Keith Weed, Unilever
Mr. Weed, for you, data-based customer analysis is the way marketers will have to go in the future. This praise of insights sounds a bit as if marketing is to become painting by numbers in the future. Where is the creativity in data-driven marketing?
In general, I think we need to change our attitude: Less "marketing for consumers" and more "meaningfulness for people". However, this requires establishing a relationship with people and interacting with them individually and personally. We have therefore set ourselves the goal of building relationships with one billion people. And if you want to add value to so many people in a credible, authentic and effective way, you need reliable data and you have to use it intelligently.
What does "meaningfulness to people" mean in concrete terms? Would you continue an established product brand even if it didn't have a clear brand philosophy that could offer customers tangible added value?
At Unilever, we have been focusing for some time on aligning our brands along meaningful goals and philosophies. The focus on customer orientation is central to this approach. However, we don't do this because we think it's charming, but rather because it makes economic sense. Our brands in the Sustainable Living segment, for example, pursue a very meaningful brand philosophy and are growing twice as fast as other brands in our portfolio. We are continuously working on defining the real meaning for our brands and developing convincing philosophies. This is, of course, a process and some of our brands are further along than others in this regard. However, we aim to have completed this process for our top-selling brands in the near future.
But can the need for individual brand experiences even be reconciled with the classic understanding of a mass consumer brand?
Technology makes the impossible possible! Consumers look for - and formally expect - the individual, personal approach. This trend will become more entrenched. Our job is to satisfy that expectation with customized brand experiences, whether it's a luxury brand like Dermalogica, or mass brands like Dove or Magnum. Even though the role of the marketer has not changed recently - namely to identify and fulfill needs - I am nevertheless firmly convinced that classic marketing concepts from the 20th century will soon be obsolete. So our challenge is to develop personalized brand concepts that are reproducible and at the same time allow us to continue to grow.
Does this focus on customer relationships mean that CRM plays a greater strategic role in the marketing mix? And how can that possibly work for an FMCG company like Unilever, which deals mainly with impulse buys?
Our great opportunity is to combine traditional approaches with new insights. The handling of data from our customer center is a good example of this: Across all our brands, we receive millions of calls worldwide every month. 70 to 80 percent of callers are usually just looking for a solution to a simple problem. However, because we analyze this information in a targeted way, we deepen our understanding of customers and can respond to developments that we might otherwise have overlooked. Our focus now is on scaling such processes to continuously develop insights and new ideas. cam