Edu Campanella is Business Group President of Home Care at Unilever, leading an €11 billion business across more than 60 markets. His teams are behind Wonder Wash, the short-cycle laundry innovation that reached more than 35 markets in less than 18 months.
In this episode, Edu joins us to discuss how a mature category like home care can find new growth, what makes an innovation “market making” rather than incremental, and why consumers now see cleaning as a source of joy rather than a chore.
Tune in to hear about:
- Why consumers see home care as joyful, and how spending more time at home changed the category
- What makes an innovation “market making”, and how Wonder Wash grew from a shift to short cycles
- Why a brilliant prototype was sent back to R&D: great performance isn’t enough if consumers must change their habits
- How Unilever turned Europe around by setting bigger ambitions, and why consumers will pay when they see the value
- Why consumers are partly brand owners, and why the first 100 days of a launch are critical
- Why he looks at input metrics, not just output metrics, and the balance between magic and discipline
- How AI is changing formulation and factories, and why early-career talent still needs to do the hard work to learn the business
