A handful of brands
carry almost the
whole company.
Dove, Hellmann's, Knorr, Rexona, Vaseline. Unilever's 'Power Brands' are 78% of sales — and they grow faster than the rest.
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✦ The bottom line
Unilever's moat is a small set of giant, trusted brands. Its Power Brands — its biggest names — now make up 78% of turnover and grew 4.3%, faster than the company overall. The strategy is deliberate: pour resources into the winners, let the small stuff go.
↓ the brief below
✦ Teach me
Pricing power, through brands
A brand like Dove or Hellmann's earns pricing power — the ability to charge a bit more than a no-name rival and keep customers anyway. Decades of advertising and consistent quality build that trust.
Unilever's bet is concentration: focus money and attention on ~30 Power Brands instead of spreading it across hundreds. Fewer, bigger, stronger.
Wall Street calls this
Brand equity / brand concentration
The 20% operating margin (Chapter 2) is the proof the pricing power is real. It's a touch below US rival P&G's ~24% — a reminder that not all consumer-goods moats are equally deep.
Share of turnover from Power Brands · fiscal year 2025
78
%
More than three-quarters of sales come from the biggest brands — and that share is rising as Unilever concentrates on its winners. Those brands grew 4.3%, ahead of the group's 3.5%.
Source · 20-F · Strategic Report — Power Brands · FY2025 · Filed Mar 12, 2026
Concentrating on a few power brands sounds obvious, but it took Unilever years — and a lot of pruning — to get here. The company has spent the last decade deciding what it isn't as much as what it is.
The long road to focus
1929
Unilever is born from the merger of Britain's Lever Brothers (soap) and the Dutch Margarine Unie. A consumer-goods giant from day one.
2000s–2010s
Sprawls into hundreds of brands across food, home, and personal care. Acquires Dollar Shave Club, premium beauty, and more.
2020
Unifies its old dual British/Dutch structure into a single company, Unilever PLC, listed in London.
2024–2025
Launches a productivity programme, concentrates on ~30 *Power Brands*, and prepares to spin off ice cream. Fewer, bigger, sharper.
From the 20-F · the focus strategy in Unilever's words
Growth was led by our Power Brands, which delivered 4.3% USG. These brands now account for 78% of turnover, reflecting our ambition to concentrate resources behind our biggest brands.
↳ The strategy in one sentence: feed the winners. The faster growth of the Power Brands versus the whole company is the evidence the focus is working.
Source · 20-F · Strategic Report — Power Brands · FY2025 · Filed Mar 12, 2026
✓
Strong
A focused set of trusted mega-brands at 78% of sales, growing faster than the group. A real moat — if a notch shallower than P&G's.