
To bring their brand purpose to life, Purpose and Vaseline partnered to refine their activism strategy and launch a consumer-facing campaign that would increase awareness of the issue and equitable access to dermatological care.
Theory of Change
Working with Vaseline’s brand team, dermatology board, and marketing partners, Purpose helped Vaseline develop an impact strategy to inform their brand purpose campaign launch and advised them on how to tackle this problem from a systemic perspective.
Our team brought strategic oversight, a racial equity lens, and social impact expertise to the strategy and creative, including advice on authentic community engagement, influencers and partnership, and storytelling.
Purpose helped Vaseline choose partners at every step of the systemic breakdown in skin healthcare — from funding curriculum for post-grad dermatologists; to partnering with Hued, a platform matching potential patients of color with dermatologists who can treat dark skin; to using a blend of influencer-led media, public health-led infotainment, and higher-touch organizing tactics to reach their base at scale while building a supportive, well-informed brand community.
Purpose’s activism approach has guided Vaseline’s ongoing equity storytelling and campaigning, including its #SkinCareforAll social campaign, video, and a series of conversations with influencers such as Regina King.
Vaseline now has a holistic, equitable brand impact approach that is closely aligned to their core product and competency, provides tangible interventions at different systemic points, and drives awareness of a real life-or-death social challenge to make it better understood.
Vaseline has made strides in advancing training for dermatologists to accurately treat skin of color, connecting people to culturally competent dermatologists, and providing access to resources and education about the importance of accurately treating and diagnosing skin. In 2022, Vaseline continued its partnership with Hued with the launch of See My Skin, the first online database designed to allow patients to look up skin healthcare conditions on skin of color.
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