Henkel's Oriol Marín: Technology Doesn't Replace Marketing, It Elevates It

Consumer goods giant Henkel is marking its 150th anniversary this year, and its marketing leadership is using the milestone to deliver a message that resonates far beyond the detergent aisle: in an era dominated by data, artificial intelligence and automation, brand building remains a fundamentally human discipline.

In an interview with Spanish trade publication MarketingDirecto.com, Oriol Marín, Marketing Director of Henkel Consumer Brands Ibérica, explained how the company behind brands such as Wipp Express, Schwarzkopf, La Toja and Palette understands modern marketing, and why he argues technology's role is to elevate the craft rather than replace it.

Henkel operates in more than 70 countries, and its products reach eight out of every ten households in Spain, where the company has been present since 1961.

Rather than converting the anniversary into a direct commercial push, Henkel is running it as a company-wide platform. "We are not working on it as a product campaign, but as a major company platform to highlight who we are, where we come from and, above all, the impact we continue to generate today," Marín told MarketingDirecto (quotes translated from Spanish).

The initiative has a strong internal dimension (employee celebrations, an extra day off for birthdays, a special share-purchase program) built around a simple idea: "No company reaches 150 years solely because of its brands or its innovations, but because of the people who have made it evolve generation after generation."

Externally, the campaign leans on Henkel's economic and social footprint in Spain, including its strategic plant in Montornès del Vallès (Barcelona). The global motto, "Future? Ready!", captures the central insight: accumulated experience only has value if it makes you better prepared for the future. Or in Marín's words, the brands that endure are not simply the ones with history, but those "capable of turning that history into credibility, innovation and vision for the future."

Managing a portfolio as diverse as Henkel's, from detergents like Wipp Express and Somat to hair colorant Palette, a category leader in Europe, requires coherence without uniformity. "In Henkel we don't sell products, we sell brands," Marín said. "A brand is much more than a formula or a functionality. It is the sum of efficacy, trust, innovation, availability, visibility and emotional connection."

That means a shared strategic architecture with execution tailored by brand, category and target: functional efficacy leads in high-penetration, promotion-heavy categories like laundry, while emotional and aspirational positioning carries more weight in beauty.

Henkel invests around 3% of global sales in R&D, but Marín framed innovation as far broader than formulas: more sustainable packaging, cold-water and short-cycle washing solutions, and new communication formats. A recent example: the got2b and Somat activation with HyperGram Experience, an immersive 360º holographic retail experience launched for the first time in Spain.

On media, his view is pragmatic: "Television remains relevant, but it is no longer sufficient." Brand building now spans social, e-commerce, retail media, influencers and digital touchpoints that accompany the purchase decision.

The interview's central thesis is also its headline. For Marín, data, AI and automation allow marketers to move from an aggregated view of the consumer to a dynamic, actionable one: identifying patterns, optimizing assortments and measuring campaign efficacy in near real time. "But there is something important: technology doesn't replace marketing, it elevates it," he said. "The great challenge remains human and strategic: understanding what really moves the consumer, what cultural tension sits behind a choice, what functional or emotional need a brand resolves."

His summary of the balance: "Data helps us listen better. AI helps us decide better. And automation helps us execute better. But brand building still requires judgment, creativity, empathy and a clear long-term vision."

Marín's framing mirrors what we see daily in creator marketing. Technology, including our own Envisioner platform, is extraordinary at discovery, vetting, fraud detection and measurement: the listening, deciding and executing layers. What it cannot do is judge whether a creator's community will genuinely embrace a brand, read the cultural temperature of a market, or build the trust that makes a partnership convert instead of just impression.

Whether the category is laundry detergent or iGaming, the pattern holds: brands that treat AI as a substitute for marketing judgment get efficient mediocrity; brands that use it to elevate human expertise get compounding advantage. The 150-year lesson from Henkel is that tools change, but the companies that endure are the ones that keep turning history into vision, and technology into better human decisions.

Source: MarketingDirecto.com — interview with Oriol Marín, Marketing Director of Henkel Consumer Brands Ibérica

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