Dr Greve — from heritage soap product to market leading skincare brand.

A problem worth solving

In 2016, Orkla Home & Personal Care was about to lose its licence for several key Unilever brands — including Vaseline Intensive Care. A significant revenue stream, shelf space, and market position were all at risk. The easy response would have been to defend what remained. We chose a different bet.

Dr Greve had been a Norwegian household name since the 1890s — trusted, if unglamorous. Its equity was built on intimate wash and a niche children's bar soap. The question was whether we could credibly stretch it into a full skincare brand with genuine mass-market appeal.

My conviction was yes. But only if we treated it like a brand relaunch, not a line extension. Sixteen new SKUs across three categories and six segments — all built on a new brand platform from the ground up.

Nordic beauty on Nordic terms

We repositioned Dr Greve around a single idea: honest skincare rooted in Nordic simplicity. Clean formulations, clear ingredient stories, and a design aesthetic that felt contemporary and slightly premium — without drifting away from the brand's accessible roots.

The reference point was what Dove had done globally with its "Real Beauty" campaign — but translated into something more specific and ownable. What Dove did for women worldwide, we wanted to do for Nordic skin, on Nordic terms. Our campaigns celebrated real Nordic skin moments: snowflakes on lashes for a winter skin campaign, sun-kissed natural summer glow for the aloe vera range. Real benefits for real Nordic conditions.

In a category where everyone looks premium, we chose to look honest. That turned out to be the premium move.

The design decision that changed everything

For packaging, we made a deliberate choice: bring in a studio that understood Scandinavian aesthetics at the highest level, instead of a more traditional FMCG packaging agency.

Following my recommendation, we engaged Neue Design Studio — the Oslo studio behind the redesign of the Norwegian passport, which had just been celebrated in The Guardian for its quiet Nordic minimalism. The logic was simple: if they could make a government document feel like a design object, they could make a hand cream feel like a considered purchase.

The result was packaging that looked like it belonged in a Copenhagen pharmacy or a Stockholm design boutique — clean typography, honest colour-coding by range, zero clutter. It signalled quality before anyone read a single ingredient.

Building the full commercial case

The creative work was inseparable from the commercial one. Alongside the brand platform and packaging, we built the entire business architecture: portfolio, pricing and shelf strategy, retail buy-in presentations, legal clearances, and financial scenarios.

As brand and project manager, I worked directly with our CEO, CFO, and legal counsel, alongside in-house innovation teams, external agencies, and Neue. Every function had to move in sync — R&D developing formulations, finance modelling margins, retail partners committing shelf space before a single product had sold.

The result

The relaunch delivered 124% sales growth in year one and market leadership across multiple FMCG segments. More durably: the brand platform, packaging system, and shelf architecture built in 2016 is still intact today. Dr Greve remains a market leader a decade later, still expanding into adjacent categories.