Strategic Marketing Report: Unilever's Strategies and Recommendations

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Unilever's strategic marketing approaches, focusing on the strategies that have contributed to the brand's overall success, particularly its recognition in the Effie Awards 2017. It delves into Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) and its role in driving business value through additional growth, cost reduction, risk mitigation, and enhanced consumer belief. The report also explores various strategies employed by Unilever, including long-term thinking, network creation, working culture transformation, and system changes. Furthermore, it examines Unilever's growth strategies such as market dispersion, product development, diversification, and market development, highlighting their contributions to the company's success. The report concludes with recommendations for Unilever to sustain its market position through continuous strategic innovation and adaptation to evolving market dynamics.

Strategic Marketing

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Literature review..............................................................................................................................3
Strategies to improve overall success of the brand......................................................................3
Different ways made by Unilever to achieve success.................................................................5
Unilever’s Growth Strategies......................................................................................................7
Recommendations............................................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10
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Introduction
The research report will highlight the main strategies to improve the overall success of the brand.
According to the Effie awards 2017, Unilever is one of the companies which show the best
performance while improving their overall success. The company chosen for this report is
Unilever. This research report will cover the main strategies and sustainable living plan of
Unilever. Talking about the company background, Unilever is the well-known trademarked
company which is ranked on 269th number when compared with the top 2000 famous companies
across Australia. The company is famous for generating the majority of its economic growth
from the food product business in Australia. Unilever is a famed Australian organization which
was founded in the year 1899 (Unilever, 2014). The headquarters of Unilever are situated in
Sydney, Australia; this corporation has its functions centered on the retail business, various food
products, personal use products as well as several home products. Unilever is the chief consumer
brand in the sector of foods and beverages, cleaning agents, and also personal care products for
daily use. Unilever employs nearly 163,000 people in 100 countries and their cleaning as well as
daily products are sold in even more than 170 countries all over the world. Currently, the
Unilever Sustainable Living Plan made a speedy intensification in their business due to which
they are awarded under Effie awards in 2017. Unilever is on the first rank that had got various
awards in year 2017. Unilever is the only company that owns more than 400 brands, with the
turnover rate of about 50 billion Euros in the past year 2016 (Limited, 2012).
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Literature review
The literature review is playing a very important role in any of the research as it will help to
focus on the earlier literature given by the various researchers. The review of literature basically
helps to recognize the point of view of the scholars in context to the importance of the strategies
to improve the success of business. The study mainly focusses on the improvement strategies
which made Unilever to get a chance to be on the top most rank in Effie awards 2017. This
report is assembled to carry out the detailed study of Unilever success by analyzing their
business strategy to improve their brands. The strategic investigation of any organization is the
study of the development as well as implementation of the short-term and long-term success
which company has developed for carrying out their business operations.
Strategies to improve overall success of the brand
Every business put up their strategy to move forward and reach to the height of success and
Unilever is one of those companies who have proved that correct plan and strategies will take
any company to the path of success. The path followed by them comprises of sustainable living
plan and some basic framework to attain success.
Unilever Sustainable Living Plan
Sustainable as well as equitable growth is one and the only method to create a long-term value
for the stakeholders. This is the reason that company has established Unilever Sustainable Living
Plan which helps to company to create a business model which is unique and different from other
companies. USLP comprises of meticulous blueprint for how the company will attain sustainable
growth, while bringing out the purpose as well as vision. It basically covers all the facest of
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business, fit in all the brands and distribution, and cover up each and every country in which they
are linked in (Unilever PLC, 2017).
The four basic frameworks that shows how the Unilever Sustainable Living Plane drives the
value for the growth of business to achieve success:
 Additional growth: Sustainability generally creates an advance opportunity, helps to
opens up many new markets and also permits the brands to hook up with the consumers
in numerous ways. About 50% of the consumers’ desire to choose the brands which are
additional sustainable and the brands must be well-placed to take advantage of
development prospect. The company has made such strategy to cope up with the
consumers world-wide.
 Less cost: By cutting out the waste as well as making use of resources very carefully the
company creates efficiencies, cut the costs and perk up limitations though fetching
uncovered part to the instability of store prices. This strategy helps the Unilever to
increase their random sale (Mahajan, 2016).
 Less threat: Working with the concept of sustainably plans helps the company to get rid
of associated risks such as changes in climate and long-term foundation of the raw
materials. By the year 2017, about 56% of the agricultural raw materials used by Unilever
were sustainably founded.
 More belief: Introduction to sustainability leads to strengthen the relationship among the
consumers. It helps the company to maintain the value as well as importance to the
consumers, while stimulating the Unilever’s present and future employees. The company
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always put their efforts to maintain the belief system within the organization and this
framework will totally help them out to get succeed (Tode, 2018).
Different ways made by Unilever to achieve success
Achieving success is not an easy task, a business has to pass on from lot of things and have to
create number of ways to achieve success. Some of the ways that help Unilever to win Effie
awards 2017 are given below:
Long term thinking: It is completely feasible, nowadays, to become successful commercially in
the market and think for the short-term success. There are number of businesses that are filled up
by an attraction with the short-term profit. But this type of short-termism in actual depicts that
businesses are somehow missing the opportunities to build up elasticity into their business, as
well as protect its standard and long-standing success. Unilever think about the impact of these
long-standing developments, and their long-term thinking make them successful in the market.
They have worked throughout the longer term outcome of the worldwide trends for their
business (Economist, 2014).
Create new networks to expand business: Unilever is very clear about many things which also
include that a business is not able to deliver the sustainable future on its hold. There are several
issues that the company is facing such as issues regarding food security, climatic change and
these issues cannot be solved by the company at a level which they have been creating. A next
step towards the change is required, therefore they started creating new networks to resolve the
issues and expand their business. Unilever has long acknowledged the significance of joint
venture. Unilever has enthusiastically engaged with the other companies to speed up the growth
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towards sustainability. Collaboration is quite necessary, to rise up in the market and create new
links to bring out new solutions to the previous problems (Davies, 2016).
Transformation in the working culture: To achieve success, Unilever started to translate as
well as set in the USLP objectives into the core running application and actions. Unilever start
providing their people with the specific tools, proficiency and information which made the
company capable to deliver USLP. The transform the working style so that they can reach their
goals faster. USLP provides a wonderful reason to what company is doing as a business that
helps to create a massive energy within the working environment and employee the engagement
which helps to explain half of the development that Unilever will be producing after the
transformation (Uren, 2011).
Changes in present system: There are number of times when a company is not able to realize
that they need a change in their current system. Unilever realized that before reaching the
unsustainable systems in which they are operating, they must need a change. Unilever is trying
hard to alter the outdoor system in such a way that, in the ending, they will be rewarded
sustainability (Roderick, 2017).
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Unilever’s Growth Strategies
Market dispersion: Unilever applies the approach of market dispersion as its chief concentrated
development strategy. In this rigorous strategy, Unilever tries to increase the volume of their sale
to perk up the revenues and equivalent industry growth. Let us make it more clear by taking an
example, in the market of home care, Unilever uncompromisingly trade its products in the
current markets, like the United States as well as Canada. Such antagonistic hard work increases
the Unilever’s ability to confine the customers away from challenging the home care firm. The
company successfully applies this rigorous strategy by making use of general strategy of
isolation to make its goods more viable and striking than other companies (Young, 2017).
Development of product: Development of any product works as a secondary exhaustive
strategy which Unilever generally uses for the growth of their business. Unilever applies this
rigorous growth strategy by bringing in the new products which address the need of consumers.
The new versions of the personal care products made by Unilever are released out over time to
uphold or boost up the company’s market share. These types of rigorous strategy direct to the
strategic aim of developing the company from side to side constant innovation of the products.
Such type of innovation usually improves the merchandise mix in the Unilever’s marketing mix
up. Their developing strategy has put the company on first position and makes them win various
awards in Effie awards 2017.
Diversification: It is the supporting strategy and Unilever make use of diversification as their
sustaining rigorous growth plan. These demanding strategies mainly focus on setting up new
businesses to raise their company. To accomplish diversification, Unilever get hold of other
businesses over with time, such as the achievement of the personal care product business of Sara
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Lee Corporation. The general viable strategy of segregation supports this rigorous growth
strategy by making sure that the company must acquire the brands that offer unique features
which can attract the target consumers. This growth strategy has played a major role in achieving
the Effie award 2017 (Trefis Team, 2015).
Development in market: Basically the market development is called as a supporting growth
strategy in business of Unilever’s. In this supporting strategy, Unilever grows by entering into
the new markets areas or market sector. By marketing their present day products Unilever tries to
acquire new solution to the unaddressed requirements in various market section, such as infant
care requirements. On the other hand, Unilever already has a considerable existence in the
consumer goods market section worldwide. Therefore, this rigorous development strategy takes
only a sustaining role in the business of Unilever. The general strategy of separation supports this
rigorous strategy by creating up competitive benefit, based on the product inimitability essential
to productively enter into the new market section (Cescau & Rivers, 2007).
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Recommendations
As it is also clear from the above part of the project report that to be in the list of Effie awards
and achieve success one must think of some strategies. To carry out a flourishing change within
the business, an important strategic plan is always required to display the accurate suggestion
which provides the employees a proper direction; and keep them motivated while working in
current environment. The changes in the system must allow the organization to defeat any kind
of challenge which is rising in their path. Unilever is one of those companies that believe in
transformation and changes which make them on number one position in Effie awards 2017
(Askew, 2017). It was recommended that Unilever keep on making new strategies to flourish in
the market. Changes are required for the growth; Unilever must develop new strategies to stay on
the position that they have attained. Moreover, these recommendations could also be adopted to
improve the overall financial status of the company. Undoubtedly, Unilever has been a market
leader in terms of their offered services, but at the same time the other competitors are really
working hard to match the pace acquired by Unilever. Therefore, there are sure possibilities of
development of immense competition in the markets. In such type of situation, it is required from
the company that they should access their resources in a best possible manner. For improved
results, equality could be established at the company so that all the employees work in a great
collaboration to fight against the emerging competition in the market (Kissinger, 2017).
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References
Askew, K., 2017. Unilever's plan to grow in 2017 – 6 things to learn, Available at:
https://www.just-food.com/analysis/unilevers-plan-to-grow-in-2017-6-things-to-
learn_id135588.aspx [Accessed 14 May 2018].
Cescau, P. & Rivers, R., 2007. Unilever’s growth strategy, Available at:
https://www.unilever.com/Images/2007-investor-seminar-unilevers-growth-strategy-
presentation-patrick-cescau-ceo_tcm244-422223_en.pdf [Accessed 16 May 2018].
Davies, S., 2016. What 449 ‘Failures’ Can Teach Us About Success: Unilever, Available at:
https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/unilever/ [Accessed 14 May 2018].
Economist, T., 2014. Unilever: In search of the good business, Available at:
https://www.economist.com/business/2014/08/09/in-search-of-the-good-business [Accessed 17
May 2018].
Kissinger, D., 2017. Unilever’s SWOT Analysis & Recommendations, Available at:
http://panmore.com/unilever-swot-analysis-recommendations [Accessed 18 May 2018].
Limited, U., 2012. Introduction to Unilever, Available at: https://www.unilever.ca/Images/ir-
introduction-to-unilever-march2012_tcm1288-447463_en.pdf [Accessed 17 May 2018].
Mahajan, V., 2016. How Unilever Reaches Rural Consumers in Emerging Markets, Available at:
https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-unilever-reaches-rural-consumers-in-emerging-markets [Accessed
18 May 2018].
Roderick, L., 2017. Unilever’s sustainable brands grow 50% faster than the rest of the business,
Available at: https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/05/18/unilever-sustainable-brands-growth/
[Accessed 16 May 2018].
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Tode, C., 2018. How Unilever leverages core consumer insights for mobile success: Mindshare
exec, Available at: https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news/strategy/
22108.html [Accessed 14 May 2018].
Trefis Team, 2015. Here's How Unilever Plans to Revive Growth, Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/07/17/heres-how-unilever-plans-to-revive-
growth/#30804f4d7e6c [Accessed 15 May 2018].
Unilever PLC, 2017. Unilever’s Sustainable Living brands continue to drive higher rates of
growth, Available at: https://www.unilever.com/news/Press-releases/2017/unilevers-sustainable-
living-brands-continue-to-drive-higher-rates-of-growth.html [Accessed 18 May 2018].
Unilever, 2014. Introduction to Unilever, Available at:
https://www.unilever.com/Images/ir_introduction-to-unilever-nov-2014-update_tcm244-
421552_en.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2018].
Uren, S., 2011. 6 ways Unilever has achieved success through sustainability - and how your
business can too, Available at: https://www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/6-ways-unilever-has-
achieved-success-through-sustainability-and-how-your-business-can-too [Accessed 17 May
2018].
Young, J., 2017. Unilever’s Generic Strategy & Intensive Growth Strategies, Available at:
http://panmore.com/unilever-generic-strategy-intensive-growth-strategies [Accessed 16 May
2018].
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