Why Unilever believes “consumers are dead”

Andrea Sophocleous
Source: Event Reports, WFA Global Marketers' Conference, March 2014
Downloaded from WARC

This event report discusses why Unilever, the FMCG giant, believes the idea of the "consumer" is flawed. Rather than attempting to "target" shoppers
based on the small part of the day when they are actually buying products, the company believes it is vital to look at customers as people with a
much wider set of preferences and interests. Such an idea has led it to focus on building a "purpose" for each of its brands, as embodied by Dove's
efforts to change images of female beauty, Lifebuoy's attempts to promote hand-washing in emerging markets, and Flora's bid to help people lower
their cholesterol.

Why Unilever believes "consumers are dead"

Andrea Sophocleous
"Consumers were a bad idea to start with. Consumers are dead," Marc Mathieu, Unilever's worldwide senior vice president/marketing, told
delegates at the World Federation of Advertisers' (WFA) Global Marketer Conference, held in Sydney in March 2014.
"You are not consumers. You are people. You are only consumers [for] a very short fraction of your day, and you don't want to be considered – or
to be labelled – as a consumer."
Such a shift in emphasis by the FMCG giant reflects a profound failure of the vocabulary – and resultant practice – of marketing. "We call people
'target groups' as though we wanted to shoot them. It's important internally for our marketeers, it's important for the moral approach that we have
when we market our brands, to really think about people as human beings," said Mathieu.
"It's all of us rediscovering the importance of humanity in the work we do, and then -very importantly – being that in the pursuit of our brands,
because unless we understand the fundamental human insight at the very heart of the strategy of our brands, we won't unlock a purpose. We can do
great work that actually has commercial reward, but does also provide something meaningful to the people we serve."
Marketing today is no longer simply about selling a product, where a brand is essentially little more than a billboard, Mathieu continued. "Having a
strong purpose at the core of your brand makes business sense," he said. "We do it because it's the right thing for the business – but it's also the right
thing for society and the planet."
That commitment is linked to Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan, a long-term vision which is at the heart of the company's business model, according
to Mathieu. And having embraced environmental sustainability as a core pillar of its global business in 2010 to "contribute to making the world a
better place", the firm then decided to adapt this idea in thinking about marketing.
"That's why, two and a half years ago, we did the same with our marketing model – rethinking the way we do marketing – we call it 'Crafting brands
for life' – to actually put purposeful brands at the heart of our strategy," Mathieu said.
Dove, the beauty brand, is the archetypal example of this principle. Its purpose is that "women shouldn't consider beauty as a source of anxiety but
much more as a source of confidence," Mathieu said. This has been embodied by its "Sketches" viral video, which has generated millions of hits
online and driven a conversation about the gap between the self-image of female consumers, and the way they are viewed by others.
"At the heart of what we can do with a campaign like Dove 'Sketches' is this fundamental interest in people, this fundamental pursuit by all our
marketeers on the brand to drive beauty as a source of confidence for women," said Mathieu.
"So that's the first thing – stop thinking about consumers, stop thinking about marketers, stop thinking about advertisers. Think about human beings.
And that's at the core of solving the very first block in this pursuit of purpose at the heart of the business."

Tapping shared beliefs

Technological change and declining trust in the business world mean having a purpose is increasingly a necessity, Mathieu went on. Today, brands
can no longer impose their beliefs on people. Instead, they must share the beliefs of consumer "tribes".
"It's about trying to create a community of thoughts, a proximity of thoughts, between the people we serve – the 'tribes' that consume our brands –
and the convictions of a brand. People want to have something that they can believe in and that matters to them.
"If we continue to talk about our brands at people, as opposed to doing something that matters to their everyday life, then why bother?"
In reflection of this mantra, Lifebuoy doesn't market soap in emerging markets like India: rather, it promotes good hygiene by encouraging people to
wash their hands. In Australia, Flora Proactiv promotes having a healthy heart rather than simply talking about margarine.
"Marketing is no longer about putting an ad on TV; it's much more about doing an experiment, doing a program that actually changes fundamentally
people's lives," Mathieu said.
In this vein, Flora Proactiv created a program involving real people in the town of Floraville, New South Wales. As part of the initiative, Floraville
residents with high cholesterol levels used Flora Proactiv margarine for three weeks. By the end of this period, fully 80% had recorded a significant
drop in this figure. Unilever scored a further PR coup when top-rating Australian TV program A Current Affair devoted a four-minute segment to
the story.
"It's doing something fundamental that actually impacts the lives of real people. And this idea of real people and real results is at the heart of the
Proactiv brand strategy, but it's really about putting purpose into action on a brand that is engineered in its DNA to make that a reality," Mathieu
said.

Finding purpose is not always easy

Not every brand has such an obvious or inherent mission, Mathieu admitted: "Some brands are a little bit more difficult to approach with a purpose."
Axe, a line of grooming products for young males, is one offering that seemingly "has far less of a purpose at its core" than counterparts like Dove.
But Unilever is not persuaded by this view. "Some would argue that Axe is the masculine version of Dove, that it gives guys confidence, but in saying
that, we work quite hard to continually push this brand to be strong in terms of purpose.
"More recently, we've moved the brand with a campaign that's all about peace, which is starting to engage the brand with something more meaningful
in terms of using confidence, but not to the point of violence."
As part of the global "Make Love, Not War" campaign, the brand, which is known as Lynx in Australia, formed a partnership with the Red Cross
calling on young Australian men to donate blood. An accompanying TV spot stars rugby player and "Lynx Peace ambassador" Adam Ashley-
Cooper, who delivers "a call to arms".
"It's really interesting to see, for me as a global marketer, how our purpose gets turned into action by our local marketeers into something as
meaningful as this," Mathieu said.
"It's a very interesting example of something where you take a brand like Axe, which is all about confidence, but at the same time you push it into a
place that is probably a little bit uncomfortable … because it's not 100% natural. But again, that's using the power we have as marketers, as
advertisers, to push the boundary and make purpose both commercially rewarding but also really matter for the people we serve."

About the author

Andrea Sophocleous is a freelance journalist. She can be contacted at andrea.sophocleous@gmail.com.

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