Overview
- A video by South Korean creator Min Day Lee that pronounced “Vaseline” as “Baseline” went viral, with multiple outlets reporting about 36 million views after the clip spread online.
- Following the clip’s spread on Thursday, Aug. 27, Vaseline posted a mock official statement, changed some Instagram profiles to a ‘Baseline’ logo, and reposted the original video.
- The company publicly credited Min Day Lee and jokingly appointed her “CEO of Baseline,” a move users praised as playful and humanizing rather than a legal name change.
- Lee later explained the pronunciation as a Korean phonetic effect where English “v” sounds often map closer to a “b,” which helped frame the moment as linguistic, not erroneous.
- The stunt is being treated as temporary audience-driven marketing that illustrates how brands can leverage viral cultural moments to boost engagement and celebrate local language use.