Integrated Unilever: Case Study

By: Shayan Reimoo (17061) and Ghalib Feroz Ali (17870)

Introduction:
Unilever is an Anglo-Dutch transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam,
Netherlands and London, United Kingdom. Unilever was founded in 1930 by the merger of the Dutch
margarine producer Margarine Unie and the British soap maker Lever Brothers. Its products include food,
beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. Unilever targets 2.5 billion people around the 190
countries of the world, by providing value in their products and services. Unilever proudly says that
when customers reach for nutritionally balanced foods, ice creams, shampoos, affordable soaps that
combat with diseases and every household product there is a good chance that people might pick their
brand as Unilever offers 400 range of products. As per Unilever, every seven household of ten
households, they will be using Unilever products. Unilever tries to meet the global challenge of
improving environment and providing good quality of products and services through Unilever Sustainable
Living Plan. To improve the product sustainability, Unilever is working with the governments, partners,
NGOs and consumers to create changes and face the challenges in the world.

Lipton:
About 120 years ago tea was a rare and expensive of product, Sir Thomas Lipton challenged this
convention and had a vision that tea should be a beverage for anyone, of any class and enjoy the best taste
of tea, for this reason he founded Lipton. Lipton was launched in Pakistan in 1948 and today 100 billion
drinks of Lipton are consumed each year making Lipton a household brand.

A new approach, a new idea….

"OUR GLOBAL REACH AND UNILEVER SUSTAINABLE LIVING PLAN GIVE US A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO
MAKE A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD. ACHIEVING THIS REQUIRES CLEAR INSIGHTS, PATIENT
FOCUS ON LONG-TERM RESPONSIBLE GROWTH, AND – ABOVE ALL ELSE – INTEGRITY."

-Paul Polman, Unilever CEO

“Integrity is a core part of Unilever’s culture. It means that wherever I go across the company in my role
as finance manager, I can expect my colleagues to uphold the same levels of integrity – whether they
are dealing with me, my team, or the external stakeholders we work with. My association with Unilever
helps me build sustainable, meaningful and positive relationships in my role. Knowing that the company
I work for takes integrity seriously means I can take real pride in the work I do.”

-Thusitha Mahipala, Finance Manager (Singapore)

Unilever was one of the first few companies that welcomed the idea of the IMC approach. Unilever,
even though having a lot of sub brands under it, realized that all of them should be integrated and that
each and every one of them should be an ambassador of their high standards. Unilever launched its
Code of Business Principles in 1995 and 24 related code policies, which were updated in 2016. These
code policies are the heart of the Unilever business integrity framework. These codes help them to put
their values of integrity, respect, responsibility and pioneering into practice. They play a key role in
setting out how the company seeks to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, protect their
brands and reputation, and prevent harm to people or the environment. In order to look over the
integrity process, Unilever has appointed its own Chief Integrity Officer, currently Anny Tubbs. Her job is
to advice on the strategies and execution of the Global Integrity Program and lead a network of local
and regional integrity officers.

The framework of Unilever Business Integrity is following:

 Prevention: To embed a culture at all levels, in all geographies

 Detection: To encourage employees to speak up and participate in decision making which show
they are following bottom up approach
 Response: Investigate the breaches which help Unilever to improve their communication
processes.

Working with others.

Unilever following its Business Integrity Program, they want work with suppliers, agents, distributors
and business partners who hold similar values and standards that Unilever holds. The priority of Unilever
is to be a successful business: which includes growth, balancing short and long-term interests. Unilever
aims to take care of their consumers, employees, shareholders and the business partners. To succeed in
this process, it requires high standard behavior within the organization and positive impact of Code of
Business in day to day work.

Twelve Fundamental Principles:

1. Standard of Conduct: The Company aims to do its operations with honesty without harming the
human rights and wants to maintain legal relationship with its partners.
2. Obeying Laws: Unilever and its employees will obey the laws of the countries in which they are
operating
3. Employees: It promises to have a working environment that promotes diversity, equality,
opportunities and no discrimination. Unilever hire those employees which are capable, meets
the standards of Unilever and have the ability to progress
4. Consumers: The Company aims to provide branded products and services consistently offering
value in price and quality. The products will be accurately labeled, advertised and
communicated
5. Shareholders: Unilever will conduct as per the internationally accepted good corporate
governance. They will timely communicate about its structures, activities, financial information
to their shareholders.
 6. Business Partners: They want to have beneficial relationship with their business partners,
suppliers and customers.
7. Community Involvement: It strives to be a trusted corporate citizen and want to be socially
responsible as per its commitment
8. Public Activities: It will corporate with the government, directly and through bodies like trade
association to have legitimate interests and it will not support any party organization.
9. The Environment: Unilever aims to make continuous improvements in the management of
environmental impact.
10. Innovation: Unilever believes in innovation to meet the consumer needs and they apply basic
science that do not harm the standards of the product
11. Competition: Unilever believes in vigorous yet fair competition. Unilever and its employees will
conduct operation with fair competition accepted by competition laws and principles.
12. Business Integrity: Unilever does not give or take directly or indirectly bribes for improper
advantage of business and financial gains.

IMC Business Model in Unilever:

Strategic Focus:
To invest in the long-term strategy categories and brands that deliver growth to the benefits of the
stakeholders. They want to deliver consistency in sales growth and give leverage to invest in supply
chain, marketing, IT and people. They are seeking innovation that helps them to bring improvements in
their products and service to make their market share grow and enter in new markets. Unilever wants to
have a responsible growth that does not have negative impact on the environment which hurts the
reputation of Unilever. Unilever believes in profitable growth and responsible which is heart of their
business model that is Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP). This model guides the company to meet
the demands of their customer with the available resources by cutting down costs and improving
manufacturing processes.

Consumer Insight:
Societies in world are growing dynamically, consumer insights do not help the predict the upcoming
trends but maintain the competitive advantage which makes the consumer to stick with branded
products of Unilever as the company introduces new or improved products as per the needs of the
consumer.

Collaboration:
Unilever works with governments, NGOs and other stakeholders to drive change that is good for the
society and good for the business. Unilever continuously work with their business partners in supply
chain to create innovations in products and in their packaging.

Innovation:
The mission of R&D of Unilever is to unlock innovation and technology to bring improvements and
provide new branded products and service to their customers
Manufacturing:
Unilever has the world’s no.1 supply chain according to Garthner. Around the world 306 factories have
invested efficient and eco-production.

Marketing:
Unilever is marketing and customer oriented company, where Unilever tries to achieve benefits from at
all kinds of platforms so that we can get reach and create engagement. Effective use of digital media is
important because it is influencing shoppers through channels.

IMC at Lipton:
With the core values of the company in their hearts and trying their best to be the ambassadors of
Unilever’s high standards, Lipton tries its best to serve the consumers with the best quality tea. In order to
do that Lipton not just only involves its customers in decision making but also tries to think like them that
why would they want their product? Many companies use segmentation in order to define their target
audiences, but Lipton no longer applies the old method of segmentation, but it tries to analyze the
consumer behavior and based on that they make their strategies. They try to make everything, from social
media websites, like Facebook or twitter, to their product on the shelf, to the customer’s consumption a
good experience.

Working with others:

In order to be efficient in what they do each department of Lipton works together in order to achieve their
objectives. They closely work and support their sales team to get the feedback from them that what is the
current situation in the market and what should be done either to solve an issue if it exists or to improve
further for e.g. Lipton thinks that the product should be found in the first 10 sec so that the consumer does
not switch to other brands, so the sales team helps to give ideas that how and where the product should be
placed in order to make it more convenient for the customer to find it on the shelf. In order for a customer
to be attracted to your product, the extrinsic cues and intrinsic cues of a product play a very important
role. Here the Research and Development department comes into play at Lipton which tells what flavor
should be there, what colors should be used in the packaging etc. The finance team plays a very vital role
in pricing their products on premium because they are a global brand and want to do competitive pricing.
The most major task of a brand is to communicate its message to its target audience otherwise the
customers won’t have any awareness or knowledge about the brand. Lipton works closely with the
advertising agency, who they consider as a part of their team. They take their opinions and short list them
in order to plan their campaign. Supply chain also plays a vital role in the distribution of resources and
providing information about the availability of resources to the company. The customer data collected is
shared with all the departments if they ask but is believed that only the marketing department would be
able to fully understand and analyze the data.

Communication at Lipton Pakistan:

It is very important for a company to engage its customers and understand them, that what they want and
how they want it, and their behavior, that why they do what they do, in order to achieve their goals.
Lipton in order to do that, studies the behavior of the consumers carefully, so that they may know what is
the certain “kick” that makes them purchase a product for e.g. why does a customer purchase green tea?
They also engage the customers through social media, like Facebook or Twitter, and through their own
website, i.e www.lipton.com, where they share different tea recipes as well. Lipton also makes use of the
Unilever Raabta, which is now also used to make outbound calls. Although the social media is also a
major tool for Lipton to deliver its message, but Lipton prefers television in Pakistan more because
Pakistan still lacks behind in e-commerce. Different ads are made according to the countries as the culture
of each country differs form one another, but when it comes to Pakistan sometimes Indian ads are also run
over here. Lipton has also created a lot of trends in which the most famous one was the tea war, in which
they challenged its rival tea brand Tapal. Although it may seem that both the brands were trying to attack
each other with all they got, but this was a onetime calculated strategy which gained both the brands a lot
of attention and a lot of word of mouth was spread. Many non-tea consumers also started consuming tea
because of this. Lipton has also used emotional appeal and has done CSR activities to attract customers
and also spread a good word of mouth of the brand for e.g. Be a Maker in which they connected the
millennials with their brand by connecting the millennials behind their tea making with the millennials
around the world. In Pakistan they launched the chotu campaign in which Lipton collaborated with The
Citizens Foundation to help register children who are unable to pay for school and get them registered.
According to Lipton, they mainly focus on how many times a consumer watches their ads and what
reaction they have, whether positive or negative, after watching it instead of focusing on how much sales
have they generated through their ads.