In 2009, Unilever, one of the world’s largest FMCG conglomerates with over 400 brands, decided that things needed to change: they believe growth at the expense of people or the environment is both unacceptable, and commercially unsustainable and that sustainable growth is the only acceptable model for its business. This realization led to the creation of Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP).
Apart from growing Unilever’s business, the plan sets three goals to achieve by 2020:
Changing a company’s business model to focus on sustainability is a good first step. However, if consumers do not keep purchasing the company’s products, this is not a sustainable business strategy. Therefore, Unilever needs to understand how to create demand for its sustainable solutions. How can Unilever communicate FMCG sustainable benefits to the right target audiences in a way that consumers find reliable, relevant and worth talking about?
Thanks to the Glocalities research program, Motivaction has a large database with consumer information including values, lifestyle, brand use and sustainability issues. In order to assist Unilever with its business challenge, Motivaction ‘connected’ consumers of seven Dutch Unilever brands to Unilever’s global sustainability goals.
This happened in two phases (see below).
Quantitative research to ‘connect’ the consumers of 7 Unilever brands to the Glocalities database in order to:
The results from phase 1 were translated by Unilever marketeers into actionable brand propositions centered around sustainability, which were tested qualitatively in consumer focus groups by Motivaction.
Here, we:
“The values based insights of Glocalities enabled us to connect our global sustainability strategy to local brands in a way that it resonates with our local target audiences.”
Anniek Mauser - Sustainability Director Unilever Benelux.
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