Unilever merges corporate affairs and sustainability after comms boss departure

Rebecca Marmot, chief sustainability officer at Unilever, will now also lead global communications and corporate affairs for the business.

According to the Financial Times, in an internal email sent to all Unilever staff, chief executive Hein Schumacher said: “Given the increasing extent to which the external policy environment impacts our commercial and sustainability ambitions, I have decided to bring corporate affairs, external communications and sustainability together under one leadership role.”

When contacted by Campaign's sister publication PRWeek, Unilever declined to comment.

Marmot has worked at the business for more than 17 years, according to her LinkedIn profile, leading external affairs at L’Oréal prior to this.

She joined Unilever in 2007 in an external affairs management role, before looking after comms for the company’s home and personal care brands.

Marmot became chief sustainability officer in 2019, after having led Unilever’s merged sustainability, advocacy and policy team as global vice-president.

Now, the business has decided to further merge its sustainability function with its broader external affairs offer.

The move comes after global comms chief Paul Mathew exited the business in December.

In a post on his LinkedIn page, Matthews, who worked as global head of communications and corporate affairs for six years, said he had decided to leave Unilever “to pursue new opportunities”, adding that “now is the right time–personally and professionally–for some new horizons and fresh challenges”.

Unilever’s sustainability juggle

At PRWeek’s Corporate and Public Affairs Summit in 2023, Mathew discussed Unilever’s sustainability messaging, sharing his view that it had initially “misstepped” with its stance on brand purpose. He explained: “What we’re also trying to do is break the paradigm which says that sustainability and business performance don’t go hand in hand. It’s about making sure that we are clear about the business case for sustainability.

“We’re not an NGO, we’re a corporation, so we have to be clear about sustainability as a performance driver, rather than just a good thing to do for society. That’s a key shift we’ve tried to make in recent years.

“I think where Unilever perhaps overstepped a few years ago was talking about brand purpose in isolation to everything else you need for a brand to grow and be successful. You need great innovation, you need the right pricing point, you need it to be available.”

In October that year, Schumacher detailed Unilever’s plans to stop “force-fitting” brand purpose across its entire portfolio, expressing his belief that the company’s sustainability efforts had been “spread too thinly”.

Then in April 2024, Unilever’s chief executive scaled back on ESG targets, prompting scrutiny from environmental activists.

In a Q1 2024 trading statement, Schumacher justified the revised targets by saying that Unilever was “not watering down” but instead “doubling down in those areas that most materially impact the business and where a more focused approach will enable us to drive real change at scale”.