Marketing at Unilever

Question: Discuss about the Marketing at Unilever. Answer: Introduction As British-Dutch Company that produce multinational consumer goods, Unilever owns over 400 brands and is one of the oldest companies. Established in 1930, this company has renowned reputation for its personal care, home care, food and beverage products. About two billion people use their products each day. It is unlikely to achieve this position in the market without appropriate marketing strategies. In fact, Unilever is the worlds second largest advertiser contributing a major share of success to its marketing practices. Marketing practices at Unilever Unilever strongly believes in providing products that would enhance the lifestyle of its customers. Communication with the customer is of crucial importance at Unilever. To ensure the same, the company has a strict policy of communicating both to the direct and indirect customers all information and risks regarding their products (Bhattacharya, 2016). Also, a key emphasis is made of the quality of the brands under Unilever. The company also takes extreme care to ensure that their marketing principles do not undermine parental influence or pester power. Their marketing principles are free of misleading messages and do not encourage unhealthy dietary habits. Though these principles are not spoken in their strategies they are the underlying ground rules for the company (Hasan, 2015). The company uses the current issues as an elevating strategy in its marketing. For example, Dove products, which are their most popular and hot selling products have ads that are challenge the stereotype of beauty, thereby penetrating into the market by hitting on to emotions and subconscious insecurities of customers. The Dirt is good campaign of their laundry detergent keys on the need to understand that getting dirty especially showing children playing around promotes a healthy lifestyle (Patton, 2015). The comfort campaign emphasis on the need to use only one bucket of water to wash clothes and highlights the need to be environmentally friendly and ecologically conscious. Unilever also indulges in promoting healthy body image and voluntary initiatives in several markets. In line with the BMI published by World Health Organization, the company hires models who have a standard BMI between 18.5 and 25 and do not offer contracts to those in Size Zero as it promotes unhealthy slimness (Cross, 2016). Also, with member companies of International Food and Beverage Alliance the company monitors the marketing principles. Conclusion Unilever being one of the largest companies in consumer goods especially into personal and household care along with beverages and food has proved to have exceptional marketing principles. These principles are to make sure that the consumer is communicated time to time to ensure that trust is built and the consumer is known of all information. The second is to make the customer aware of the additional benefits that would be entitled to them by using Unilever products and the third by leading the marketing of other companies through voluntary initiative. References Bhattacharya, C.B., 2016. Responsible Marketing: Doing Well by Doing Good. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 8(1), pp.8-17. Cross, G., Vanhaverbeke, W., Roijakkers, N. and Pop, O., 2016. How Unilever Realises Its Mission Of Making Sustainable Living Commonplace Through Partnering. Hasan, M.M., 2015. Marketing Analysis of Unilever. Total Quality Management, 11, p.13. Patton, C.R. and Holstius, K., 2015. Unilever: A Marketing Giant. In Proceedings of the 1993 World Marketing Congress (pp. 603-606). Springer International Publishing.