Group: 3 VB group

Unilever case study

Case summary

Unilever is multinational consumer goods company co-headquartered inLondon, England and Rotterdam, Netherlands. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's third-largest consumer goods company measured by 2012 revenue, after Procter & Gamble and Nestlé.  One of the oldest multinational companies, its products are available in around 190 countries

Unilever owns over 400 brands, but focuses on 14 brands with sales of over 1 billion dolla. Unilever was founded in 1929 by the merger of the British soapmaker Lever Brothers (founded in 1885 by William Hesketh Lever) and the Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie. During the second half of the 20th century the company increasingly diversified from being a maker of products made of oils and fats, and expanded its operations worldwide. 

In fact, Unilever was recently anointed Digital Marketer of the Year by Advertising Age. It does planty of stand out digital by creating innovative Website for it bevy of family brand. Unilever has made headline for nummerous Web and viral video successes. For example, it’s Dove brand won at Cannes for successful “ Evolution” viral video, Suave developed a series of “In the Motherhood” Wedsite- that attracted more than 5.5 million viewers per episode.

Although these and other Unilever digital efforts were highly successful in there own right, none were purely digital campains. Each digital effort was carefully intergrated with others media and marketing tactics, such as TV, print ads and broader pulic relations initiativers. Unilever is actually cutting back on traditional advertising- telivision and print media, its overall promotion budget is increasing into online and digital- recently is about 15 percent of Unilever’s overall marketing budget.

The real secret behind Unilever’s digital success is its skillful blending of new media with old to build and extend customers involvement and the brand experience.

One powerful if intergrateing digital with traditional media is what Unilever calls “Superdistribution” the idea of getting Web programs, most often video, pick up by other media- most often for free. Dove’s evolution video created as a part of its “ Real beauty” campain.

But, again, this isn’t just about “digital”, its about “communication” says Unilever’s global communication planning director. In all, Unilever understands that the growth shift to digital doesn’t change the fundermental much. “ Almost in what we do, I think, is the important of storytelling for ours brands. A 30-seconds ad is a story we pull together for consumers on the

TV. Digital is an extendion of that story telling in a typically longers format”. The richness of the story and the resulting brand experience depend on everything communicating well together.

1. How has Unilever successfully crossed the great “media divide” between traditional and digital media?

* What is “media divide”? The digital revolution has created a kind of “media divide”, pitting traditional media such as television and magazines against a new-age digital media.

* Each digital effort of Unilever was carefully integrated with other media and marketing tactics, such as TV and print ads and broader public relations initiatives.

For example , Suave’s “ In motherhood” campain. It started with telivision spots featuring real, funny mother sharing their experience, including beauty experiences. TV ads pulled the customers to related Wedsite with links to other Suave- related content. Pulic relation has also played a role to submit customers real-life stories. The entire Suave campain- telivision, digital and public relation- was wonderfull intergrated to create a “sisterhood” of mom and diliver the brand’s “ Say yes to beauty” positioning.

Suave developed a series of “In the Motherhood” webisodes—the Web’s version of TV soap operas—that drew more than 5.5 million viewers per episode.

* The degree to which digital is integrated into mainstream of Unilever’s marketing is clear on how the effort is managed…. Unlike many other advertisers today, Unilever doesn’t hand its online promotional efforts off to digital shops. Instead, online efforts are handled by Unilever’s mainstream advertising agencies, further helping to integrate digital with more traditional promotional tactics.

In conclusion, how Unilever could become the Digital marketer of the Year and the number two advertiser (behind P&G) is because of is professional strategic combination of digital and traditional media to communicate their value propositions to customers and maintain strong relationship with their public.

2. What does Unilever mean by the term “superdistribution?” How are they using superdistribution to leverage marketing communication?

The key to the digital efforts is what Mr. Master calls "superdistribution," the idea of getting web programs, most often video, picked up by other media - most often for free.

Mr. Master is asked question: "Really, superdistribution for Unilever means? “'Is the core of what you're doing big enough that it's going to be picked up in other channels such as PR, television, print, radio, etc., and be repurposed and replayed in those other channels?" Mr.

Master says: "We used to repurpose things from television for the internet. Now the ideas we have are so rich and creative ... we're able to feed that into all these other channels from digital.

"Our real focus is to go where consumers are," said Master. "Superdistribution is taking a great

piece of content and syndicating it. You can see our video on the Yahoo home page and never

leave that site."

They apply “superdistribution” by some ways:

1 Build and extend customer involvement and brand experience.

2. Attract many customer by video online program.

It seems that every Unilever brand has something big going digitally. At the extreme, comparatively stodgy Hellmann’s produces an online “Real Food Summer School” program, which features recipes and cooking demos by celebrity chefs such as the Food Network’s Bobby Flay. During its first season, about a million unique visitors clicked onto the Real Food site, and more than 5000 visitors signed up to be a part of the Real Food online community. After Hellmann’s aired the show, Web searches for “Hellmann’s” and related words jumped 50 percent on Yahoo!

3. Unilever has made headlines for numerous vital video successes:

For example, its Dove brand won a cyber Grand Prix award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for its spectacularly successful “Evolution” viral video

"Evolution" is still the classic example. While it's gotten likely more than 20 million views on YouTube and other video sites, Ogilvy Chairman-CEO Shelly Lazarus says global viewership for the video is 400 million. Evolution shows an ordinary young women being tranformed into a beautiful poster model with a lot of help from make up artist and photo-editing software. The end line: “it is no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted. The video which cost just $50,000 to make, had created the equivalent of $20 million worth of free media coverage.h That incorporates a lot of viewership via TV news and talk shows, classrooms and other forums.

A key aspect of Unilever's model is "superdistribution", moving beyond corporate websites to place material in locations where targeted netizens will visit.

4. Unilever was one of the first marketers to buy iPad advertising, through Time magazine.

Smartphones and tablets also now exert a substantial influence.

"The difference is that part of the experience is your finger interacting with the screen. We talk

about how long consumers are engaging with our brands, and the iPad is a much more engaging

device," said Master.

"With the iPhone, our Dove+Men campaign created a rich experience around baseball stars such

as Andy Pettitte and Albert Pujols. We showed their homes, we showed their playlist on

iTunes." 

Indeed, 20% of individuals interacting with these ads returned to do so again, indicating how

going further than mere promotion generates results.

5. Unilever uses Nielsen's Marketing Mix system when monitoring digital impact, and media

agency Mindshare tags all relevant output, tracking metrics like video views, voucher downloads

and sample requests.

4. What’s next for Unilever? What new promotional direction would you suggest for them

now?

Digital marketing is a current trend, however, it is also necessary to pay attention to marketing involving events. It means, Unilever should also focus on organizing real events, sponsoring for some charity events or participating in real-time event marketing to promote products instead of spreading information on Internet, TV or digital media only.

This promotional way gives customers an impression of real and direct interaction with products and brands and target customers that do not have much access to digital tools.

Some activities can be held in events and attract customers: contest, branded gifts, customer appreciation events, surveys, product giveaways,…

Unilever may also pay attention to promotional directions that focus on customer loyalty. The company is doing good in widely spreading knowledge of its products to gain awareness of people. However, since it has some big competitors that can offer products at the same qualities (P&G in home and personal care, Nestle in food and beverage,…), Unilever should try to gain customer loyalty besides customer awareness. For example, the company may organize some clubs for some famous brands’ customers which propose membership and special offers.