Paul Yole’s Cannes Diary: Day Five

June 20 2014, 10:37 am | BY Ricki Green | No Comments

PY_cannes14-thumb-300x300-154368.jpgThe Brand Agency’s Paul Yole has written for the Campaign Brief Cannes blog for the last eight years. He’s at it again this year.

Thankfully I saw somebody today who talked sense and came prepared.

 

Keith Weed, CMO at Unilever gave a well-structured presentation that put forward an opinion and gave examples of what Unilever is doing. It was in stark contrast to the rambling reminiscence of the great director Joe Pytka, who rendered his host Chris Wall to a superfluous bystander.

But back to Keith Weed. He talked about the journey from the past marketing environment of simple media choices to today’s chaotic ecosystems and through to his thoughts about the future, and the opportunity to make order out of the chaos.

 

At the end of the last century, it was all about marketing to people.

 

Regarding the current state of play, it’s more about marketing with people, and Weed described how Unilever is trying to create brands for life by adopting three core principles.

 

1 Put people first

 

Take what Unilever is doing in the Indian province of Bihar. It’s a media-dark state so they’ve created a radio station that can be accessed via mobile phones. Most people in Bihar can’t get access to media but the do all have mobile phones.

 

To tune into Bihar’s largest radio station, listeners don’t use a transistor radio. They use a mobile phone.

 

They call a number and hang up, and the mobile radio station will dial back and play songs, jokes, and ads for 15 minutes. Call again and you can listen for 15 more minutes. It costs the listener nothing.

 

2 Build brand love

 

Unilever tried to embue all of its brands with real purpose. The most famous example is of course Dove, whose Real Beauty Sketches is the most watched ad online of all time.

 

3 Unlock the magic

 

This is all about marketing with a message and Weed gave the example of Axe’s great campaign, Make Love Not War and its extension, Kiss for Peace.

 

So what does the future hold? Marshall McLuhan once said (in 1965), ” It is the framework which changes with each technology and not just the picture within the frame.”

 

Weed talked about three key themes:

 

1 harnessing mobile, social and data.

 

Easier said than done. Take a look at these dramatic Luma Scape infographics that show the new and complex media landscape.

 

But working around making mobile both visual and personal Unilever has created a great YouTube channel called All Things Hair. It harnesses the growing trend of women sharing hair tips online to create a massive and useful community.

 

2 Unlocking creative talent

 

There’s never been such a premium on creativity so Unilever has launched The Foundry to give opportunities to emerging talent and people with ideas. It connects Unilever with innovators – smart move.

 

3 Scaling up

 

Unilever has a Sustainable Living Plan that has three focus areas: deforestation, sustainable agriculture and water sanitation.

 

Take a look at Project Sunlight, which engages people in these issues at scale. Project Sunlight involves 12 companies and is all about orchestration more than fragmentation.

 

 

The upshot of all this is we are moving from marketing to people, through marketing with people and then tomorrow, marketing for people.