I always thought corporate anniversaries were lame and unimaginative. Sort of a marketing cop-out. Unless, of course, you think about how to make it fun.
How refreshing it was to read about a brilliant idea from the folks at Unilever and Vaseline to celebrate their 140th anniversary. Contest, anyone?
Submit your creative, alternate use for the product via Twitter (you got it: 140 characters or less) or Facebook and they’ll select the top 140 ways.
Figures the product was developed by a guy from Brooklyn:
Vaseline Petroleum Jelly was first discovered in 1859 by Robert Augustus Chesebrough, a 22 year old chemist from Brooklyn, NY. Chesebrough travelled to Pennsylvania to study the oil extraction and refinement process and was immediately drawn to a by-product of the oil refinery process used by the riggers to help aid the healing of cuts and burns – petrolatum. The product was found to have remarkable skin-healing properties. He took some of the paraffin-like substance home with him and after testing discovered he could extract a skin-friendly version of the material. In 1870 Chesebrough introduced this product to the public as Vaseline Petroleum Jelly and by 1974 it was being sold nationwide at the rate of a jar a minute with most medical professions recognizing it as a standard remedy for skin complaints. Today it is triple purified and even safe to use on lips.
OK, so he was born in London. But he did reset his career nicely, don’t you think?