Unilever Boosts Digital-Marketing Spending Rate

Unilever intends to boost its investment in digital marketing, catering further to the “manpower-intensive marketing world” amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, says Alan Jope, CEO of the global brand.

On October 22nd, Unilever made an announcement on an investor call, saying that it would elevate its marketing spend in the fourth quarter of 2020, to a greater extent, compared to similar form outlay in the third quarter.

The FMCG giant also revealed that some of the spending would continued to be pumped into branding and marketing investment (BMI), while more would be invested in company talent to equip staff with appropriate skills.

According to the results of Q3 sales, Unilever’s underlying sales growth was reported to be 4.4%, increased by homecare sales, while turnover dropped 2.4% to €12.9 billion, resulting from the fluctuation of currency exchange rates.

Add to this the 2020 Effie Index – which identifies and ranks the most effective brands, marketers, networks, and agencies around the world – identifying Unilever as the most effective marketer; a result the business giant puts down to one key factor – their staff – and Unilever is not doing too badly.

“We have stronger safeguards than anybody in making sure that when we spend digitally, it’s not in fraudulent media activities, that our advertising shows up in safe environments in the digital world, and most importantly, that it’s viewed by humans and not by robots.” CFO Graeme Pitkethly said.

Within such a tough period, Unilever is undoubtedly delivering a better end result than its peers.

The company’s efforts in digital marketing center on brand safety and shunning losses from potentially fraudulent campaigns.

Alan Jope stated “We’ve moved from response mode to now living with COVID-19, but the environment that we’re operating in remains highly unpredictable and we believe an economic downturn is inevitable.”

Unilever, therefore, pledged to expand its investment in marketing even further, enhancing support for its brand campaigns and backing an innovation programme that is tailored to the changing environment as consumers learn to live with the pandemic.

The British–Dutch multinational is aiming at emerging markets that consumers are seeing by way of digital technologies, all the time fostering its talent base, and overall skillsets while building other marketing resources to connect with customers.