Herbalife
Building a global brand strategy that speaks every market’s language
Overview and Challenge
Herbalife’s challenge wasn’t awareness; it was alignment and awareness. With distributors in nearly 100 countries and competing cultural narratives about wellness, business, and community, the brand needed a unified strategy that preserved its global identity while allowing each region (and distributor) to express its own story authentically.
I helped bridge that divide — turning insights, cultural nuance, and content strategy into governance frameworks that allowed Herbalife to scale storytelling without losing relevance.
My Role at a Glance
As part of Herbalife’s global brand transformation, I collaborated across strategy, creative, and digital teams to help define how the brand could flex across cultures. I co-developed the editorial framework for the new global website, supported the glocalization strategy through research and C-suite presentations, and led social strategy for the Cristiano Ronaldo campaign - ensuring content could perform across markets and have long-term relevance.
Key Project Snapshots
1. Global Website and Editorial Strategy
Worked on the content architecture and editorial guidelines for Herbalife’s website re-launch, ensuring brand consistency and compliance across diverse legal systems and cultures. The site debuted at the brand’s conference in Poland, serving as the cornerstone of the rebrand.
2. Cristiano Ronaldo Partnership
As lead social strategist, I developed the creative brief for a campaign partnership with the world’s most followed celebrity, Cristiano Ronaldo. With only three hours of shoot time and a multilingual audience, the challenge was designing assets that felt authentic to the athlete’s actual use of the product, would perform across regions and platforms, and garner engagement through a full-year campaign cycle.
3. Glocalization Governance
Partnered with global strategy leads to build a “think global, act local” framework that balanced brand standardization with regional flexibility. I contributed to the creation of scalable governance principles — defining tone, imagery, and storytelling parameters that empowered markets to localize content without losing global cohesion.
4. Poland Fieldwork: Ground Truth and Cultural Translation
During Herbalife’s EMEA distributor event in Kraków, I conducted interviews with distributors from 12 countries (often through interpreters) to capture authentic stories of motivation, belonging, and community impact. These conversations informed content that reflected real distributor voices and made participants feel seen within the global brand narrative. This was my most useful experience and fondest memory while working on this account.
Outcomes and Impact
Stock value increased following the rebrand, signaling renewed market confidence
Ronaldo campaign generated ~400 Million global views and strong engagement across Herbalife’s markets
Distributor frameworks adopted across all major regions
Editorial strategy launched globally, showcased live at the international distributor conference
My POV
Honestly, I joined the Herbalife account as its biggest skeptic.. and that turned out to be my greatest asset. Coming in with healthy doubt pushed me to understand what it would really take to earn trust, both from consumers and from myself. And I was committed to honesty in every project I touched.
Striving for an open perspective helped me learn how different Herbalife’s operations and reputation varied across the world. In some regions, distributors were seen as local heroes running community wellness hubs. In others, Herbalife was viewed with suspicion due to past controversies. I was able to elevate the systems that worked well while steering potentially misleading messaging towards transparency.