Unilever’s promotion team seems partial to cruises.
At first it was just sampling, stocking ship cabins with shampoo — since cruise lines don’t. (People are predisposed to brands they discover on vacation.)
Then came the Suave sweepstakes, which gave cruises as prizes, and the Dove Spa Cruise, a weekend jaunt at which a few hundred sweepstakes winners luxuriated in all things Dove, from gift bags to spa services.
“We have tremendous passion for promotions here,” says director of promotions Michael Murphy. “We’re not about a big idea — the biggest, coolest thing out there. We’re about linking to the consumer and the essence of the brand. That intersection is where we excel.”
Catching consumers at leisure is all in a day’s work for the promotion team Murphy has assembled since Unilever struck out on a Path to Growth 20 months ago. The Netherlands-based giant formed two North America divisions (Food, and Health and Personal Care) and winnowed its portfolio from 1,500 to 400 brands, marshalling support behind “master brands” that cross over product categories. The HPC division — based in Greenwich, CT, with the former Helene Curtis as an outpost in Chicago — is running lean with five promotion managers (and one open post) who concentrate on seven master brands: All, Degree, Dove, Finesse, Suave, Thermasilk, and Axe.
“We can build bigger and better brands by taking the core brand into more categories,” Murphy explains. “In promotion, it’s our job to win [consumers] across those categories.”
Unlocking the Power
One year into the reorg, and three years into Murphy’s tenure, the new setup seems to be working. Unilever brass projects that leading brands will account for 90 percent of sales by year’s end, up from 84 percent as the company sells off tangential businesses.
Unilever still has a way to go in winning over retailers. It ranked No. 9 in Cannondale Associates’ annual PoweRanking survey of retailer perceptions about packaged goods firms. “That’s not impressive, especially for its size,” says Don Stuart, partner at Wilton, CT-based Cannondale. Having separate food and HPC units present two faces to retailers. “I don’t think they leverage their scale. Being a bifurcated organization hurts them in [retailers’] perception of their capabilities,” Stuart says.
At $4 billion worldwide, Unilever’s marketing capability is considerable. In the U.S. last year, it spent nearly $200 million in measured ad spending on just seven brands (per New York City-based Competitive Media Reporting) and an estimated $200 million-plus in consumer promotion across the full HPC portfolio. HPC’s account-specific spending nears an estimated $100 million on annual double-digit growth. First-quarter 2002 media spending was almost $30 million across the same seven brands, per CMR, with an estimated $50 million devoted to consumer promotion and about $20 million for account-specific campaigns for all of HPC.
“We spend a tremendous amount of money on promotion with a very lean internal team,” says Murphy. “We’re working with fewer, bigger brands to connect with consumers and retailers.”
Category promotion managers have eight to 10 years of experience, mostly on the brand side. Their strongest asset is leadership, says Murphy. “They need to be able to stand up to the brand and the agency and say, ‘Here’s the right thing to do that can give us the best promotion.’”
Each manager is assigned to a brand team alongside reps from the p.r., account-specific marketing, media, relationship marketing, and creative services units of Unilever’s Marketing Communications Resources division. The team sets strategy with one eye on consumer insight and the other on brand essence.
“We can be in a planning meeting when an idea comes up and half the people in the room will ask, ‘Why is this intrinsically about Dove?’” says p.r. director Michelle Holland. “That’s a filter we use for every brand and promotion.”
“We don’t worry where an idea comes from. If it really links to the brand and we can rally around it, we do it,” Murphy adds.
Outside Extensions
Execution falls to agencies, which refine the pieces of a core idea that falls under their discipline. “It’s agencies learning to play well in the sandbox,” says 141 Communicator president Shireen Moore. “Good clients define who owns what, when. Unilever is good at that.”
“When it’s time for agencies to develop a plan, we’re all working from a previously agreed-upon execution idea that keeps us integrated and focused,” says Ryan vp Joel Chestler.
Agencies are “the staff of my team,” Murphy says. “If something goes phenomenally well or something unfortunate happens, there is no difference between my team and the agency. They are one.”
In early 2001, Unilever converted Helene Curtis to small teams, disbanding its full-service promotion department and conducting an extensive review that brought in 141 Communicator and Wunderman, both Chicago. That followed two reviews at the Greenwich office.
Murphy restructured the account teams at long-time shops Ryan Partnership, Westport, CT, and Alcone Marketing, Irvine, CA, raising one agency’s fees 20 percent to give “an under-performing business to an over-performing team. I wanted better people, so we made the appropriate adjustment” in compensation, he explains. “I would rather restructure with people we know can deliver than just bring in a new agency.” (Marketing Drive Worldwide, Wilton, CT, is account-specific AOR.)
“I want agencies to put a situation in play [through which] everyone is clamoring to work on my business,” he adds. “If [agencies are] vendors, you never get great work from them. If they’re partners, you’ll get the best people because they want to work on your business.”
An annual review benchmarks agencies against each other on 15 to 20 criteria. Shops present what they’ve learned quarterly to the whole promotion staff, which boils down brand and consumer insights into a single report that goes to all brand teams — and all agencies.
Unilever requires agencies to analyze promotion data, too. “That gives you a very different understanding of the brand,” says 141’s Moore. “We get better learning and come up with more measurable ideas. [Analysis] makes you ownable for your results.”
Crow Flies, Dove Soars
The work proves out. Take this summer’s Sheryl Crow concert tour, sponsored by Finesse. “It’s an opportunity for a brand with a limited ad budget to work with retailers to give value back to consumers,” Murphy explains. Ticket giveaways through retailers link to radio stations; concert venues get styling stations and sampling as well as signage. Wunderman handles.
Unilever is prepping to spend significantly more on sponsorships worldwide (May PROMO). Later this year it will launch global guidelines and workshops to improve evaluation and activation as brand teams fold sponsorship into strategy.
Two diverse winter deals — one with the U.S. Olympic Swim Team, the other with the Rockettes — helped reposition Vaseline Intensive Care as a healthy-skin brand, part of an estimated $10 million-plus push with as much as $5 million pegged for promotion. By year’s end, Unilever adds Healthy Hand Essentials, pitched for women’s hand and nail care.
Dove may be the best example of the master brand strategy. The $375 million brand added body wipes this spring, with sampling in Bally Total Fitness health clubs. Chicago-based Bally also lends its four million-member database for joint offers; Dove sponsors club classes and advertises in Bally’s markets.
The chain also rode this year’s Dove Lifetime Tour, a 15-city in-mall expo with shows, product demos and spa services, and sampling for Dove cleansing bar, body wash, and deodorant. Top consumers get a personal invitation to visit tour stops and get a free fleece pullover. (A Dove newsletter spawned a database that’s mined for top loyalty and volume potential. A loyalty program gives new-product previews and tailored offers.) Ryan handles.
Then there’s Suave, whose low-price positioning runs from shampoo to deodorant and toothpaste. “How do you drive that brand essence across all categories?” posits 141’s Moore. “We start with the Suave umbrella, then look underneath at each product’s needs.” A sweeps awarding cruises played well with retailers and consumers, she adds.
New this summer is Axe, a men’s grooming brand launching this month with an estimated $70 million-plus campaign. The top men’s deodorant brand outside the U.S., Axe will bow with a handful of SKUs including body spray (popular in Europe) to coax more shelf space from retailers and heighten brand awareness. Marketing targets young men, pitting Axe against Procter & Gamble’s growing Old Spice line.
“It’s hard to establish a new regimen, especially among men, but men’s grooming is underdeveloped in the U.S. and the potential is there to develop a franchise,” says Cannondale’s Stuart.
Venerable Q-tip, meanwhile, gets the master brand treatment with the July launch of Q-tips Treat & Go, cotton swabs with antibiotic ointment that are individually wrapped for on-the-go first aid. Characters Scratch and Scrape make appearances this summer, with print ad support.
Going to Trial
A corporate-wide new products push has ratcheted up sampling efforts. Last year’s launch of Lever 2000 Wipes sent sampling crews to “the point of dirt” in mall food courts, ballparks, train stations, and ribfests. Ryan handled with an assist from Pierce Promotions & Event Management, Portland, ME.
A mass sampling effort for Wisk laundry tablets brought lukewarm results, so Unilever zeroed in on its core “convenience” message and fielded intercept sampling in apartment-complex laundry rooms (via Alcone). That boosted cost-per-trial and cost-per-conversion dramatically, says Murphy. “It was more important to have quality than quantity and leverage the brand essence.”
The launch of Degree Invisible Solid antiperspirant brought Unilever into dry cleaners. Garment bags carried ads and samples to catch consumers “when they were really thinking about it,” Murphy says. Look Worldwide, Miami, executed.
A multi-pronged spring/summer campaign wooed young adults by playing off the ad theme, “Degree Hell.” Campus events, sampling in bars and through viral e-mail, and a sweeps offering a grand-prize trip to the Cayman Islands (and the town of Hell) reinforced Degree’s pitch: When the pressure’s on, protection rises to meet it. 141 wove promo elements into advertising and p.r.
Unilever’s broad portfolio lets it leverage some tools across many brands. A three-year deal with Catalina Marketing Corp. gives the company exclusivity in detergents. The promotion staff helps brand managers with portfolio management, tracking which brands are active in what stores to reduce overlap and execute account-level promos.
Account Action
Brand-marketing budgets fund increasingly more account-specific work. “The Cinderella part is direct targeting, managing data, structuring offers properly, and then reacting when consumers respond to offers,” says Sebastian Munden, HPC’s vp-customer team brand development.
Unilever has stepped up its 10-year alliance with Kroger Co., tapping the Cincinnati-based grocer’s database for about a dozen annual programs, from new-product sampling to brand-specific direct mail touting the chain. Unilever plans one year at a time, and tracks how often it contacts individual shoppers. “Kroger likes that we create a total plan,” says Munden. “We do a lot of analysis and … look beyond redemption to future purchase potential.”
The company is testing Home Basics magazine with a handful of grocers. The joint effort from the Health & Personal Care and Food divisions has fielded a few issues so far, with plans to roll out as early as this year.
Research is crucial to maximizing master brands. Unilever’s 2000 reorganization formed a Consumer Market Insights unit with separate quantitative and qualitative staffs that help promotion managers mine consumer research and measure program effectiveness. Promo managers get an overview that brand managers don’t, so they swap ideas.
As Unilever preps for 2003, promotion remains a vital piece of strategy.
“What’s great about the promotion industry is its can-do attitude,” says Murphy. “People say, ‘What do I need to do today to get this done?’ My team is that way, their agencies are that way, and the industry is that way.”
It’s no cruise, but it’s working.
Masters of the Unilever
Top HPC brands in the U.S.
| Brand |
Sales
(in millions) |
Ad $
(in millions) |
Promotion $
(est.) |
| Suave |
$392 |
$17 |
$12 |
| Dove |
$375 |
$95 |
$67 |
| All |
$253 |
$3 |
$2 |
| ThermaSilk |
$109 |
$32 |
$23 |
| Finesse |
$101 |
$.014 |
$5 |
| Degree |
$86 |
$15 |
$11 |
| Salon Selectives |
$72 |
$25 |
$18 |
| Sales are food, drug, mass (excluding Wal-Mart) for 52 weeks ended May 19, 2002. Ad $ is 2001 measured media spending |
| Source: Information Resources Inc. and Competitive Media Reporting |
