HUL steps up digital advertising, media spends to drive growth for key brands

FMCG giant Hindustan Unilever (HUL) has intended to elevate its media spending and boost digital advertising to drive the growth of key brands. According to Managing Director and CEO Rohit Jawa, brands like 'Lifebuoy, Glow & Lovely, and Nutrition Drinks' are the three brands in the core portfolio that require improvement in performance.

Jawa added that HUL has taken initiatives such as heavy media spending, extensive digital advertising, and product relaunching to improve brand performance over the next quarter. Notably, HUL's 'Personal Care' segment grew 3% with a low-single-digit volume decline as calibrated pricing actions were taken by the company due to commodity inflation.

The turnover of HUL's nutrition drinks, including Horlicks witnessed a decline in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 due to continued category headwinds and the transitionary impact of pack-price architecture change.

"Over the last few years, we have been able to increase penetration by unlocking access while also strengthening market leadership. However, we have been unable to drive consumption as the overall category witnessed a drop in average household consumption. We are taking actions to address this category headwind and improve performance," HUL's CFO Ritesh Tiwari said.

Further, HUL is meticulously balancing its distribution strategy between quick commerce and Kirana stores. According to the CEO, "Recognizing the increasing consumer preference for q-commerce, we have also almost doubled our assortment to fully meet their diverse needs".

Additionally, the FMCG major has created a distributor-inclusive model for the Kirana store. Jawa said the model gives the power of any-time ordering in traditional trade and transparency to retailers.

"With a direct value-weighted distribution of 69%, we are now servicing stores that cumulatively sell over 69% value of our relevant categories," Jawa added.

HUL registered a turnover of Rs 60,680 crore for the fiscal year 2025. The profit for the year stood at Rs 10,644 crore while the total income increased to Rs 62,646 crore.

The company's latest acquisition--Minimalist delivered an annual turnover exceeding Rs 500 crore in FY25. On the other hand, the health and wellbeing brand Oziva scaled up its annual revenue run rate from Rs 100 crore to Rs 400 crore. HUL acquired 90.5% of Minimalist in 2024 and a 51% stake in Iziva in 2022.