Unilever markets more than 400 consumer brands. It is one of the largest and oldest multinational companies in the world. Some of its well-known brands include Dove, Lipton, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Marmite.
Unilever has thoroughly embraced social marketing. One of its most notable campaigns is likely Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. This campaign began in 2004 with an interactive billboard in Times Square. Passersby were encouraged to vote via text message on the images displayed: portraits of regular women taken by renowned photographer Annie Liebowitz. Votes were tallied in real time, and the billboard displayed the running totals. The campaign then evolved to appear on smaller screens near you with a series of viral videos. You’ve probably seen some of these in your Facebook news feed, or promoted on Upworthy.com (since they specifically target you “right in the feels”).
However, the Dove campaign is largely one-sided. Although the videos start conversations among consumers, there is little interaction between the consumer and the brand or parent company.
The company took a slightly more tongue-in-cheek approach in its marketing of Marmite. Marmite, for the uninitiated, is a very salty brown paste made from yeast extract, a by-product of brewing beer. It is usually eaten spread on toast and is, as they say, an acquired taste. Marmite has been a Unilever property since 2000. In 2010, Unilever staged a multiplatform social media campaign to win new taste buds to the marmite camp, inviting consumers to become members of the elite “Marmarati.” (Would membership in a elite secret society entice your taste buds to try a yeast-based spread?) Social media agency We Are Social was enlisted to recruit members to the ranks of the Marmarati from devoted fans and food bloggers who had proven their love for the product by uploading content (videos, text or photographs) to the Marmarati website. Members of the Marmarati were then invited to test a new Marmite formulation, filming their reactions to the new flavour and uploading it to the web. In return, tasters received a special commemorative jar. The producers of the best videos, as voted by fans, won a lifetime supply of Marmite. (In my house, one jar would have likely sufficed.) It was, perhaps, the first instance of a product launch happening entirely over social networks.
Unfortunately, Marmite’s foray into viral video campaigns in 2013 was much less successful. Not surprisingly, the campaign to “end Marmite neglect,” which featured a faux documentary parodying animal welfare advertisements, left a bad taste in consumers’ mouths.
The outrage from animal welfare advocates, much of it delivered via Facebook and Twitter, caused the ad to be banned from British airwaves. You win some, you lose some.
For a company the size of Unilever, with its wide array of trusted household brands, to embrace social marketing and the storytelling such campaigns necessitate speaks volumes about the future of advertising and the direction in which they think it is headed. Although they have had some missteps with various brands, Unilever seems determined to make their social strategy a success, going so far as to enlist Accenture to build and implement an enterprise digital social platform that will allow the company’s marketers, brand managers and partners to collaborate internationally.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 