>> If we can stick with those two examples of Dove and
Axe maybe, if I think about confidence in being a man or
a woman, an adolescent man, it's so different around the world.
At least on the surface.
How does one adapt the positioning?
I guess the purpose stays the same,
but the expression of that purpose might differ, how do you adapt it, and
how do you manage that adaptation across the world?
>> Yes, I mean, this is obviously a big challenge.
So one of the benefits of being a global company is being
able to leverage your expertise, your resources across many countries.
You're with the second largest advertiser in the world.
And in doing that, of course then you would hope that we can buy advertising
cheaper and that we can build our brands more effectively because we learn,
we work with the best agencies, we learn how to build brands accordingly.
But, against that absolutely, you're absolutely right,
I mean there are huge differences around the world.
But also there was some fantastic similarities.
And if I took a young guy for example.
There were more similarities between a young guy in Sao Paulo in Brazil,
Mumbai in India, and Shanghai in China than him,
his parents and his grandparents in Mumbai, for example.
So what we do is we look for the themes that run across and
find ways of this human truths that really resonate across different markets.
Now of course, if you took an example of angst.
Boys around the world are anxious about dating girls.
And similarly, girls around the world, are concerned about beauty,
and their own body self image, etc.
But you have to find that executions which are appropriate for the different markets.
And of course in some markets, a good example of some markets where you can't
even show hair, and we're selling shampoo.
I mean, that might sound like a difficult challenge, but
you have to respect the sensitivities of the individual markets.
And so yes you're right.
Beauty in India is different from beauty in the USA and
dating in China is different from dating in Brazil.
But as long as you understand some of the codes and
then you take the core human truth, you can make that work.
>> And how does one gear up to manage that?
How do you, if you think in terms of brand governance or even the structure,
maybe some matrix structure.
And what's your role as a global CMO versus the brand or
the markets, leaders of the brand?
>> So yes, that's a good question because again,
different companies do it in different ways.
But let me tell you how we do it as an example of how you could structure it.
So we have a global marketing function which I had.
But then we also have categories, which have what we call brand developers,
I'll explain what they do.
And then we have countries which have brand builders.
So in reality, three different types of marketers,
although I have the overview of how we do marketing in Unilever.
Within the global marketing function,
we have things where we believe specialists or we can leverage scale.
So would that be things like media buying.
It'd silly to buy media on a country by country basis.
Google's a global company.
Facebook's a global company.
We should buy globally and leverage our scale as the second largest advertiser.
So, I won that, and I won that around the world.
Although, I had media people who were in Shanghai or Sao Paulo,
I also have some global media people who manage partnerships etc.
Another good example is the digital revolution that's going on right now.
We want to have some experts around search or mobile etc.
We wouldn't want to put those in each and every market.
So again, centrally in the media function we have some specialist functions as well.
Consumer market insight is one globally as well.
So, of course, there will be market researchers doing consumer market
insight who are in the categories and indeed in the countries.
But they won't report up through to me, and why?
I think that's now, I think accepted approach, it's just a little checks and
balances.
So many years ago when I was a marketing director,
my market researcher reported to me as indeed my brand managers.
And surprise, surprise if I got particularly passionate about something,
the market researcher felt slightly influenced to say well that is a good
idea or not, and what we want to try is to get independence, in judging mixes and
ads and products, etc.
So we want our market research separate from our marketers so
they can remain independent.