Unilever sharpens focus on core brand thinking

Unilever's decision to elevate Sher Mazari from Pakistan to a newly-created Singapore-based role as media director for Asia, Africa and the Middle East looks — at first glance — relatively routine.

But the move is one of many that reflect a broader shift in the FMCG giant's marketing and communications priorities, as it seeks to centralise more of its decision-making and better harness the power of the core Unilever brand.

For 13-year Unilever veteran Mazari, the new role offers a chance to bring support to Unilever's communications outlook, which has often played a secondary role to its powerful product brands. While Mazai stops short of terming it a restructuring, he notes that the company's communication resources are being increasingly focused under one global function.

"The launch of the Unilever brand and the Vitality mission in 2004 are a reflection of the company's keenness to actively engage and communicate with its stakeholders across the globe," explains Mazari.

It is this Vitality offering which represents the core of Unilever's current brand thinking. Launched as a platform to unite Unilever's master brands, the move represented the Anglo-Dutch company's first substantial effort to give the Unilever brand a voice.

The launch, furthermore, preceded the 2005 rollout of Unilever's new five-year strategy, aimed at focusing investment on its 400 master brands.

"Our portfolio of brands brings in benefits of nutrition, hygiene, health and beauty, which give us a unique ability to add vitality to all of life: inside and outside our bodies, at home and in the everyday environment," says Mazari.

The key challenge, of course, is likely to arise out of the sheer diversity of Unilever's product lines, which encompass home care, personal care and foods, and do not make for easy harmonisation. "It will be interesting to see how the company manages the internal and external dynamic tension between product quality, social accountability and management practice to bring Vitality to life and establish a platform of trust across all categories," says Bob Grove, Southeast Asia MD, Edelman PR.

Mazari is wary of letting the Vitality platform grab too much of the limelight. "Our advertising communication will continue to be through our products and brands that our consumers are so familiar with, though the Unilever and Vitality mission will start to figure more prominently in it," he notes.

"In no way will the Unilever brand supplant or replace our product brands, but will instead unite them all."
If much of this seems familiar, it is probably because Unilever's approach resembles the strategy already embraced by key rival Procter & Gamble. TVCs for P&G brands, for example, often feature the P&G logo. For several years now, the company has focused significant time and resources behind the central P&G brand.

Formed out of a conglomeration of local independent companies, Unilever's Anglo-Dutch roots have ensured a decentralised approach for the best part of a century, resulting in strong local businesses in countries such as India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

While its 2010 strategy continues the swing from local towards global, Mazari says there is no inherent dichotomy between the two.

"It is essential to get the balance right," he notes. "Thinking more global allows us to bring faster innovation to the market and helps us to share great ideas from other markets. Nevertheless, we remain focused on the local consumer as well, and there is as much emphasis on local brand building as there is on global brand development."