What happens when a 150-year-old brand lets a single viral video dictate its identity, even temporarily?
A Korean creator named Min Day Lee posted a video showing her Vaseline products. Because the Korean language has no “v” sound, her pronunciation came out sounding like “Baseline.”
The video went viral and millions of people watched it. People started repeating the same mispronunciation as a joke.
Instead of correcting it, Vaseline joined the joke. It temporarily changed its Instagram and TikTok display names to “Baseline” and posted a playful statement saying that after “extensive review,” meaning one video with a million views, it decided to rebrand. The brand even jokingly named the creator “CEO of Baseline.”
This was only a marketing stunt and a fun way to ride the viral trend, not an actual permanent name change. Vaseline went back to its original name afterward.