Will the real Unilever please stand up? Is it sexist Lynx or female-friendly Dove?
In this guest post, Miles Mainwaring argues that brands like Unilever need to be consistent across their entire portfolio or risk social media censure.
Author Martin Amis makes a satirical (and what turned out to be very prescient) stab at the cynicism of tabloid culture in his 1992 novel, Yellow Dog. The editorial team at his fictional rag, “The Morning Lark” uniformly refer to their readers as “the wankers” while sincerely asking, “Is it in the best interests of our wankers?” and stating, “The wanker comes first.” They know their customers, but certainly don’t think much of them.
And of recent times, I’ve begun to wonder what Unilever really thinks about their customers.
The current hoopla and outrage surrounding the latest Lynx “Dirty Balls” campaign is nothing new to most of us. It is just the latest chapter in what has become an increasingly yawnful, yet successful global brand strategy for Lynx:
“It is an established fact that women care about the values of companies they buy from.”
Maybe not as established as you think Miles. Lynx target market is 13 to 20yo males. In my experience less than 1% of this age group do their own shopping. Therefore Mothers buy Lynx for their sons and continue to do so in preference to any other brand. If they cared so much about the ads, why do they keep buying?
It’s almost as if Unilever (and P&G, etc.) have a house of brands for a reason.
They are a parent company that produces differentiated products to fit various customer segments.
Lynx is aimed at hormone-filled teens who view authority and conforming with disdain. And so with this insight they market appropriately.
Lobby groups such as MTR and her twin-set chums bite on this as self-appointed moral guardians. Because they have no actual supportable point to make, but feel compelled by their misplaced moral superiority to impose their warped need for control on the rest of society. It’s actually quite sad to watch them.
The real challenge is for companies and marketers to quantify and manage the pearl-clutching wowsers, not alienate the silent majority who honestly realise that the fabric of society isn’t destroyed by a few testicle jokes that weren’t aimed at them. In the same way that they don’t give a toss about the daft husband stereotype.
ps – You’re also drawing a disingenuously long bow to equate Newscorp’s illegal UK phone hacking and related criminal activity, with vocal customer angst at multi-product marketing.
I feel like I just read this in SMH yesterday… de ja vu
I refuse to buy Dove products because of the opinions shared above, yet I buy Lynx for my husband because I like him smelling like a giant chocolate sundae.
Unilever get away with the hypocrisy because at the supermarket we would have to get over our own hypocrisy before challenging theirs.
Also, every brand has a bad back story – I still feel bad buying Nestle products because of an African exploitation story doing the rounds in the late ‘90s.
It’s too hard to get grocery shopping done while thinking about the ethical consequences of each item.
Mind you, I would switch in a heartbeat if someone else brought out a male deodorant that I liked the smell of. I may buy the stuff, but I still hide it in my trolley.
I’m not sure about this at all. They’re different business units under the Unilever brand. Nobody gets up Coca Cola for making coke as well as drinks for malnurished children in the third world. Nor, for that matter, does anyone care that an agency might work with different clients with different messages, markets etc that sometimes conflict.
“So, does Unilever believe the famous Dove “Real Beauty” campaign cry, “Talk to your daughters before the beauty industry does?”
I think it is important to believe in your product as well as your message but I also think there’s an element that these people are employed to do a job (and they’ve done it quite well, at least with Dove) and that they adopt a strategy that suits the brand they’re working on. Hypocrisy it isn’t. Unless hypocrisy and marketing are one and the same.
2 different brands + 2 different target audience = 2 different brand strategies, both effectively speaking to their target audience.
That’s not hypocrisy, that’s effective marketing
Well Anon may have hit the nail on the head “Hypocrisy it isn’t. Unless hypocrisy and marketing are one and the same.”
Well said NA – hit the NAil on the head.
This doesn’t make any sense. I use Dove. I don’t care about what Unilever does with Lynx (and I do know they own both brands). I think the examples Miles uses – Qantas, Koni and Yumi – are so completely different to a company with multiple brands with each having their own identity. Well done on Unilever for keeping their campaigns true to the product users and target audience.
There are so many companies with different (and often contradictory) campaigns for products within their portfolio – doesn’t make them hypocrites. If a campaign is extremely sexist, I will take offense to that brand and not others in the portfolio. I’m not speaking as a marketing expert – just as a consumer, a woman and user of social media.
Let’s get off our high horse here!
Are you talking about the executions or the overall values of the corporate body or the individual brands as they all seem to be doing their job to their respective audiences?
I think there seems to be confiusion about the corporate values and individual product brand values as they can be different and is why former is normally general and the latter is specific.
I accept your point that things can blow up online but do you really think this is in the same vein as your examples of child exploitation in Africa, major national infrastructure disruptions, illegal phone hacking and bribery or demeaning an Australian serviceman?
I’m not sure if this opinion post is completely off or way ahead of its time.
I do believe that as social media and the information superhighway grow bigger and become more accessible, it is very likely that people would have done enough research to know who owns their favourite brand. This could soon be as common as knowing Coca-Cola owns Sprite and Fanta. And yes, if Coca-Cola pissed me off via any means, I’d probably stop buying the latter. Ditto for Qantas and Jetstar.
Or the world could be moving the other way where consumers care less about who owns their favourite brands. This might come true if the startup and crowd sourcing generation gains momentum. We’ll wait and see.
Unilever are clever marketers but integrity isn’t one of their guiding principles. Just ask their employees.