Should We Invest More in Best-Selling Brands? The Conditions of Focus Through Unilever

Does allocating more budget to best-selling brands accelerate their growth? Unilever's performance in the first half of 2026 makes it difficult to avoid this question. Power brands, which the company grouped as core brands, accounted to 78% of sales and recorded a 6.0% underlying sales growth. The group's overall underlying sales growth rate was 4.8%. While the fact that core brands performed better is clear, that margin alone does not lead to the conclusion that all subsequent investment funds should be channeled into the same place. What management must decide is not whether to acknowledge an already large business, but where to allocate the next resources. Focusing on leading brands makes it possible to leverage scale and execution power, but it also carries the risk of prematurely cutting off the growth potential remaining in smaller brands. Conversely, investing evenly across all br…