Tati Lindenberg on dirt, desire and protecting good ideas

George White may be new to the 10 Days dating scene, but his first match as part of the 10 Dates x 10 Days interview series was hard to beat. On a sunlit day in Cannes, our co-founder and chief strategy officer sat down with Tati Lindenberg, CMO of Unilever Home Care, for a conversation that covered dirt, desire, taboos, partnership, creators, Cannes Lions and the surprisingly delicate business of keeping a good idea alive.

Tati now oversees seven Unilever power brands, including Dirt Is Good, Comfort, Cif, Domestos and Sunlight. It means she works in one of marketing’s most deceptively difficult spaces: home care. A category people need, but rarely desire. As George noted, while home care is “in many ways, a low-interest category,” Tati has helped make it something people care about.

“Nobody likes doing laundry or cleaning their homes,” she said. “They like to enjoy their homes. They like to enjoy themselves.” That is the shift at the heart of her work. Stop selling the chore. Start selling the life around it.

Dirt becomes desire

The brilliance of Dirt Is Good is that it does not try to make home care interesting by simply extolling product benefits and claims. It makes it interesting by changing the meaning of the mess. Dirt becomes evidence. Of play. Of sport. Of life being properly lived. The product still matters, of course, but the brand has earned enough meaning over two decades to let the emotional idea lead.

As Tati explained, “Dirt Is Good was created 20 years ago… it was really about reframing the meaning of dirt from an enemy to an ally.” That meaning has compounded over time. In some markets, the brand still needs to lean harder into product performance. In others, the emotional idea can lead because the product has already earned belief. “Now we reach a point that 80% of our advertising and communication is all about the idea of getting dirty,” Tati said, with product proof there “just as a reminder.”

But the story has had to evolve. Twenty years ago, parents needed permission to let their kids get messy. Today, many parents are trying to pull children away from screens and back outside. The idea has stayed the same. The cultural context has changed.

From taboo to teamwork

That evolution sits behind Dirt Is Good’s work with Arsenal Women, a partnership George was keen to dig into. The partnership began with a campaign on period stains, still one of the most judged stains in sport and culture, and quickly became a lesson in what happens when a brand is willing to be challenged.

The original line was “Wash Away the Taboo.” But when it was shared with the Arsenal players, they pushed back. “They hated it,” Tati said. “They said, ‘We’re not going to participate… because that doesn’t represent what we believe about period stains.’”

Their challenge made the work stronger. The campaign became “Every Stain Should Be Part of the Game”, confronting the double standard that sees blood in sport as a badge of bravery, unless it is a period stain. The message was clear: periods should never stop anyone from playing the game.

That honesty helped build a deeper relationship between Dirt Is Good and the Arsenal players. It also helped set up the next campaign, “It Starts Outside”, which shifted the story from stigma to the role of outdoor play in building confidence, skill and a lifelong love of sport.

Using real childhood photographs of Arsenal players, the campaign showed that before they were elite athletes, they were children outside: getting muddy, kicking balls, falling over and living the idea long before it became advertising.

As Tati put it, for the work to be credible, “We needed real pictures. We couldn’t stage.” That is the difference between a partnership and a sponsorship. Arsenal did not just amplify the message. They shaped it.

Protect the idea

George and Tati also talked about how fragile good ideas can be inside big organisations. Not because people want to kill them, but because too many opinions, too early, can smooth away what made them interesting in the first place.

Tati’s advice to her team is simple: “Protect a good idea. Just protect it.” She compares good ideas to babies. “They are born, you need to look after them,” she said. “You need to protect, nurture, and then when you know that the idea has legs, then you let it go.”

In practical terms, that means keeping the circle small, respecting the creative and knowing when an idea is not ready for the full force of the organisation. It sounds gentle, but it is not. It is one of the hardest commercial disciplines in modern marketing.

Reach is not enough

The conversation then turned to creators, and the scale of the shift happening inside Unilever. As Tati explained, the business has shifted 50% of its media investment to digital, with 50% of that going to creators. It is a significant signal of where culture, media and influence are heading.

But for Tati, creators are not simply a new media line on a plan. They are not rented reach. They are people who can carry, challenge and remix brand meaning.

For Dirt Is Good, creators are chosen through communities: families, sports fandoms and fitness. Reach matters, but belief matters more. Tati shared that one creator, despite being a brilliant storyteller with serious scale, admitted they did not like their child getting dirty.

That was enough for Tati to pass. Her response was simple: “Thank you very much.” Because without shared belief, the work would not land. Creators, she said, need to be able to “remix our brand meaning.” But that only works if there are shared values in the first place.

From backpack to big wins

Five years ago, Tati arrived in Cannes with a backpack, no dinners, no real agenda and a home care campaign many people would not have expected to see on the Lions stage. She came anyway. That first leap became a Bronze Lion.

Then came another. Then came a year with nothing. Then she came back again. This year, Unilever Home Care had its best-ever Cannes result, with work including “It Starts Outside,” “Dirt Is Glory” and Cif’s “Play My Name.”

For a category often dismissed as low-interest, it is a reminder that creativity does not belong only to the obvious places. It belongs wherever there is behaviour to shift, culture to understand and a brand brave enough to make people care.

When George asked for the most overrated word in marketing, Tati did not hesitate: “Authenticity.” Not because being real does not matter, but because the word has been used until it has lost its edge. As she put it, “When everything is authentic, nothing is authentic.”

Her advice to future marketers was just as direct: “Be resilient.” Not everyone gets the biggest brand, budget, or brief. You play the deck of cards you have been given, and you try to win with it.

By the end, George called Tati his new marketing crush. But really, the crush was on the thinking: resilient, commercially sharp, culturally awake and determined enough to make even dirt feel desirable.